Technology in our classroom

Thanks to all the visitors coming to check out our classblog.  We have recently had our clustrmap account updated and now we have been  announced as a monthly winner.  Check out this email I received.

I’m pleased to announce that you’re a winner of the ClustrMaps User Of  The Month (there are more than one this month)!  CONGRATULATIONS!!  I’ve already updated you to ClustrMaps+ status, and the ‘zoomed in maps’ (continents) will begin appearing after the next map update (normally overnight at 0400 GMT, but it also depends on there being an increase by 20% of the number of ‘dots’ shown, so it may take an extra day or two).

You’ll find your URL listed on our User of The Month page, at

 http://clustrmaps.wordpress.com/user-of-the-month/

in one of the collections reasonably near the top,

and the upgrade stays in effect for 2 years (after which I can easily guarantee plenty of great new features).

Best wishes, and thanks for being a loyal ClustrMaps user and fan!

Thanks again visitors and the Clustrmaps team!!

We thought some of you might like to add badges to your blogs to let your readers know you’re part of the Student Blogging  and Commenting Challenge.

So here they are!

For the Better Bloggers

150 pixels wide

Image location:   http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_150.gif

200 pixels wide

Image location:   http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_200.gif

For your blog posts

Image location:    http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_468.gif

For the Better Commenters

150 pixels wide

Image location:    http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_150.png

200 pixels wide

Image location:    http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_200.png

For your blog posts

Image location:    http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_468.png

For the Challenge Helpers

150 pixels wide

Image location:     http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_1501.png

200 pixels wide

Image location:     http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_2001.png

For your blog posts

Image location:     http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/files/2009/10/better_bloggers_4681.png

Adding to your blog sidebar:

All you need to do is add a text widget to your sidebar and write a link to the image here on this blog using HTML code.

Here is an example of how you need to write the code:

Where it says:

http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/files/2009/o3/theedublogger2.jpg

you replace it with the image location given above for the size of badge you want to add to your sidebar.

Enjoy!

Miss W. says, “Thanks very much James  from Edublogs for designing and organizing these badges.  Also many thanks to Sue from Edublogs for writing this post to show students and me how to add them to their blog.  I am sure many students and classes will soon have them on their blogs and will have left a comment here thanking you for your support of the challenge.”

Since last week, I noticed a few classes in the first list of the participant’s page now have blogrolls with student individual blogs listed on them.  Also please note the blogmeister blogs have individual blogs on their sidebar as well. 

Classes and students have been out visiting and commenting on lots of blogs and, thanks to Sue Waters from the Edublogger, we now have a teacher, pre-service teacher or student helping with commenting on all class and individual blogs.  Most people using Blogger blogs have made sure commenters can use a profile of anonymous or name/URL.

Lots of students have created blog and comment avatars, but remember, if you have uploaded it on Edublogs, then it will only appear when you comment on an Edublogs blog.  There is no way your comment avatar will appear on all blogs.

So, I hope everyone is enjoying the challenges.  We have classes and students taking part from the following countries: Australia, U.S.A., New Zealand, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Hong Kong, Canada, Scotland, Thailand, Venezuela, Greece, Chile and Basq country.  Hopefully Portugal will also be joining us soon.

Challenges this week

1. To keep up the international flavour, add at least one widget to your sidebar that shows your reader a bit about the area you live in. This could be a weather or time widget.  What else might be appropriate?
2. Visit a blog from at least five different countries not including your own.  Leave a useful comment on the blog. This might include asking a question about the area the blogger lives in. 
3. Now write a post about what you learnt about the five bloggers you have visited. What did you find interesting about their blog? Is there someone in your class you would recommend read that blog as well?
4. Make sure you have read this PDF blog post about adding a URL as a hyperlink in a comment.  Try using this in activity 2 by linking to an interesting website about your country that the blogger could visit.
5. With so many countries taking part that have bloggers writing and speaking different languages, it is nearly necessary to have some form of translator widget on your blog. Can you find a widget to translate in Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Greek and Basq?

Attribution:

Original image: ‘Welcoming‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/56013895@N00/122872445
by: fly      Released under an Attribution License

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

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

One of our responsibilities as a teacher, is to make sure you are safe while using the internet, both at school and at home, by teaching you certain skills and knowledge.  But you also have a responsibility.  That is to be internet savvy and protect your online identity.

Most schools do not allow students to have pictures of themselves on their blogs and websites. If they do, parental permission has to have been granted from all students in the picture. Instead, most teachers create an avatar with their students.

Avatars can come from a website on the internet or you can use an image editor  or paint program to change a photo you have that represents you.

Activities for week 2

1. Create an appropriate avatar to represent yourself.  Save the picture as either a .gif or .jpeg or .png .  I noticed many of the challenge participants last year don’t have a blog avatar, but do have a user avatar.

• If using Edublogs, when you log-in to your blog dashboard,  there is a link under the section “Getting started with Edublogs” that allows you to upload your blog  avatar and user avatar in one easy step.  If you are a user like author or editor under your class blog, you should be able to upload to user avatar but not blog avatar.
• Once you have uploaded a user avatar this will appear wherever you make a comment.  Make sure you have your blog URL correctly written in your settings and profile.  So from now on, people will be able to click on your avatar and go straight to your blog. But if your URL is wrong, you will miss out on some interesting visitors.

