This is our last post for the Student Blogging Challenge until we start again in September/October 2016. I hope you have enjoyed the activities and the chance to make connections with other students and classes around the world.

I would like to thank Sue Waters from Edublogs for writing a few of the challenges this time, but also thank the mentors for taking time to visit and comment on student blogs.

We have had a great 10 weeks of blogging. You have learnt so many skills to help you improve your blogs. Many of you have improved those writing skills or maybe digital skills with using a variety of tools to embed on your blog. But it is now time to evaluate your progress as well as the progress of the blogging challenge itself.

This week there are two things to do:

  1. Evaluate your own blog
  2. Evaluate the actual blogging challenge

1. This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of March 2016.

  • How many posts did you write?
  • How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge?
  • How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers or overseas students?
  • Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
  • Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
  • Did you change blog themes at all and why?
  • How many widgets do you have? Do you think this is too many or not enough?
  • How many overseas students do you have on your blogroll?
  • Which web tools did you use to show creativity on your blog?

Now ask another student and teacher/parent from your school who might not have read your blog to do an audit.

Sit beside them while they navigate around your blog, record what you observe as they interact with your blog. When finished, ask them the following questions:

  1. What were your first impressions of this blog?
  2. What captured your attention?
  3. What distracted you on the blog?
  4. What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?

Write a post about your blog audit.

2. Evaluating the challenge.

This is the sixteenth challenge and sometimes I feel like the activities are getting stale especially for those students who have taken part in more than one set of challenges. So over the next few weeks I will be adding new pages that you all can contribute to. Every month of the year, there are special events, festivals, birthdays of authors etc. Which ones do you think it would be interesting to write about? Find the post ideas page for that month and add your ideas in the comments. (These are found above the header area)

I usually have a form to fill in here but this time I would like you to leave a quality comment giving your opinion of the challenge. You might want to mention some of the following things:

  • the most interesting challenge for you
  • how often you visited other blogs and left comments
  • whether you read the challenge flipboard magazine
  • a PMI or plus/minus/interesting point about the challenge
  • the most important thing you learnt while doing the challenge

Thanks again for taking part in this challenge. Hopefully you will take part again in October this year. If you have taken part in at least two sets of challenges, you can also become a mentor, so watch out for the mentor post in September.

38 thoughts on “Week 10: Time to say goodbye

  1. Hi Miss W,
    I found some of the challenges really fun and interesting. But I found some of the challenges not so interesting for me like week 5 and 9. But I understand that everybody likes different challenges, and you have to make challenges that suit everybody.

  2. Hi Miss. W,
    The challenges have been great from last year and this year but I am now sort of growing out of it because it is getting a bit bland and it feels very repetitive, otherwise it has been another good blogging challenge. I like how you changed up this weeks blogging challenge so that it would be something different.

    From Riley

  3. Hi Miss W, I have enjoyed the student blogging challenge so far it’s hard to say goodbye but you just have to let it go.Anyways I’m going to answer a question you might have wondered.The most important thing I learnt in this challenge was communicating/respecting each other’s culture it is so important to me and hopefully you feel the same way too.Thank you Miss W for giving students around the world an opportunity to express their knowledge and a way to communicate with other’s across the world.Thanks again.
    Visit my blog:https://lorraineroom9bnms.blogspot.co.nz/

  4. Hi Miss W,
    first of all I would like to thank you and all of your helpers for the awesome challenges that you provided me and the rest of the students from around the world for the student blogging challenge. I think that the student blogging challenge is a awesome and fun way for students to interact with other students while learning. I will be sure to participate in this next year as I greatly enjoyed it.

    I think that the most interesting challenge over the past ten weeks for me would have to be the food and culture challenge. I liked it the most because since I live in Canada, maple syrup is a very well known topping and I was actually interested in learning about it. Even though maple syrup is not exactly a food I still researched it and used it for the challenge. I also think that this was the most interesting challenge because I wanted to research maple syrup before the challenge came out so it worked out perfect. I think that one of the most important things in blogging is definitely commenting so I tried my hardest to do that as much as I could. I usually left about a comment a week at the least and usually visited about three different blogs a week. I oftenly visited and read the articles in the student blogging challenge magazine because I enjoyed to learn from their posts in order to improve my writing. I think that the most interesting part of the student blogging challenge would definitely have to be the magazine. I like the magazine because it gives the students a goal to try and reach through their blogging as well as it inspires the students to keep on writing quality posts. I also liked the magazine because it allows the students to learn about blogging from other people’s posts instead of just through their teachings. I think that the most important thing that I learnt throughout the 2016 student blogging challenge would have to be that the more that you write is not all wise better than less.

