Technology in our classroom

 Look at these stories told in pictures only. 

Which one do you think was most interesting? 

Were there any you didn’t understand?

Leave a comment here at this blog post.

Lauren,   Co-Connections,  Cierra,  Sean,  Josh,   Alyssa,  Kayla,   lilracer,  Ashley, Kenzy, Kylie,   Kaela, roadrunner

We even had fairy tales in pictures: Hansel and gretel  Humpty Dumpty

 A rebus by Nikki 

Matt shows those students taking part in the commenting section of the challenge one way to keep a record of how you are improving your comments.

I have been tagged by Abigail to write a post about an inspiring song. I don’t listen to much of the modern music of this century.  But I do find inspiring the negro spirituals sung during the time of slavery – songs telling the life stories of those involved during this horrendous time.  But the song that I really love is “I still call Australia home“. 

This song reminds me of the times when I have been travelling, seeing the sights of the world, missing family and friends, but opening my eyes to the rest of the world – the people, the cultures, the similarities and the differences.

When travelling through Europe just the smell of a gum tree was enough to make me think of home, when in smog bound LA, that was enough to remind me of missing the clean air of home. Whenever I did arrive home, my first thoughts were, “I’m glad I live in Australia, particularly in Tasmania which is so clean and green compared to where I have been travelling.”

I am now going to tag five other students.  You have to write a post about an inspiring song and then tag five other students to do the same.  Make a link to their name like I have below, but also go to their blog to mention you have tagged them to write a post. Try to choose students from other schools rather than your friends. You need to copy what I have written here at the bottom of your post so they also know what to do.

Jessica from Australia,  Hailey from USA, Pedro from Venezuela, LittleMiss from New Zealand and finally Michael from Hong Kong

One of the participants in this blogging challenge has also organized her own ‘green’ challenge. I know we have many students and classes interested in our environment and how we can help improve it for future generations.  Please read her blurb below, and join in her challenge as well.

Hi! I am needing more bloggers for my blogging challenge, “The Big Green Help.” If you could help me “advertise,” or get bloggers, that would be great. Any ideas, posts, or comments will work.

For those of you looking for more information about this challenge, here it is:
“The Big Green Help” blogging challenge is to help students and teachers all around the world discover what they can do to help our planet Earth. Students and teachers will also get the chance to become better bloggers through posts and comments. Challenge participants will complete a series of challenges to try to help Earth. There will be a few different categories that you can become a winner in (there will be 1-3 winners per category). Winners will receive a cool banner that they can add to the side of their blog. They will also receive more visitors to their blog, more comments, and a mention in the winner list post. The first challenge will be posted on September 25, and after that, new challenges will be posted about once a week. Sign up at the link below (To participate completely, please sign up before September 25, although later admissions are welcome):

Here’s the link to sign up:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dEpfaUp2ZlJMU1p3S3pOWjNvSk5ZbFE6MA..

Here’s the link that challenges will be posted at:
http://laurenc604.edublogs.org/

Thanks!
~laurenc604

So please visit Lauren and her blog where you can register for her ‘green’ challenge.

By a class blogger – Daisy

On the 5^th of December our class did a Skype call to a class in Canada. It was 9:00am Friday here in Australia and 2:00pm Thursday over there in Canada. We had some Questions to ask about Canada and we had some trivia questions about Australia and they had some trivia Questions about Canada and some Questions about Australia. We had also made some power point presentations on Aussie animals, Aussie cars and NRL [National Rugby League] Unfortunately we didn’t get to show them because  there home time bell ran. It was very interesting learning some things about Canada. and I cant wait to Skype again.

What a joy it is to see students taking on leadership roles.  This wiki is about stopping whaling and has been set up by two students.  Stephie is in Argentina and she has commented on the blog of Nadine in Australia who has also commented back to Stephie.  The two of them are very concerned about whaling, so after a recommendation from one of Stephie’s teachers, they have set up a wiki for other students to join who also have concerns with whaling.

Wonder what the girls and their friends will do with their wikispace about stopping whaling?

 Photo source:  Whale Well 1 by Steve Crane

I have just been looking at your links in your blogroll and have noticed a few games sites being added.  Now this is OK as long as you,  the writer of the blog, are old enough to be using that game site according to the terms and conditions of the games site.

So if you have to be at least 13 years old to use the games site and YOU the writer are only 12 , then you can’t have that link on your blog until you turn 13.  It would also be a good idea to write a post about some of the websites you are recommending, making sure you mention how old you have to be to use that site.

