Technology in our classroom

A new blog has been created for students to continue the friendships they began in the blogging competition.  A teacher and their class(es) will be in charge of the blog for a two week (fortnight) period. 

In that time, students from that class can add posts for other student readers to comment on and/or write posts about on their own blogs.  This will be similar to the blogging competition but without the reward at the end. It will be more a blogging challenge than competition.

The first post for the blog will include the names of the students who won most improved and keenest bloggers in their classes according to their teacher and students. These students will also be on the sidebar blogroll. An adapted version of the participants page will also be added – students who did not take part regularly will have their names removed from the list by their own teacher.

Interested teachers will be given admin rights and they can add students as authors or editors as required when posting.  Teachers will also be in charge of moderating comments.

Some of the teachers involved in this competition have just had a skype call and decided on the following:

• Create a new blog to carry on the conversations and friendships begun in stubc08.
• Each teacher and their classes to be in charge of the new blog for one or two weeks at a time.

But before we set up this new blog, we want some ideas from you, the participants from 2008.

1. What should be the URL for the blog?    eg http://wyatt67.edublogs.org is this classblog URL
2. What should be the name and tagline for the new blog?
3. What theme should the new blog have? eg this blog has Rubric 1.0

Please leave your comments here on this post preferably before Christmas so Miss W. and Sue Waters can get the new blog up and running by January 1st 2009.

Original image: ‘asign‘
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by: Kevin Walsh

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Well, this is the official last week activity for the 2008 student blogging competition run by this classblog.  As always, at the end of a period of study, we all have to evaluate ourselves – Where did we go well?  Where could we improve?  I notice that Mrs Mirtschin has jumped ahead of me with some of her student posts about a blog. 

But here is what I would like to see in your last post. Remember this is all about you and your blog.

• Some statistics about your blog – number of posts/comments/visitors/countries/widgets used etc.
• How many comments did you write on other blogs?
• How has blogging improved your literacy skills?
• Your best post
• Where you have improved the most
• Skills you have learnt
• Why is it good to write with a world wide audience in mind?
• Check this rubric.  What score would you give yourself?

Now we also need to think about the future.  What is going to happen now?  The schools in the Southern Hemisphere are heading towards summer and their holidays – perhaps some students don’t have computers at home so won’t be blogging as often.

• Does another school take over and run another blogging competition?
• Do we run a new competition every ten weeks? 
• Do we open a new blog to young bloggers around the world with teachers as admins and interested students as authors, editors?  This way every school can have a week to run some activities. We would need to include a calendar to know when it is your school’s turn.  Do we include a form for students to register?

What other ideas can you come up with?  Please add them as comments to this post.

Attribution:  Image: ‘?‘
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This week is the penultimate week of the challenge.  It is your last chance to shine in front of your teacher (who might be assessing you for blogging), your class mates and your readers around the world.

This week’s challenge involves research of one of the topics below.  You must find at least two relevant websites or blogs on the topic that you can link to and include at least two images with attribution. 

In your post, you must mention why you chose this topic and what relevance it has to your life as well as information you found interesting about the topic.

The year 2008 has been declared the International Year or Decade of the …….

Next week is the last week of the challenge and will involve you assessing yourself and your blogging over this last ten weeks.  You also need to think about what might happen after next week … just think this week and add your thoughts to my post next week.

Original image: ‘Coral Reef‘
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by: Matthias Barth

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Original image: ‘The Singing Potato – July‘
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by: raysto composto

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WOW!  I checked our clustrmap today and at 4.30pm on Thursday 13th November we had just clocked over the 10,000th visitor. Our class blog began in March 2008 as a way of teaching students to be internet savvy as well as for them to comment on posts from both students and myself. It was the first blog created in our school and since then we have had other class blogs as well as individual student blogs created.

Posts on this blog have ranged from jigsaw puzzles to netball to fighter jets as well as creating cartoons and avatars.  Up until the beginning of September we had received about 4000 visitors. Then Miss Wyatt decided to run a world wide student blogging competition and since then the number of visitors have soared. 

I wonder how many countries you can name that have visited our blog? 

The first three students to name at least 20 different countries will get their name on my class blogroll until the end of our school year about 18 December.

Photo source

Students, you have now visited many class blogs and student blogs while taking part in the competition.  Do you want to nominate one or more of these blogs as part of the 2008 Edublogs Awards?

