Technology in our classroom

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.

As part of having a blog of your own, you have to write comments on other students’ blogs both in our room and in other countries.  But what have your comments looked like? 

Oh cool, what a gr8 blog!

Kewl car! lol

Keep up the blogging! 

Make sure you visit my blog, cya!

Maybe this type of comment is acceptable for your first few comments, but remember you are trying to improve your communication skills with your audience, the readers of your blog.  What could the blog owner come back with as a comment?

Thanks, yes I will keep blogging.

This doesn’t really keep the conversation flowing. Your challenge for today’s computer lesson is to look through the comments written on your blog.  Which words or phrases were used, which allowed you to keep the conversation going? Who writes great comments on your blog and why are they great?  Also remember to complete the blogging survey from the previous post.

I noticed that many of you are now starting to conduct polls or surveys in your blogs.  I read CC’s post and a comment from one of his readers who mentions how to embed a survey form in a blog and get google to do all the work of tallying etc. 

So here is one I created and I hope you all submit your answers to the survey about good comments.

Thought I would try to make it easy for my students to keep a track of where they are in the challenge by writing a page that I will update every few days.  It will be a modified version of the adult comment challenge, but I feel students can also be doing things like auditing their comments, widening the range of blogs they visit, keeping track of their comments. 

If anyone else would like to comment on the page, feel free, because as a new blogger myself, I don’t know all the answers like using google applications or documents for tracking etc.

A group of educators have put out a challenge to bloggers both new and old, teacher or student.  Let’s improve our commenting on blog posts. 

 Are you up to the challenge? 

Check out this wiki to find out more about the challenge and if you write a post or make a comment at any time during the month of May, add a tag comment08.  This will make sure other people see it and perhaps come and comment on your blog.

Where can you go to write on blogs?  Check out our blogroll on the class blog.  There are many schools mentioned there.  Also look at this wiki for teacher and student bloggers.  Some of these blogs might not be active but you can still make a comment.  You could also add your blog to the student bloggers if you wanted to.

 You will need to keep a record of some sort about where you have commented and what you wrote. Perhaps a word document where you can cut and paste,or use an Excel spreadsheet with date, URL and comment in the first three columns.

Who is going to be the best commenter in our class?  If you want to join in this, please add a comment to this post and tell me how you are going to keep a record and what you think is going to make this interesting.