Technology in our classroom

As there are some classes in grade 6/7 who are blogging and others that don’t have that chance, I have created a single middle school blog for all students in grade 6/7 at our school.  All students will become users of the blog and if you want to be an editor with the privilege of publishing posts directly on that blog, then please visit the blog and leave a message.

On your personal blogs you have adminstrator rights, which means you can make all changes as needed, but as a user on the middle school blog you will have less rights.  If, though, you are prepared to help the teachers run the blog, then we will give you further rights as an editor or author.

Please visit the new blog and leave a comment.

Original image: ‘3:30 PM-Web Team Works After School‘
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by: Judy Baxter

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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‘
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by: Steve Ryan

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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!‘
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by: Andy

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We’ve now had two students coment on which theme we should have for our class blog.

A new class means we need a new look for the blog.  This class blog is going to play an important part in your school life this year, so we need to change a few things around to make it more yours.

What about the tagline?

Do we need to look at different themes?

Hopefully by Easter, many of you will have your own blogs.  Those who don’t want their own individual blog will be added as users on the class blog – which is not as much fun as having your own blog.

So your first blogging activity is to visit the blogs of other students, keep a record of the blog themes you like and write a comment here about which theme you think we should have and why.  The name of the theme is usually at the very bottom of the blog.  The one we have now is ‘Rubrick”

On the right-hand sidebar of this blog is a list of students who have blogs.  Also go to this blog ‘Bringing us Together‘ and visit the students mentioned here.

A new blog has been created for students to continue the friendships they began in the blogging competition.  A teacher and their class(es) will be in charge of the blog for a two week (fortnight) period. 

In that time, students from that class can add posts for other student readers to comment on and/or write posts about on their own blogs.  This will be similar to the blogging competition but without the reward at the end. It will be more a blogging challenge than competition.

The first post for the blog will include the names of the students who won most improved and keenest bloggers in their classes according to their teacher and students. These students will also be on the sidebar blogroll. An adapted version of the participants page will also be added – students who did not take part regularly will have their names removed from the list by their own teacher.

Interested teachers will be given admin rights and they can add students as authors or editors as required when posting.  Teachers will also be in charge of moderating comments.

Some of the teachers involved in this competition have just had a skype call and decided on the following:

• Create a new blog to carry on the conversations and friendships begun in stubc08.
• Each teacher and their classes to be in charge of the new blog for one or two weeks at a time.

But before we set up this new blog, we want some ideas from you, the participants from 2008.

1. What should be the URL for the blog?    eg http://wyatt67.edublogs.org is this classblog URL
2. What should be the name and tagline for the new blog?
3. What theme should the new blog have? eg this blog has Rubric 1.0

Please leave your comments here on this post preferably before Christmas so Miss W. and Sue Waters can get the new blog up and running by January 1st 2009.

Original image: ‘asign‘
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by: Kevin Walsh

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WOW!  I checked our clustrmap today and at 4.30pm on Thursday 13th November we had just clocked over the 10,000th visitor. Our class blog began in March 2008 as a way of teaching students to be internet savvy as well as for them to comment on posts from both students and myself. It was the first blog created in our school and since then we have had other class blogs as well as individual student blogs created.

Posts on this blog have ranged from jigsaw puzzles to netball to fighter jets as well as creating cartoons and avatars.  Up until the beginning of September we had received about 4000 visitors. Then Miss Wyatt decided to run a world wide student blogging competition and since then the number of visitors have soared. 

I wonder how many countries you can name that have visited our blog? 

The first three students to name at least 20 different countries will get their name on my class blogroll until the end of our school year about 18 December.

Photo source

Students were asked to write about poverty for Blog Action Day.  This is Mallorie’s photo story and a poem by Julya.

Students wrote about where they lived and where to visit if you were a tourist.  Come with Nadine on a tour of her state.

Why did Tim choose a pirate avatar?  Check it out here.

Festivals from India, Australia,  Muslim culture,  Chinese culture, Lithuania, USA

Questions to answer from Lanie, Karen, Mr Winik

We are now half way through the competition, so we need to conduct some sort of review.  I would like both teachers and students taking part in this blogging competition to head over to Sue Waters special competition review post on The Edublogger and leave her a comment.

This week’s activities are all about keeping up the conversation.  I recently had a  teacher from Holland write a post about starting out blogging.  She included two links to my posts on avatars and introducing yourself. This meant she left a trackback or ping to my class blog. Some of you will have received trackbacks or pings when I have linked your name in one of my posts.

I then visited her class blog to write  a comment and check out all her students’ blogs that were on her sidebar blogroll.  Sofia, one of her students, then came back to my blog with this comment:

MS. W,
How did you find my blog? My teacher recommended your blog to my class, but i never thought that you would find it!! Thanks a lot for writing a comment though…
Sofia

In my class I have about 20 students with their own blogs. How do I remember their URL? How do I get to their blogs easily?  Well, I use my ‘blogroll’ on the sidebar of my blog below my flag counter.  It has a variety of titles – 2008 students, games to help your skills, our school blogs, talk to these students, teacher blogs, wikis to visit. On the blogroll, I link to all those blogs that I visit often or have interesting activities to do.

I often give you clues on how to do certain activities but this week, you are going to look at both a written post from The Edublogger which has screenshots included and a video from Edublogs telling you how to create your blogroll. Make sure your computer can use a flash player to watch the video. It has a .swf ending to the URL.

Once you have created at least five links in your blogroll, come back here to answer the poll.

Still got time to spare, then visit some more blogs or check out the recent posts.

Add a comment at this post about three people whose blogs you visit often and why?

Which was more useful when creating your blogroll?
( polls)

Original image: ‘Usapan & Nyanpan‘
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by: Jon Bounds

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