    To end this comment off I would again like to thank you for the awesome challenges that you provided me and all of the other students this year. I personally learnt lots and can’t wait for next year. Thanks and happy blogging!

  5. To me the most interesting activity was week 9, this was because it allowed me to think of my future and what it hopefully has in store for me. I visited other blogs either if I had enough time and I finished all of my activities, or if it was part of my activity. I am sorry to say I only visited the magazine once when my classmate made it on there. A plus to these challenges were that they allowed me to interact with people around the world. A minus would be there weren’t enough interactive activities or extra activities if you finished early. An interesting part were that it allowed people to read my thoughts. The most important thing I learned during this challenge was that it improved my writing skills.
    -Brent

  6. The post I enjoyed most was the food challenge when we were suppose to write about a food unique to our country It was really interesting to see all the different foods that are popular in other countries. So that was probably my favorite challenge out of the whole blog challenge.

  7. The challenge that I enjoyed the most was Game TIme. I thought it was cool to learn about board games that I play all the time. I tried to visit a blog from the Student List every week to see what blogs look like from other parts of the world.
    I only commented on other students blog when the challenges told me to.
    I have only checked the Flipboard magazine a couple times but when I did there were some very interesting posts.
    A plus was seeing different blogs and how much I learned while doing this challenge. Also interacting with other blogs and learning about different things from all around the world. I don’t think there was a minus. The challenge was well-organized and all of the challenges were fun to participate in.
    The most important thing I learned was to try my best with every post and never slack off. Also to write each post the way I would write and not how other people would want it.

  8. Hi. I would like to take this time to thank everyone who created or helped to create the student blogging challenge, as it has been lots of fun and has taught me about blogging. My favorite activity that I did regarding the sudent blogging challenge was either the post talking about food, or making a sentence using just words. Thanks again Miss W and everyone who helped put together the student blogging challenge. I can’t wait until next year!

  9. The most interesting challenge was the one where you have to talk about yourself,every time there was a new post I commented on a persons blog,I do not read the flip board magazine,2 plus because I really didn’t like posting,the most important thing I learned was to get yourself out there is to be posotive.

  10. Hello! During this year’s Student Blogging Challenge, I had a lot of challenges and activities that I really enjoyed. However, of my top favourites, I think that my overall favourite was in week 9: “Doing My Best,” where I created a post on a global issue. This was about the wildfires in Fort McMurray. While creating this post and doing some research, I learned a lot more than I had known previously about this event, but it helped me to want to help the community of Fort McMurray and all of the victims of the fire. When doing this Blogging Challenge, I visited other people’s Blogs, and commented on them quite often, however, mostly when we had activities that involved visiting other students Blogs. I had usually visited the flipboard magazine of the challenge at least once a week to see some interesting and fun posts and to be updated on the challenge. A plus for this challenge would be getting to interact with other Student across the world, by visiting their Blog and commenting on and interesting post that they had. A minus about this challenge would be that some of the people enrolled in the challenge weren’t actually completing the activities from each week. An interesting thing about this challenge is how each week there is a different ‘theme’ that includes a variety of different activities to complete. The most important thing that I learned while being in this challenge was to always keep my posts detailed and to comment on other student’s Blogs as much as possible.

  11. Hi everyone,
    My favourite student blogging challenge week was probably last weeks or the week where we did the picture sentence.
    On this blog, I like how there is a map of the different countries, that everyone can see.
    I tried to visit other peoples blogs and comment at least twice a week.
    I have not read the challenge flip-board magazine, because I don’t know how, and if I knew how, I would. Can someone please tell me how?
    The plus about the challenge, is that there is always lots of activities, and lots of choices.
    The minus is that……….. Well, I can’t really think of anything. Expect for the fact that some people did not get mentors, and I am very lucky I got a great one. The interesting part is that the activities are always different and cool. They are not boring like write a post about newspaper and then your done. This challenge gives you advice for what to write such as make sure you include links to other blogs and have at least 3 paragraphs, etc. I like having a criteria to follow.
    The most important thing I learnt during this challenge was to show your personality when you write. Don’t just write about a topic, include your opinion and your thoughts.
    I really want to be a mentor next year, so I will keep my eyes out! 😉
    – Anna 😀

  12. the most interesting part of the challenge was week 8. I only left comments on peoples bloge when I had to. I did not read the challenge flipboard magazine.
    I think it was cool to have a blog because I got to learn about other people in different countries. the most important thing I learned was how to spell different words