There are a few categories you might want to nominate in:

• Best individual blog
• Best group blog (could include class blog)
• Best new blog
• Best resource sharing blog
• Best teacher blog (not class blog)
• Best educational tech support blog
• Best educational wiki

There are two things you need to do to nominate:

1. Write a post on your blog linking to the 2008 Edublogs awards page and the blogs that you nominate
2. Send 2008 Edublogs awards page a link to your nomination post (they’re allowing pingbacks / trackbacks here, but they can be unreliable)  You could comment on their blog and mention the post you have written with the URL.

This all has to be finished by the end of November, so get nominating – then check again in December to actually vote for the blogs you think should win.

This week, 10-16 November, is National Recycling Week in Australia. Since November 1996, Planet Ark has been running this event and in Australia, we sure need to be reminded to recycle. 

OECD figures show Australia to be one of the world’s biggest per capita producers of waste – at an alarming rate of 2.25 kilograms per person per day.

Check out the information about recycling here.  It includes videos to watch and fact sheets.

How can you get involved in recycling? Find out here. Some activity sheets you might like to download.

Week 8 activities to choose from

1. Write a post about how you, your family, and/or your school recycle.
2. Run an event at your school about recycling. Could include creating sheets for younger students to teach about recycling.  You and your teacher can come up with some great ideas.  Write a post about your event. Include some images if possible.
3. Create a voicethread, video or mp3 file about recycling. Put it on your blog so other students can listen to or watch it.
4. Make a machine, toy etc by using only recycled goods.  Take a photo and add to your blog.  Write a post about how you created it.
5. Write a post about recycling around the world.  Research the topic and include links and images correctly attributed.
6. Check out the website “Ollie saves the planet“. Write a post about this website.

Original image: ‘christiania, glass house, august 2007‘
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by: seier+seier

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Students were asked to write about poverty for Blog Action Day.  This is Mallorie’s photo story and a poem by Julya.

Students wrote about where they lived and where to visit if you were a tourist.  Come with Nadine on a tour of her state.

Why did Tim choose a pirate avatar?  Check it out here.

Festivals from India, Australia,  Muslim culture,  Chinese culture, Lithuania, USA

Questions to answer from Lanie, Karen, Mr Winik

I hope everyone has included at least five different blogs on their blogroll.  If you haven’t, then do that before starting this activity. This week, you are going to extend the range of blogs that you are reading. To do this, you must follow these steps:

1. Go to the competition participant page and click on the link to a student who you haven’t visited before or is from a different country.
2. Now go to their blogroll and click on a link from there.
3. Now finally click on a link from that student’s blog.
4. Somewhere on this blog, you need to leave a comment.  You might have to read a few posts to find one that interests you so you can write a fantastic comment.

You can now see why the activity is called “Count three out.” You have to click three students or blogrolls before making a comment.  To finish this activity, do the above steps for at least three different students on the participation page. If you can’t click on a blogroll link, then go back to the previous student and click on a different link.

Now your final activity this week is to write a post about those blogs you visited and the posts you made a comment on.  Give reasons why you chose those posts. Did you get to a blog outside of the students or classes participating in the challenge?

Original image: ‘Click‘
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by:

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As we have participants from 9 different countries taking part in the blogging challenge, Sue Waters and I thought it would be great to have a post about the festivals and celebrations you have in your country or the area you live.

I know students in my class will have just had the Royal Hobart Show they could write about, students living in Georgia must have some sort of “Peach Festival” as that is the nickname of their state, Halloween is around the corner as well.

Activities to choose from for week 6

Write a post about a festival or celebration you have attended.  Describe the festival and its history. What was it about? Did you enjoy it or not?  Make your post at least three paragraphs long so your readers will have lots to comment about. Try to include links and an image with the correct attribution. If you don’t know how to attribute photos then use the link in the previous sentence. If you want help in finding creative commons images then check here.

Change your theme to have some sort of festival appearance. If you have a music ipod on your blog, make sure the music relates to your festival.

Write about a festival or celebration you would like to visit in the future.  Mention why you would like to go there - perhaps the snow festival in Sapporo in Japan. Find links and an image to include, again with correct attribution.

Remember: you need to have at least 5 links in your blogroll for the activity next week.  These links don’t include the ones that were in your blogroll originally. You can have as many links as you like, see Nadine’s and Ashley’s blogrolls – about 20 names in each of them.

Original image: ‘P1040369‘
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