So the 10th challenge begins

It seems only a short time ago that I began the first student challenge and we are now up to the 10th one – a milestone. The first challenge started with a group of four classes and by the end of that challenge included about 10 classes and 250 students.

The activities in this challenge will include three types:

• challenge using the number 10
• challenge to improve your  blog
• ideas for posts and other activities often related to a subject area

Hopefully all students will have a mentor who will visit at least three times to leave comments on blogs. So make sure you have some interesting posts that allow conversation between you and your mentor.

Every second week will be a free choice rather than related to a subject area – this allows time to catch up on missed challenges often due to holidays or testing. It also allows students to be creative and inspire other students to find out about passions.

You will notice on the student list, many of the Kidblog blogs have had the URL shortened. This made it easier on the spreadsheet.

To get the most out of the challenge you will need to do the following things:

1. If you have already registered and haven’t received a comment from me, then check your spam folder. Sometimes comments that have a link included (like URL to a student blog) can be sent directly to spam folder, so check this regularly. If you didn’t have a post or page visible I didn’t leave a comment.
2. If you are a student, make sure you have a link to your class blog on the sidebar somewhere. Make sure it is very obvious – Blog for my class or something similar.  This helps mentors and teachers contact each other, especially if it is something to do with a post you have written or the layout of your blog.
3. If using Blogger or blogspot, make sure you have Name/URL as an option for visitors to leave comments. Remember not everyone has a Google account.
4. When leaving a comment on a Kidblog blog, you will need to include the URL for your blog in the comment, otherwise the author of the post won’t know where your blog is.
5. Check that you are only registered once on the student list – leave me a comment or send me an email if changes need to be made. Names are sorted according to age, so check all names in your age group.
6. If the name of your country is highlighted in the student list, it means there is something wrong with your blog – I don’t know correct URL, or I need to login to leave a comment. Again contact me via email or leave a comment with the corrections.
7. If you want an email sent to you whenever a new post is published, fill out the subscription box in the top right corner of the challenge blog.
8. If you have registered with a class blog, make sure you start visiting other classes with similar age groups to you, but especially those who are on either side of your name on the list.
9. If using twitter to advertise a great post, include this #13stubc – represents 2013 student blogging challenge.