This is the same for other widgets you are adding to your sidebars.  For example Binga has now turned 13 so he can have a voki and feedjit map.  But if you are only 12, sorry, you will have to wait a few more months.

This post is by Ben, who is not a student in our class, but he was very keen to tell our readers about blue tongue lizards.

Skinks have overlapping scales that are usually smooth and contain small plates of bone. There are more than 300 species of skink in Australia. Most skinks have 4 legs and 3-5 toes but the legless lizard have no legs which means that they have no toes.

Blue tongues are the largest member of the skink family. Blue tongue lizards can live for 20 years in captivity and 5 years longer, that is if they are looked after properly.

DIET:  Blue tongue lizards eat carrion, fruit, dog food, egg yolk, baby food, insects, some types of flowers and their favorite are snails. 
 
There are 6 species of blue tongues and here are the 3 most common ones.
     -   Blotched blue-Tongue
     -   Eastern blue-tongue
     -   Shingleback

The Shingleback and blue tongue have a triangular head, but the male’s head are more triangular than the females, that is one of the ways that you can tell if a blue tongue is a male or female. Another way to tell with the Blotched blue-tongue is that the females have more of a blotchy pattern on the back as for the males, their back is more stripy.  Blue tongues don’t have as hard scales as Shinglebacks but they are still hard.

If you have a Shingleback or blue tongue in your garden and you have dogs or cats, feed them inside and if you see anything that the dogs or cats will eat near where the lizard lives, get it so the lizard and pets won’t be attracted to it and the pets won’t eat the lizard. Try to keep the pets away from the lizard as much as possible. If you are doing something to your garden, try not to do as much around the where the lizard lives. Before going anywhere, check the driveway to see if there is a lizard and If there is, move it and then go so you don’t run it over.   
 
SHINGLEBACK:      
The Shingleback is also called Boggi, Sleepy lizard and Stumpy-tailed lizard. The Shingleback has 1-4 babies after a few months of mating (I’m not quite sure when). Shinglebacks mainly give birth every 2nd year. Shinglebacks and blue tongues mate for life. Once the male finds the female, he will eat by her, sleep under the same bush and walk behind her. If another male comes around the female, the male (female’s mate) will fight with the rival male and might leave scars to the body. Shinglebacks have hard scales so it will be harder for predators do bite or grasp them. 
 
 The female Eastern blue-tongue gives birth to round about 10-19 babies 3-5 months after mating. The Blotched Blue Tongue has can have 5-20 babies. The babies like it a bit warmer than the adults for about 6 months. The babies love eating mealworms but they can’t have too many otherwise they will get stomach pains and they can die. If you keep blue tongues, don’t keep the babies in with adults otherwise the adults will trample them or eat them if they get too hungry. If the female lizard are carrying too many babies or get too cold, she will release a form of acid in her uterus were her babies are and they dissolve and the female will use the babies as a food source, this is called aborting.

Photo source                               Photo source

Congratulations go to  Ebby, Braiden, Viper and Aaron who have shown Miss W they are prepared to work hard with blogging. These students have written posts of their own to add to our class blog; have made many sensible and conversational comments on posts I had written or other students had written and had visited blogs from other students and teachers around the world and left comments there.

Over this week, these students will have received an email saying how they can log into their own blog. Next week I will spend some time with these four students in setting up the presentation, blogroll and sidebar widgets on their blogs.

Photo source

Hi I am Braiden I am going to talk to you about rallying.  Rally is you try to beat the clock. Rallies  are divided into stages which can be 10kms to 50kms.   In rallying you don’t race head to head and cars go into a stage 1 or 2 minutes apart but in tarmac events they go 30 seconds apart. The world rally championship is the biggest rally  championship goes around  the world .                  
                          
There are all so tarmac rallies which are held on closed roads. They use road cars but with safety features . Here is a Targa  Tasmania car which is a tarmac rally.

 Miss W says:  We are waiting for permission to insert some photos from rallying websites onto this blog.
                           
                                             

Photo source 

Hi I’m viper I’m a real fan of fighter jets.

There are many different types of aircraft for different missions like there are: fighters, attackers, STOL (short take off or landing), EAs (jammers), bombers and multiroles. One of my favourite is the F 16 fighting falcon. (Shown above)
There are also VTOL (vertical take off and landing) that can make a plane hover like a helicopter.

 An EA-6B firing a missile. Photo source 

Permission sought to use photos and this is part of the reply:

Official pictures of US Federal Government agencies are “public domain” in the US. You can use both in your class blog and I’m sure there will be no problems. If you want to add the source: The upper picture (F-16) is “United States Air Force” and the lower picture (EA-6B) is “United States Navy”