  13. Hi Miss. W,
    My favorite challenge was week 9 DOING MY BEST. I loved that you gave us creative freedom to do whatever we wanted. I enjoyed be challenged to do our best ( which we should be doing anyway) I did visit other blogs, and I did leave comments, but I wish I had visited more. I tried to read the flipboard magazine, but I was super confused because the layout was not very user friendly. ( maybe it was easier than I thought, but it would be helpful if there was something telling me how to view it.)
    My Plus- I really enjoyed this challenge because it gave me ideas for posts. One of the hardest parts about blogging-for me- is finding inspiration, and this challenge helped with that.
    My Minus- I think it would be fun to have multiple extra challenges over the week because some weeks I finished really early.
    My Interesting fact- Thank you for the comments you leave. They mean more than you may think.
    One of the most important things I learned is that I must write each post with care and passion. I need to think through what I am saying before I write my post.
    Even when the challenge is over I would appreciate it if you still visit my blog every once in a while because I do not get very many views. Thank you for everything,
    Olivia

  14. Here’s my opinion about the challenge. I like the challenge it has interesting posts that you have to write (it really is a challenge to write all those posts) and I believe that this blogging thing is bringing us together and have each other have good conversations. And please make tons of other good posts next challenge taking us to the next level of the internet safety, maybe learning some code for our posts, and maybe even advertising and making good advertisements on the challenge to lead people too our blogs! So I like the challenge and I rate it a great opportunity to interact with other people, so hope you can get great ideas from this comment goodbye!

    1. I meant to say taking us too the next level of the internet when I wrote this comment sorry.

  15. Dear, Miss. W
    Hi Miss. W I’m very sad to see the Blogging Challenge go it was very fun for me and I couldn’t thank you enough for teaching me more about Blogs. You are a very great influence, and I’m very sad to see all this go. When I first did the Blogging Challenge I didn’t think it was that fun, but after I was reading it more and getting more interested in it more I started to love it. I felt comfortable and it was amazing and fun for me. I’m very sad to see it go but I must say Goodbye.
    Thank you, and Goodbye. &heartsj
    Here is a link to my post,
    http://blogs.csdvt.org/miaw/2016/05/18/the-last-week/
    Love,
    Mia &heartsj

  16. We are starting our blogs in Yr 5……looking forward to this unit and sharing of knowledge and opinions!

  17. The challenge I liked the most was free choice and three attractions in my country! I liked visiting other blogs from other countries it is a great way to connect with others and learn about different countries! The Student Blogging Challenge has been awesome to be a part of!

  18. the most interesting challenge for you . The food one
    how often you visited other blogs and left comments. once a week
    the most important thing you learnt while doing the challenge. to learn how to right good. Thank you for doing all this stuff so we could get better.I enjoyed it .

  19. Hi, the most interesting challenge for my in the blogging challenge was when we had to write about three tourist attractions in our country. Every week in the blogging challenge i try to visit about five other blogs and comment on two or three of them. I try to read the blogging challenge flip board but I don’t very often. The most important thing I have learned in the blogging challenge is to always comment about the good things in other people’s post. Also that it is okay to express your opinion in your posts or in the comments that you leave.
    Happy Blogging! See you next year.
    Madison
    http://madisonm110gst.edublogs.org/

  20. For me the travelling challenge was my favorite because I liked planning my own holiday. I visited quite a few peoples blogs as well this year. The most important thong I learnt this year was that when you ask questions on your blog you get a lot more comments.

  21. The Dream Overseas Trip!
    Every time we had blogging time I would leave a comment on some random blogs,
    No I didn’t,
    P- People form USA come visit my blog! M- It was hard trying to do all the challenges, I- Trying to add a Student Blogging Challenge Badge.
    That I still don’t know how to add the badge!!!

  22. I wrote about 30 blog posts and probably half of them would have been school related, I received a lot of comments from classmates but I didn’t get any overseas comments! I got 9 comments on one of my posts and I think it was because I asked a question so most of the comments were answers. I changed my blog a lot because I wanted people to be interested in my blog, No overseas students came to my blog but I tried to make them by going on their blogs and commenting, and then I would tell them how to get to my blog. I really enjoyed the student blogging challenge and I cant wait to do it all again next year!!!

  23. This is a comment i am doing for activity 2. I have always loved the student blogging challenge because it allows us to visit blogs from all over the world. I can name a few, Australia, New Zealand and Germany. I would like to thank you for giving us these 10 weeks of fun.

  24. Hello Miss W,
    I think the most interesting challenge was the Game Time because it was fun and new, however sometimes I got a little annoyed about that game because some people would not have a sidebar. I visited about 5 blogs each week which payed off a lot in the long run so I would recommend doing 3-5 comments a week. I also really liked the Flipboard however it got a little annoying when we were on week 8 and there was only blogs from week 6 on there. The most important thing I learned about the challenge is that you only get as much out of it as you put in it.

    Thanks so much for all the fun,
    -Maeve
    ( by the way I am done this weeks challenge )

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