Technology in our classroom

WOW! Two posts for the challenge this week.  Some students and classes took a great deal of care writing their commenting guidelines from last week’s challenge. Have a look at these:

Abbey, Mrs Yollis, Mr Miraglia, Jessica, Brad, Chris, Emily, Kelly - teachers are the same, all over the world Kelly!!

• Fab4 even made a video earlier this year about why they want to blog.
• Mrs Cousino has some tips for starter sentences when commenting on blogs.
• Mrs Bee’s class have created ’scooper tops.‘  What are these you ask?
• Mrs Thompson’s class were advertising the blogging challenge.

These students wrote posts about the comments they left:  Brad, Abby

This week’s challenges

1. How are the comments made by Brad and Abby the same? How are they different? Which comment(s) would lead on to further conversation between Brad or Abby and the owner of the blog?
2. How can you write a great post so lots of people leave comments?  Check out this post by Sue Waters from the Edublogger. Write a post you think will invite a lot of comments.
3. When someone leaves a comment, are you leaving an answer for them in your comment area, are you visiting their blog to leave a comment or are you sending an email to them if they left their email address?  Which of these three do you think carries the conversation on about the topic in your blog? Why?
4. If you want to have threaded comments in your blog, then enter this competition run by The Edublogger.  It closes soon so you might want to write this post first.

Too much to have to say in one post this week, so I have divided it up into a blogging challenge post and a commenting challenge post.

It is great to see so many students with their own blogs participating in the challenge.  Remember though, there are also some students on class blogrolls. Visit them to read their posts and leave comments as well.

What is a blogroll, you ask?  Now that you have started visiting other blogs and looking at the participant list to find students with similar interests, you might start finding some blogs that you really like.  You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL?  This is where a blogroll comes in handy.

If you look on the sidebar of my blog, you will notice I have certain subheadings such as:

• 2009 bloggers
• links numeracy
• links science
• teacher blogs  

These are all part of my blogroll.  Notice the subheadings or categories are alphabetical beginning with numbers.  So you will need to think about what the names are for your categories. 

If using Edublogs, to create the link category headings, go to  links > link category  To add some links such as this blog and your friends blogs, go to links>add new.  Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL.

Just to confuse you and your teacher, there is also another heading called ‘categories’.  This though, relates to the posts you write about.  These categories appear in the header area or at the footer section of your post. 

What are your posts mainly about?

• family and friends
• schoolwork
• my interests
• my future 

You might use these as post categories.  If using Edublogs, to set them up from your dashboard go to posts>categories. Why are categories and tags important when writing your posts?  See if you can find out that answer over the next week.

Your challenges this week

1. Add at least 10 blogs to your blog roll.  Make sure you have at least two different categories.
2. When writing posts, begin adding categories. You should only have a few of these – it is like the chapter heading of a book. Go back to your previous posts and change the category.  If writing a post for the challenge, perhaps a category ‘challenge 09′ would be useful.
3. If you have taken part in a previous challenge,  you also need to write a post recommending at least 5 blogs you think students and classes should add to their blogroll.  Remember to give reasons why that blog should be added.
4. If you still have lots of time to do some more challenges, then visit the blog run by last year’s participants.  Leave some comments on the posts and perhaps you will also find some other links for your blogroll. Check out the categories used on this blog in their blog roll.

Looking through many of your first posts about what you want to get out of this challenge, most of you mentioned cyber conversations with other students around the world.  But how can you do that? 

Consider that at the beginning of 2008, there were over 70 million blogs in the world.  How is someone going to find yours?  I asked a similar question when I started blogging in this post.  Why is nobody commenting? What were some of the tips teachers and my readers gave me about getting comments?

Now check out this post by Priscila in Argentina about how blogging has given her a world wide audience. Check out Abbey’s blogging story and the changes she has made since November 2008 when she began blogging.

This week’s challenges

1.  Write a post or even a page about commenting on your blog. What sort of comments will you accept? Do you have to leave a name with a URL?  Are your comments moderated? Explain what this means. Will you accept critical comments about your spelling and grammar etc? 

 Mr Toft has written something on his blog about commenting guidelines to help give you an idea.

Our students from Thailand have already set blogging and commenting guidelines at their school.

