As mentioned last week, all the activities this week relate to writing comments.
So please have your ‘Recent comments’ widget on your sidebar with 10 comments visible.
This will make it easier for us to see where we left our last comment.
But before I set the activities,
I want everyone to visit this post
at Mrs Yollis’ blog.
I especially asked Mrs Yollis and her students to create a post about commenting. She also included how to use HTML code when writing comments which will interest our older bloggers. So please visit her first before doing the activities below.
……………………………………………………………………………..
Are you still here?
Off you go, visit Mrs Yollis’ blog on commenting.
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That was quick.
Are you sure you visited Mrs Yollis’ blog
to learn about HTML code in your comments?
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OK, what did you learn while reading the blog and listening to Mrs Yollis and her students tell you about how to write great comments? Here then are this weeks activities relating to commenting:
1. Create your own commenting guidelines to have as a page on your blog. Here are some examples to visit: Scattergood Biology, 2KM blog, poster on comments, AbbeyR, a primary school in Australia,
2. Visit and leave comments on at least 10 blogs of other students taking part in the challenge. Look for students your age and who have similar interests to you. That way it is easier to continue a great conversation. When leaving comments try to use some of the HTML code mentioned in Mrs Yollis’ blog. Here are some examples: Mike – teaching about avatars, Shelly – discussion with Mrs Yollis over a 2 month period, Saskia – how the challenge can break down walls
3. Add to your blogroll ready for a game next week. You need at least 15 names on your blogroll.
Remember you can divide these into link categories like I have on the left sidebar of my class blog – challenges, check these passions, get help here, global Australia, global rest of the world, grade 6, 2010 and grade 7, 2010 and finally left this year.
On your edublogs dashboard go to links> link categories to decide how to divide your links. When ready to add the links go to dashboard> links> add new> “Name” put in person’s first name then “Website” URL of their blog then remember to click which category you want them in.
4. Make sure you have a user avatar created. Go to dashboard >users> your avatar and upload one you have created. This could be the same as your blog avatar or you might create a different one. Then whenever you leave a comment on someone’s blog, this avatar will show.
Also make sure in users >your profile, you have a name displayed publicly as and that you have your blog URL on the line website. The owner of the blog where you leave a comment now only has to click on either your name or your avatar and it should take them to your blog.
Students over 13 might also want to visit gravatar where you can upload a globally recognized avatar to use when leaving a comment on any blogging platform whether it be edublogs, wordpress, blogspot etc.
5. Write a post or leave a comment explaining how a blog could be improved. As you visit many blogs to read posts, you start to see some really great blogs that are designed well, don’t distract you from reading and generally make you want to visit again. Write a post about what you consider is a great blog and use some examples from where you have visited. You might also want to mention the things that put you off visiting a blog regularly. This idea was from Poisonious Inspiration.
6. Find three bloggers (not in your school!) whose work you enjoy and add them to your blogroll. Write a post introducing them to your readers and sharing your favorite article from each blog. This idea was from Denise.
7. Also, while it is encouraging to receive comments… is there room for an “Introducing one of my commenters” posts? To present it a little bit like reflective listener… this is____ from ___. His/her comment helped me because _____. Maybe then adding to the blog roll…? This idea is from declairing (Mrs Bee)
8. Write a post for Blog Action Day 2010 which is all about water. See separate post I have written for this activity.
9. Reminder about “One Day on Earth” activity for classes.
Original image: ‘Celebrating 6 month on FLICKR and 300.000 individual views of our photographic works! THANK YOU TO ALL OUR FLICKR FRIENDS AND GROUPS!::))‘
by: uggboy
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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.
Dear Miss W.,
My name is Jaden and I am in Mrs. Yollis’ class. I helped make the video. The video turned out very good. Panda got the most lines. By the way, Panda is our classroom mascot along with Hoppy. I hope a lot of people go onto Mrs. Yollis’ blog. How long have you been doing the blogging challenge?
Sincerely,
Jaden♠
Mrs. Yollis’ student
G’day Jaden,
The video that you and your class mates made was fantastic. I am expecting all the student and class bloggers from the challenge will visit your post as I said they had to do that before starting the other activities I had written down. You will probably get three pingbacks as I mentioned the post three times.
I have done 5 blogging challenges now, the first one in September 2008. Do you have your own blog?
from Miss W.
@ Miss W.,
Thank you for commenting back to me. I do not have my own blog but I really want one. Mrs. Yollis said that people are not eligible to get their own blog until November. Why did you start the blogging challenge? How many blogging challenges are their a year?
Sincerely,
Jaden♠
Mrs. Yollis’ student
G’day again Jaden,
Well you only have a bit over a month until you can earn your own blog.
There are two blogging challenges each year; one starts in March and the other in September. I started the blogging challenge so student sin my classes could connect to other students around the world.
What do you enjoy most about blogging?
Miss W.
Congratulations Mrs. Y and class.
I am going to use your video all week long in my class…the directions and tips you gave were clear and easy to follow. I think my students will really like seeing other students explain what to do.
How did you come up with these ideas? Is it because you blog so much? We’ve just started and this is our class’ first Challenge. Everyone is very excited about trying to have their own blog but there is so much to learn before we take on that responsibility.
I think your video will help get us more and more ready. I challenged my students to think about whether they could write and produce such a video clip. If they manage to do it, we would love to send you our link. Thanks for your inspiration.
Mrs. R
at http://lmsblogs.org
I tried to visit her blog but it’s blocked on my school computer. Anyway, I had an idea for something you might challenge about. For those of us who don’t pay for our blogs we need more room! I can’t post anymore because I don’t have enough storage space. This is my school blog so I need more room. You could have people post about that. I tried deleting some of my posts but that didn’t help any. I enjoy your challenges!
Hi! when I try to go to Mrs. Yollis it wont let me because my school denied that site. What should i do?
G’day Freddy,
I will add the video into the next post I put up about blogs to visit.
I heard that you posted the video up but it wont let me go to it. It doesn’t show up.
Sorry Freddy,
But wherever you are viewing it from eg school or home, must have both you tube and vimeo blocked. Sorry about that. Maybe if an adult logs onto the computer, they will have permission to view it with you.
So like basically what is the challenge? It’s a little bit confusing to understand.
G’day Sora,
The challenge is explained on the student challenge blog. It is 10 weeks worth of challenges. You can choose which activities to do every week once the challenge is posted on a Monday. It is up to you or your teacher to visit the challenge blog to find out what the activities are about. You then write comments or posts about the activities which can also include adding widgets, images and using embed code.
Dear Mrs W,
I can’t add or change my avatar I have tried different sizes but it always comes up black or appears there but not when I comment. it uses my old avatar for comments which I really don’t like. If you have any suggestions please notify me.
Brendan.
Dear Brendan,
I checked out your blog (which is looking great, by the way) and noticed your old user avatar. Remember an avatar for Edublogs needs to be 97 x 97 pixels only so if you have a picture to use you might have to resize it first. Then go to your dashboard > users > your avatar> browse to find where you have saved it on your computer, then use ALTERNATIVE UPLOAD. This type of upload works when you already have the correct size avatar.
Hi! In my opinion I liked the picture and how it says the message. I read some of the comments and knew that there was suppose to be a video, but since the computer is not able to put the video in then never mind. But the challenge is very interesting and would like to know more about this!
Hello,
My blog could be better if I wrote more and commented on more blogs so more people would come to my blog.My site- http://www.hannah110gs.edublogs.org
~Hannah