Technology in our classroom

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

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.

“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