2. Now create a post to explain why this avatar represents you.  If you are using a class blog, work with your teacher to create a post or page about your avatars. If you have saved the avatars on a drive at school, then your teacher could upload each of them as images with an explanation under each avatar.  Make sure your teacher also creates an avatar.

3.  If you created a Voki, then it can’t be added like an avatar.  Check out this site if you want to add it to your sidebar and check out here if you want to add a Voki to a post or page.  In both these posts, the most important thing is have everything ready in the post or page, including tags and categories before you insert the code under HTML and finally hit publish.

4. Still got time left this week, then make sure you visit the blogs of other participants. Leave me a comment here about some of the blogs you visited and what the interests were of the students you visited.

Remember the most important part of blogging is the conversation you begin and follow up on.

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self – top left
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer – top right
• The Hero Factory – top middle

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar -  on my sidebar

If under 13, sorry you can’t register for these mentioned below. But over 13, need parental or guardian permission.

• Zwinky
• Meez
• Tizme
• Wee World
• Voki

Thanks to this wiki which gave me many avatar websites to visit.

Reminder: Remember if writing a post or comment, mention challenge09 somewhere in your work.

Thanks to William, Jeff, Sam, Michael, Karen and Dale.

WOW!  When I left school yesterday, only one student had a virtual pet in their sidebar.  But when I checked all the blogs today, nearly everyone has got one.  Well done on working out how to do this.  Teaching each other is great in my class.

But I noticed that the width of the pet widget often overlaps into your post area.  Check out Lochie’s post and read my comment about how to change the width and what to change it to.  Remember to refresh your blog to see what difference the changes have made. If it is still too wide, go back in again and make the width smaller.

PS: You might have to change the width in two different places.

As teachers, we have a responsibility to make sure you are being internet savvy and responsible while using computers and mobiles at school.  Hopefully what we teach you will also be seen in the way you use the internet at home or out-of-school hours.

One way of being internet savvy is not to have pictures of yourself on your blog.  So below are a few sites where you can have a go at creating what is called an “Avatar“. Remember though, that age counts when using some websites and if you are under 13, then some of these sites are not suitable for you to use yet. These are where you need to have parental or guardian permission.

Activities for week 2

1. Create an appropriate avatar to represent yourself.  Save the picture as either a .gif or .jpeg or .png . 

2. If using Edublogs, when you log-in to your blog dashboard,  there is a link under the section “Getting started with Edublogs” that allows you to upload your blog and user avatar in one easy step.  If you are a user like author or editor under your class blog, you should be able to upload to user avatar but not blog avatar.

3. Once you have uploaded a user avatar this will appear wherever you make a comment.  Make sure you have your blog URL correctly written in your settings and profile.  So from now on, people will be able to click on your avatar and go straight to your blog. But if your URL is wrong, you will miss out on some interesting visitors. 

4. Now create a post to explain why this avatar represents you.  If you are using a class blog, work with your teacher to create a post or page about your avatars. If you have saved the avatars on a drive at school, then your teacher could upload each of them as images with an explanation under each avatar.  Make sure your teacher also creates an avatar.

5.  If you created a Voki, then it can’t be added like an avatar.  Check out this site if you want to add it to your sidebar and check out here if you want to add a Voki to a post or page.  In both these posts, the most important thing is have everything ready in the post or page, including tags and categories before you insert the code under HTML and finally hit publish.

 6. Still got time left this week, then make sure you visit the blogs of other participants.  Leave me a comment here about some of the blogs you visited and what the interests were of the students you visited.

Remember the most important part of blogging is the conversation you begin and follow up on.

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self - top left
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer - top right

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar -  on my sidebar

If under 13, sorry you can’t register for these.  But over 13, need parental or guardian permission.

• Zwinky
• Meez
• Tizme
• Wee World
• Voki

Thanks to this wiki  which gave me many avatar websites to visit. 

Reminder: Remember if writing a post or comment, mention stubc08 somewhere in your work.

The students in Portugal are using a name ‘tag’ for each of their posts.   For example if you want to chat with Pedro in 6c then look for the tag pedros6c in the lefthand sidebar.  Click on this and all the posts he has written will then appear on the page. 

“But I can’t read Portuguese?” you say.

Then open Google language tools in another window or tab.  Highlight, then cut and paste the Portuguese words into the translate text box.  Check you are translating Portuguese to English.  You should be able to understand enough to write back to the student using English.

Please make a comment here about your conversations with the Portuguese student bloggers.

Original image: ‘Colors‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12285897@N00/2669201638
by: Francisco Antunes

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Oh no!!  Where have they all gone?

The list was there this afternoon when I checked.

Don’t worry, all the names are still here. In fact, we want you to click on your name and make sure the link goes to your blog.  If it doesn’t, please come back here and leave a comment telling us the correct URL to your blog.

Sue Waters and I had a long chat on Skype about the number of participants we were getting for the student blogging competition.  The blogroll on my sidebar was getting longer and longer.  How could we make it easier for students and teachers to find others to comment with?

Brainwave from Sue!!  Create pages:

• tell everyone about the competition
• links for the weekly activities
• names of all our participants

You can now find all the information you need above my avatar on my classblog.

You can also translate the page or a selection of the page using the google translator below the clustrmap.

Finally, teachers you can subscribe to the blog in a reader to make it easier to know when I make new posts.