2.  Visit at least 5 blogs from the participant list and leave appropriate comments.  Keep a record of what you said in a word document or discuss the comments you left  in a post.  Think about what you would like as comments on your blog before you write these. We will be looking at these again at the end of the challenge to see how you have improved with your commenting.

Remember you can see what all the participants have written in their posts by visiting this page and clicking on the link. Choose a post you would be interested in to leave a comment on.

3. Add a clustrmap to your blog sidebar.  Check here if using Edublogs. Go to enhancing your blog with widgets.

4.  Add another widget that shows your global audience.  It might be like the flag one on my classblog or if you are over 13, you could add the feedjit map as well.  Maybe you also need a translator widget to help our non English speaking readers to translate your posts. Check what other classes have as widgets to help their global audience.

Attribution:  Original image: ‘Ioni’s world DSC01433‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99037763@N00/346630496
by: Dimitris Papazimouris  

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Well it’s getting close to the end of the challenge.  Here in Tasmania we have about three more weeks until our end of term then we have a two week holiday.  Those students in Canada and USA are heading towards the end of the year and their summer vacation time.

Are you going to be writing posts over your holiday break?  What topics are you going to write about? Maybe you are going to be away from computers for the break.  But you still want your readers to come back after the break to read your posts.

You have your blogroll organized; you’ve visited everyone on the blog to wish them a great holiday or good luck when they finish middle school and go onto high school. But how are you going to keep them as readers and entice new readers in over your break?

Challenge this week

Begin writing a series of at least three posts on a favourite topic. 

For example, if you are like Braiden in my class last year, your topic would be motor sport.  Perhaps he could write a post about:

• famous motorcar drivers – one post per driver with links and photos to other websites
• famous races – again lots of links and images with correct attribution

At the end of each article ask a question.  Also mention what you will be writing about in your next post. To make it easy for your readers to know when you have written your post, do you have an email subscription on your blog?  Check out this post from The Edublogger to see how to add it.

But, I’m not going to be near a computer over the holidays, you say!!

Easy done!  Instead of publishing the post immediately, tell your computer when you want it published.  In Edublogs above the save/publish buttons in your write post dashboard is a ‘publish immediately edit’ button.  Use this to tell edublogs when you want your post to be published. This will make it look like you are still writing during your holidays.

Original image: ‘Late night‘  by: eden politte
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35237096015@N01/24604141
Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

“Who wrote that great post on the trail of tears? I know it was someone in Mr Bogush’s class.” But that means looking through over 50 blogs.

“I loved that recipe on ANZAC biscuits?  Who wrote that post?  Which blog was it on?”  Someone in Mrs Smith’s Huzzah blog loves cooking but who is it?

There was one student who writes great posts on a variety of topics.  Who was it?

If you and your teacher are asking these types of questions, then you need to get your blog roll organized.

What is a blogroll?  It is a list of your favourite blogs or websites.  You can divide it into different categories and then add them to your ‘Links’ widget in your sidebar. On my class blog I have divided mine into these categories:

• 2008 students
• 2009 bloggers
• 2009 Inuit websites
• Games to help your skills
• Geography and the world
• Our school blogs
• Talk to these students
• Teacher blogs
• Wikis to visit

Notice they are alphabetical beginning with numbers.  So you will need to think about what the names are for your categories. 

If using Edublogs, to add links, go to write > links > add new link  Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL.

Your challenge this week

Add at least 10 blogs to your blog roll.  Make sure you have at least two different categories.

If you took part in the challenge last year, your task is different.  You need to write a post recommending at least 5 blogs you think students and classes should add to their blogroll.  Remember to give reasons why that blog should be added.

If you still have lots of time to do some more challenges, then visit the blog run by last year’s participants.  Leave some comments on the posts and perhaps you will also find some other links for your blogroll. Check out the categories used on this blog in their blog roll.

Original image: ‘Question Mark‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25696778@N08/3233934830
by: Laika Henna

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Most answers to this quiz can be found in Wikipedia, but you might have to visit a couple of pages to find the answers.  This could be used as an example of Activity 1 in the Edublogger Student Competition.

Note you must be 13 or older to be able to create your own quiz in MyStudyio.

All the images in this quiz were either from flickrcc or wikipedia pages.  There was nowhere in the quiz allowing me to attribute the images.

