Lots of choices again this week in the challenge.
1. Create an avatar for your blog and for you to use when leaving comments.
Avatars are a representation of yourself. Check out this post about avatars. Create your avatar using one of the websites below. Sue Waters from ‘The Edublogger‘ has written a great post about avatars, including giving instructions on how to save them and then upload to an ‘Edublogs’ blog. Many of the sites mentioned below are included in her post. If using Blogger, here is a link to show how to add a photo to your profile.
Most important is remember to save as a jpeg file if using Edublogs.
![MyHero[1]](http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/files/2010/03/MyHero1.jpg "MyHero[1]")
Any age can use these avatar sites:
- Build your wild self – middle left
- DoppelMe
- Mini-mizer – middle right
- The Hero Factory – far left
- Adventurer Maker – girls only
- Wimp yourself - relates to ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’
- Mess Dudes
- Hogwarts student – girls only
- Mii character
- Harry Potter and others saves as GIF
- Caracature
- Block head – like Lego
From abi-station:
- Iconmaker
- Illustrationmaker
- Avatarmaker
- Moeruavatar - far right
But over 13, need parental or guardian permission for these.
- Meez
- Tizme
- Wee World
- Voki
- Bless this chick
- Hero Machine
- Marvel Hero
- Doll Maker
- Grabba Beast
- Sega Sonic
- Manga face maker
- Make your avatar
14 or older with parental permission
2. As a class, put together a post, movie or slideshow including your avatars.
Mrs Yollis’ class made lucky hat avatars last year. Here is an example using animoto.
3. Create a quick brief tour of your classroom or school (walking around showing the grounds/playgrounds/classroom) and then embed it or upload it to the classroom blog. You might use vimeo , a slideshow, photopeach, YouTube, Smile Box etc. Next week visit other classes who did the same activity and compare your schools or classrooms. Thanks Mr Webb for this suggestion.
4. In a post, please answer this question: When do you think it is appropriate for students to use real photos of themselves on their blogs and why? See if you can research this on the net and find responses from other educators. Remember to link to their post if you use information they mentioned. Hyperlink as well to this challenge post, so I can read your answers. Andrea wrote a great response in March this year.
5. Visit this website and leave a comment on the topic posted. Look at the other topics to write about at Ignite to Write. Create a couple of these to put as posts on your blog. Thanks Tatiana for this suggestion.
6. Create a Voki to put on your blog sidebar or post. Have the Voki talk about a place you would love to visit. Give at least three reasons why. Try to use an appropriate background for the Voki relating to that place. Don’t actually tell us the place eg Egypt, let your readers guess from the information you mention.
7. Visit Mr Pepper’s blog and leave a comment on this post. If you are a new blogger, answer the grade 7 question. If you have been blogging for a while, answer the grade 8 question – you might want to create your own ‘Commandments of blogging’.
Remember, whatever activity you choose to do, create a hyperlink back to this post somewhere in your writing. That way I can visit your blog and add you to one of my ‘Visit these’ posts in the future.
PDF 
I am a middle school teacher who retired in 2012 but still loves teaching. In my spare time I enjoy tracing my family history and helping others with their genealogy as well as chatting with my friends around the world. But most of all, I enjoy travelling and visiting new places.
Holy smoke, there are a lot of great blogging activities there to chose from.
Unfortunately all New Zealand school’s are on holiday for 2 weeks so we can’t complete any of the activities. But when we return we will try hard to catch up.
Loving the challenge!
Stephen,
No need to catch up. The challenges are ideas of things to do during the week. When I run the challenge again in March next year, many of the same activities are included. You can do them at any time throughout the year as they are always on the blog.
Enjoy those two weeks of down time – rest and relax.
Dear Miss W.,
I am a little late in putting a comment about 3 interesting things about me. Here they are:
1. I’ve been to over 7 different countries and lived in 3.
2. I live in Thailand… I’ve been here for a year and still am amazed.
3. I don’t eat any type of seafood except caviar.
Bye,
Ingrid
Ingrid,
At your young age to have been to 7 countries is amazing. Seems like you are an expensive date if you like caviar … too salty for me.
Miss. W,
These are going to be a blast for my kids. Thank you for all the hard work this must take…I really appreciate it. The challenge tasks help me generate enthusiasm and energy for my blogging effort.
