While checking out many posts this week, I noticed some schools have been on spring break or some form of holiday, so I have decided this week is a catch up time. There will be no official activities, but I am sure no-one has done every activity in all the challenges.

Over the first five weeks, let’s look at what you could have done on your blog:

  1. Registered for the challenge as either an individual or a class – checked you were on the list
  2. Changed the theme of your blog
  3. Looked at ‘About’ pages and created your own
  4. Posted about why students or classes should visit your blog
  5. Left comments on other student blogs and recommended at least one to visit
  6. Introduced your class or school to the world
  7. Created avatars
  8. Uploaded comment and blog avatars
  9. Linked your avatar to your blog URL
  10. Slideshow of avatars created
  11. Looked at your digital footprint
  12. Classes looked at commenting guidelines
  13. Classes thought about ways to involve parents
  14. Added tracking widgets to your sidebar
  15. Written in another language
  16. Added translation widget
  17. Posted about global activities
  18. Wrote about Earth Hour
  19. Commented on blogs from other countries
  20. Culture and celebrations from other countries
  21. Created blogroll categories
  22. Added links to blogroll
  23. Created tags and post categories
  24. Post about your community so Miss W can visit
  25. Post about where you would like to go in the world
  26. Created a poll about your country
  27. Finding out about creative commons and using images on your blog posts
  28. Learnt about giving attribution and uploading images to your posts
  29. Wrote a post about your favourite colour
  30. Used different web 2.0 tools to edit images
  31. Zoomed out from an image
  32. Created an image sentence
  33. Wrote a post about an image
  34. Created an animated photo show

My goodness, I think you need a break after all those things were done in just five weeks.

Remember you need to be ready for the game we will be playing next week, as one of the activities. To take part in the game you need the following completed:

  • a blog avatar and a user avatar
  • an ‘about me’ PAGE not post
  • a clustrmap or flag counter widget
  • at least three interesting posts – could be topics of your choice not necessarily from the challenge
  • your ‘Recent Comments’ widget on the sidebar with 10 comments as the choice
  • your ‘Recent Posts’ widget on the sidebar with 10 posts as the choice
  • Your ‘Pages’ widget on the sidebar
  • at least 10 student and/or classes linked on your blogroll
  • at least three overseas blogs linked on your blogroll

The more overseas links you have, the more interesting the game will be.

As we are half way through the challenges, I am starting to run out of ideas for activities. Please leave a comment or write a post about what you would like to see as an activity. If writing a post, make sure you link back to this post so I can visit your blog.

Visit lots of blogs written by students overseas. Leave lots of interesting comments. Get to know our overseas friends. How are they like you? How are they different to you? Ask questions and get conversations going.

Original image: ‘Give me a break…in the pool
Give me a break...in the pool
by: Tommy Wong

Released under an Attribution License

28 thoughts on “Time for a break – March 2011

  1. I think doing the mystery photo sounds pretty good for a challenge. If we do something like that, than you could post a sound for a challenge and we would have to write a story of what we thought the sound was. just throwing out ideas for you to take.

    Don’t forget to visit my blog!
    Bye!

  2. I had some ideas for future activities, but these simply come from questions that I have, so I don’t know how well these would work out as student challenges: First, I thought of a post that includes multimedia. We’ve used galleries and slideshows, but what about including audio or video? The other, and this may sound very remedial, but the difference between a pingback & a trackback and how to use both/either. Just some ideas. Thanks for all of the wonderful challenges so far. This has brought new life to a class that was really feeling the Spring Sluggishness.
    Which reminds me, another idea that always fascinated me was the different seasons around the world and the different customs when it came to school. I have a student that joined me from Guatemala who thought that our customary June dismissal was too early, but she was also used to starting school in November and not September.

  3. We’ve been hard at work trying to get ready for the next week of the challenge. I want to share something I discovered (thru dumb luck) that was fantastic. I converted your checklist into a Google spreadsheet and used it as a formative assessment for my student bloggers. I could coach them thru the assessment AND know where they stood at the end of the assessment. It was a time efficient process and they learned something from participating in the assessment. How cool is that? Please come and see what you think and if it could work for your students too?

    marsha

    PS. Maybe you have ways that I should have/could have done it better. I already know that I need to figure out how to lock a row so that students can write on top of just that row but on all the rest of the spreadsheet. If we can share stuff like this, we can figure this out together and I would be eternally grateful. Thanks everyone.

  4. Thanks for the break. I had to get some other things done and give the kids time to get all their loose ends tied up. We’ve been busy blogging today….you might check in on us.
    We spent the day blogging about minerals and had a blast….read thru these and I think you’ll be able to see that we’re getting better at writing and I’m beginning to figure out how to plan these activities better and better.
    thanks for all the learning and help. This has been one of my best days EVER in the classroom. I had a blast.
    marsha

  5. Thank you for leading this challenge. Ideas: Create a Wordle
    Create a Voki
    Mystery Photo (crop or zoom in so it is hard to decipher)
    Something about Character Education
    Add a GoodReads or Shelfari widget
    ToonDoo

    Mrs. Gorneau

  6. Hi!

    I was just reading through and checking off the list of things you have to have to play the game and I ran across the “Pages widget” one and I was think why I need one because at the top of my page, I have tabs to my other pages that come with the theme.

    Please let me know if I still need it because that would be okay. I might also say, I have everything else.

    Rachster 😀

    1. Rachster,
      As long as it is obvious where your ‘About’ page is on the header, then no need for the widget to be included. Great to see you are ready for the game.

  7. Mrs W, I use weebly for my blog but as the post said, I need to have a user avatar so I created an edublogs account so now I have an avatar is that ok? I did it right?

    1. Alejandro,
      Every time you leave me a comment I see a user avatar of a wimpy type kid – so looks like you are OK with a user avatar. I also checked your weebly blog and that had your avatar as well.

  8. This is cool and Fun But it is Challenging! Thank you for giving me A breakvBecause I am atired Girl!

  9. I just set up a blog just for my story The Secrets Zone. If you want to read it you can copy and past the following link (secretzonebykriso.blogspot.com. Thank You for leading the blogging challenge, I hope you are able to read my blog. It is an ongoing story that isn’t complete yet, I have the 4th part written but I can’t publish it till I have it cheecked and revised.

  10. I think activity for the blogging challenge could be that all the participants could read one particular piece of writing and then comment on it or comment on another persons comment on a google document.

  11. Miss W,

    First of all, thanks so much for all you do! It has been amazing to watch our kiddos thrive through this blogging challenge. Our students have no prior experience with this. So, thank you!

    Our “spring break” was a few weeks ago, and we’ve been trying to catch up ever since — so the break is perfect timing for us to catch up to others.

    Ideas for future posts: What about posts on migration patterns of animals/insects in our habitats and/or seasons? The physical global location has a lot to do with this, and could be interesting to hear about.

    Whatever you come up with will be fabulous! Thanks again for all you do… and have a relaxing week.

    Kind regards,
    Tracy Watanabe

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