Technology in our classroom

Sorry I am a day late getting this challenge out to you. But I have been thinking about what to use that I haven’t used in previous years.  Then I got an email from Sue Waters from The Edublogger saying she was off on holidays to Cairns and Uluru. 

Then it hit me: Holidays and Vacations.

Challenges week 7 – you may complete as many as you wish

1. What would be your fantasy holiday?  Remember we have readers from age 7 looking at our posts so be careful how you express yourself.
2. What is your favourite holiday that you have already been on? Why is it a favourite?
3. If you had a choice of a country to holiday in, where would it be and why? Check out the destination tab at Lonely Planet.
4. Find a travel blog about that country or place and leave  a comment there.
5. Visit the Lonely Planet blog and leave a comment on a post.  Remember to be savvy and only use your first name. If you do this activity, come back here to tell me which post you commented on.

Remember to tell your readers answers to questions beginning with who, where, when, what, how, why.

• Who did you go with?
• Where did you go?
• When did you go?
• What was the best part of the holiday?
• How did you get there?
• Why did you go to that place? etc etc

Include some links so your reader can visit the place you went to or want to go to. Try to find some images of the holiday or vacation place.  A map would be handy for your readers. Remember to include the attribution for the images.

Image: ‘Uluru/Ayers Rock‘
www.flickr.com/photos/97708873@N00/2562614982

Well it’s getting close to the end of the challenge.  Here in Tasmania we have about three more weeks until our end of term then we have a two week holiday.  Those students in Canada and USA are heading towards the end of the year and their summer vacation time.

Are you going to be writing posts over your holiday break?  What topics are you going to write about? Maybe you are going to be away from computers for the break.  But you still want your readers to come back after the break to read your posts.

You have your blogroll organized; you’ve visited everyone on the blog to wish them a great holiday or good luck when they finish middle school and go onto high school. But how are you going to keep them as readers and entice new readers in over your break?

Challenge this week

Begin writing a series of at least three posts on a favourite topic. 

For example, if you are like Braiden in my class last year, your topic would be motor sport.  Perhaps he could write a post about:

• famous motorcar drivers – one post per driver with links and photos to other websites
• famous races – again lots of links and images with correct attribution

At the end of each article ask a question.  Also mention what you will be writing about in your next post. To make it easy for your readers to know when you have written your post, do you have an email subscription on your blog?  Check out this post from The Edublogger to see how to add it.

But, I’m not going to be near a computer over the holidays, you say!!

Easy done!  Instead of publishing the post immediately, tell your computer when you want it published.  In Edublogs above the save/publish buttons in your write post dashboard is a ‘publish immediately edit’ button.  Use this to tell edublogs when you want your post to be published. This will make it look like you are still writing during your holidays.

Original image: ‘Late night‘  by: eden politte
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35237096015@N01/24604141
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