I am also commenting on individual student blogs as a Helper. I am not able to get every student’s blog to come up….several have closed down their registered blog and are directing me to a new site. But that site is blocked by my school….I don’t have access except from home. Some won’t let me comment unless I’m signed in…even when I’m signed into my own Edublog I can’t leave a comment. Not sure what to do…I feel badly that these students won’t have a comment from me. Do you have any advise?
Thanks.
Marsha Ratzel
G’day Mrs R,
Can you email me a list of the problem blogs? I know which classes most blogs are from and I can then contact their teacher.
Hey Ms W,
Could I put my responses to your challenges in a page on my blog instead of seperate posts.
or must the responses be in seperate posts for each challenge???
Bye Grace
Hi Grace,
Put in on a page if you wish, just remember to send me an email when you have completed it as pages don’t always send pingbacks.
Thanks for including Grabba Beast! Minor correction: You only have to be 13+ to register your account at Grabba Beast and accounts are not required.
We’re also changing our TOS soon to be age-free, similar to Twitter’s TOS.
hi
G’day Fatima,
How are you enjoying using a blog for the first time this year?
My classes can’t get the Voki to embed. I can get it to work perfectly on my blog but everytime one of my students try it, the html code gets shortened and the voki doesn’t appear on their blog. I have a Pro account and my students all have the free student accounts, does that make a difference?
Mr Kruse,
That is the problem. What you need to do is go to your dashboard> pro> upgrade up to 50 student blogs That way students can also use embed code and the ads that are appearing on the top of their blog posts will disappear.
Hi Miss W,
Is there a way for students to upload an avatar for commenting if they aren’t users?
MsD,
There is a website called gravatar which allows you to specify a globally recognized avatar to be used whenever you log in to leave a comment at blogs on most different platforms eg Edublogs, wordpress, blogspot etc.
Thank you Miss W!
By the way, I wanted to share with you my student’s short tutorial within his comment to help his peers with creating an avatar. You can read his comment at: http://theconch.edublogs.org/2010/09/26/avatar-me/#comment-197
Hello folks,
My class has posted their avatar slideshow on our page at http://alamb.edublogs.org/
Cheers everybody.
Mr L.
This is my challenge 2, #4
http://jboca93.edublogs.org/
Miss W,
even though I’m still an Edublogs Supporter (because of the subscription I won on a contest on Sue Water’s blog last November) my blog isn’t letting me embed my voki in a post. Instead I just typed out what I had recorded on the voki.
-Meredith
hi miss w.! i have a question for you. is it possible to make more than one avatar, but only use one for your edublogs account? for example, i’ve already made one avatar, and i was wondering if you could make another one. if you can, can you take your avatar to another website besides edublogs? thanks for your help!
-Lindsey
G’day Lindsey,
You can make as many avatars as you wish. There are lots of websites where you can upload an avatar as part of your profile. If you create a few, you might want to create a post using an image gallery to show your avatars.
Thanks a lot Miss W! Since I haven’t done a lot of posts on my blog yet, I might make an image gallery for it. I hope to make some awesome avatars! Thanks a lot!
Hi there Miss W.
I got my students all signed on as users for our class blog, and we had a look at some of the other class blogs and added some comments. One of my class noticed we were mentioned on the edublogs site – great excitement!
I’m not sure how to set up the trackback or pingbacks – not really sure what that means. Is it something I set up? Or do I have my kids make links when they start adding posts?
Thanks,
Katy
G’day Katy,
Thanks for joining the challenge. Glad you are enjoying it. To make a trackback or pingback, make sure you include a link, in your post, back to the blogging challenge post you are writing about eg challenge 2 That way I know you have written a post and I can visit and leave a comment or include your post in a ‘Visit these’ post which I do every week or so.
We were really suprised when we were told that we were behind and that the blogging challenge had started! So we are all very busy doing the challenges! Blogging is really fun, but I need more time to do my homework.
Callum
Hello Miss W.
We have completed the Avatar challenge! I know that it’s a bit late but it was fun nonetheless. I am adding my address in the hopes that you can check our blog out. Thanks so much. Off to the next challenge.
Cheers
B. Carmichael and the Blockheads
http://bcarmi.edublogs.org/
Hi Miss W,
I found this site for making Wallance and Gromit avatars today, and I thought you might like to add it to the challenge. Thank you for organising this, my whole school is learning so much.
Cheers
Marama Stewart
Principal Pukeokahu School
https://www.wallaceandgromitstamps.com/createyourself.php