Your blog is up and running but not many people are visiting you to leave comments.  How do you attract comments and how do you find out who is visiting?

Attracting visitors:

• my students and I visit lots of other blogs and leave comments
• the name of the post is important for search engines to pick up eg Fighter jets
• making links in your posts to other blogs and websites
• having an interesting post that lots of people want to read and comment on
• making sure the class blog URL is attached to my avatar when I make a comment
• having an activity linked to the page, so the reader has something to comment on
• check out the other blogs on the class blogrolls

Check out these student posts and the comments about building your blog audience:

• Ashley
• Nicholas
• Hayden

Checking who is visiting:

There are a few ways to do this.  You could have

• a counter such as the flagcounter on this page
• a clustrmap, how to add to your sidebar
• and if 13 or older, a feedjit map

Some classes taking part in the challenge are keeping a large world map showing where their visitors are coming from. They want to know about your country and where you live.  This week’s challenge is to visit at least 10 other blogs that are new to you and leave a comment on an interesting post.

Make sure you stop by Mrs Cranford and Mrs Rush with their class blogs.

Remember the most important point as Sue Waters says

the key to blogging lies in effective reading of blogs

Original image: ‘Groveland Museum Visitors – Day 309‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29145750@N00/1035938155
by: Steve Ryan

Released under an Attribution-ShareAlike License

In less than a week, we will be losing all those red dots on the clustrmap.  After 12 months, they archive the map, so I thought before that happened I would save an image of what it looks like now.

Since March 14, 2008 we have had nearly 18,000 visitors to our blog.  We have had 50 or more visitors from these countries:

Can you work out the names of ten other countries where our blog visitors have come from?

It has finally started!! The 2009 student blogging challenge is on its way.  The first challenge has been posted, but first a few reminders:

• Check out the participants at this link
• Read the most recent posts from all the participants at this link
• Enjoy the challenges and make new friends

Challenge 1 – Introduce yourself

Whenever you meet someone face to face for the first time, you usually tell them a little about yourself.  You don’t tell them lots of really personal information but just enough for them to know a bit about you and your interests.

Well, the same thing happens when blogging.  Your readers need to know about you and your interests.  So there is an “About ” page on most blogs.  This is often the first page your readers might visit. When leaving a comment on your blogs saying thanks for joining the challenge, I checked out your about pages and many students from last year’s challenge had not done theirs so here is your chance to start improving your blogs.

Activities to choose from:

1.  Write about yourself or your class on your “About” page.  Remember though to be internet savvy.  Check out these sites for what to say or not say. Here are some examples of students and teachers who have already introduced themselves and their classblogs to their readers.   This teacher has put a lot of work into introducing his class and the role of the blog to his readers.  (Some themes don’t have pages, so you might have to write a post instead to introduce yourself or your class. )

2.  How do the introductions of Sue Waters and Miss W. differ? They are both teachers yet one gives out more personal information than the other.  Why?

3.  If you did the challenge last year, you might need to update your ‘About’ page. Things might have changed and you might want to tell more about yourself to your readers.

Original image: ‘Hello!‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035667891@N01/382513
by: Andy

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Edublogs have been making some changes in the way they host blogs.  At the moment, your blog is costing you nothing, but if you look on our class blog and my personal blog, you will see an Edublogs Supporter badge.  This costs about $40 each for these two blogs but I feel it is worth it to keep you safer on the internet.

What might you see on your blogs now?  Well, not too many changes.  As a supporter, I can turn off ads to 30 blogs from my personal blog and 30 blogs from my class blog.  This means you won’t see any Google ads on your blogs, but you might see some on other blogs you visit. 

It costs Edublogs thousands of dollars every month to run this blogging site for us.  At the moment it is free but you will have less space to save your blog and images, so make sure each of your posts are valuable.  If you are really keen on keeping your blog, you might in future years decide to become an edublogs supporter so you can also enjoy some of the great things on offer.

As a supporter, my blog and the class blog get some new widgets that you can’t get automatically – like the snow falling on the page. Now, if you find you lose your clustrmap, remember you can always add it as a widget in a text box – check with me how to do this. Anything nasty on your blog, make sure you tell me so I can discuss it with you and we come up with a decision of what you can do.  This is all about you becoming a responsible and savvy 21st century user of technology.