Photo Credit: jpellgen via Compfight

Next weeks activities will relate to digital citizenship and digital footprints and we will also be taking part in a global blogging activity with millions of bloggers around the world.

This is called “Blog Action Day 2014″ and is held every October. The theme for this year is “Inequality”  Please visit the blog action day website, register your blog if you are over thirteen, add the badge to your blog sidebar and start researching what you are going to include in your post on the 16th October. For ideas about inequality, visit the websites of the partners mentioned on BAD14 or look at their wordle here.

Many schools have been on holiday or breaks recently or may have only just joined the challenge. So this week does not count as a formal week in the challenge instead it is a time for being creative. Have a go using some of the tools mentioned on the sidebar of the student blogging challenge blog, leave a comment if there is another app or website you would recommend I add to the list.

We want to see or hear your creative masterpiece so you might need to make a screen shot to save as an image to add to your post. Otherwise add a link to where your creative work can be found.

Remember if you are under 13, you will need to get parent and / or teacher permission to use many of them.

Art

• Art games including jigsaws from getty art
• art from around the world in a mosaic
• Colour in motion needs flash player
• Interactive ideas at the National Gallery of Art, USA
• Create a sand picture by clicking on the little grey square in the top corner to get instructions
• Create your own art work at artpad
• Site on how to draw it
• A school art teacher’s blog with lots of excellent ideas
• Draw your own cartoon characters here

Writing

• Magnetic poetry – create a poem using their words, take a screen shot or submit to their gallery and put link in your post
• Use Fotobabble  (13+) or Blabberize to create a movie or book trailer
• Register at Educaplay to create lots of games and literacy activities
• Create a book that flips the pages at flipsnack. Check out the other links at the bottom as well.
• Make beliefs comics are great for your creativity
• Little Bird Tales for creative writing
• Another great site is goanimate – teachers there is an education version of this as well

Music and audio

• Isle of Tune is fantastic for creating your own musical items
• Voki allows you to type or speak what you want the character to say
• Audioboom – education version, create whatever you want to say on your blog then embed it.
• Create tones to use on mobile phones at Wolfram – need quicktime plugin
• Use keyboard, guitar or violin at this site
• Play drums here, but use a headset
• Create your own music and become a composer
• Music activities for all ages

Science

• Toymaker ideas at the bottom of the page – make the toy and create a video showing us how it works
• Use physics to make a contraption – make sure you disable the sound
• Use physics to build towers – again disable sound
• Use magic pen to move the ball
• Using your camera effectively with these project ideas

Simulation Games

• African Expedition - follow the route Henry Stanley took when he tried to find Dr Livingstone
• Ayiti - make your family of five survive the years in Haiti
• Refugees in Sudan - keep your refugee camp safe from militia
• Shoe Sweatshop - create your own shoes to earn money for your family
• Stop Disasters - develop a disaster plan to save your country
• Third world farmer - develop your farm in Africa and survive with your family

Creating your own images include:

1. Image Generators such as ImageGenerator.org
2. Comic Generators like MakeBeliefsComix.com, ToonDoo
3. Photo Editors like Befunky, fd’s Flickr Tools
4. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle
5. Graph Creators including GraphJam and Crappy Graphs

Sites suggested by previous students in the blogging challenge

Wacky Web Tales from Dawso

Stykz – similar to Pivot from Isabel

Edheads – try knee surgery from Gabriela

One of our mentors Maria, suggested these sites for creating quizzes

QuizBean,  Socrative, Purpose Games,  Quizdini,   AnswerGarden,   FlipQuiz,   eQuizShow,  Quizlet

More new tools from students in the 2014 challenge

Zara recommends Audiotool for making music

Welcome to the organizational post for the 13th Student Blogging Challenge.

The first challenges will be published on September 14, 2014.

Registration forms for classes and students  have already been published. These were each on a separate post with a Google  form asking for certain information. Once you have registered as a class or student, you will be able to visit the participant pages which will be found in the header area of this blog as well as below here.

• Class registration – Teachers only to fill in this form with their homeclass blog
• Class participants
• Student registration – Students with their own individual blog which might be part of a course you are taking
• Student participation

We will be having a badge again that can be added to your blog. Read this post by the Edublogs team about how to add the badge to your sidebar. Depending upon the blogging platform you use, the text box or image widget might have a different name.

Can visitors leave comments and read posts on your blog?

You might think they can but try this. Go to your blog but don’t login. Most of your visitors wont be logging in. Can they read your posts? Now try to leave a comment on a post. Can you leave a comment? If you cant read a post or comment without logging in, then neither can your visitors. Check with your teacher about the settings you might need to change.  This post from last September challenge shows how to change privacy settings on edublogs, kidblog and blogger platforms.

Are you on the student list only once? Are you on the correct list?

Each challenge we don’t always have enough mentors to cover all students registered, so please check that you’re only on the list once. The list is found in the header area on the challenge blog. This is where you go to visit other student or class blogs. If you are on there more than once or in the wrong age group, leave me a comment on that page giving me first name, age, URL and what is wrong and I will make corrections on the spreadsheet.

How are you going to know when the challenge is published each week?

One way of being notified straight away is to subscribe to the challenge blog. Just fill in the  subscribe by email widget at the top of the sidebar. An email will be sent to you as soon as I hit the publish button for a new post.

Is there a link to your class blog on your sidebar?

It is helpful for your visitors especially other teachers and your mentor, to have a link to your class blog on the sidebar of your blog. If using Edublogs, you might have a class blogs or class directory widget you can add to your sidebar. This will show your class blog and any other students blogs connected to the class blog.

Teachers using Edublogs, here is the post on how to set up class blogs. Using another blogging platform, then check out the Get Help section on the sidebar of the challenge blog. This is where I have links to user guides, videos etc for a variety of blogging platforms. If you know of some more links I could add there please let me know in a comment on this post.

Any chance of some teachers from your school being mentors for the challenge?

Maybe some teachers who might be interested in blogging wouldn’t mind being a mentor in this challenge. Mentors when registering, I will need your name and a way to contact you to send reminders such as an email address. The results from this form will not be published, but you will also be asked to write a short bio in the comment area of the registration post.

Finally, do we have a class which would like to run the challenge for one week?

This year I am hoping some classes will run one of the challenge weeks.  If your class would like to run the challenge for one week, please leave a comment mentioning the theme you would like to set challenges for eg global issues, history, my country, nature, and the date for it to be published. The journalism students from Cactus Canyon, Arizona ran one of the challenge weeks during the March challenges. Check it out here for an example of what can be done.

Get your blog organized, have at least one interesting post written before the challenge starts, so any visitors will be able to leave a comment.

You have just over 2 weeks till the first challenge is published.

Before filling in the registration form please read the following:

Who should register

• Teachers who have their own class blog can register, can be any blogging platform
• Classes which want to connect with other classes around the world

Reminders before registering

1. If your blog URL is very long, then use a shortener such as this one from Google  Also handy when students are registering their blogs on their form (especially if kidblog as the URL is usually long).
2. In case I need to contact you, an email is the easiest way, so please fill that in on the last question on the form. This is not published but other teachers could contact me in case you don’t have a contact spot on your blog.

A few days after  you have registered

1. Check the class participants page which will appear in the header area to make sure you are there.
2. If you are not on the participants page, register again being careful that your blog URL is correct
3. If you are on the participants list, start visiting other classes of similar grade level.
4. Fill in the subscription by email so you are notified when posts are published each week – first challenge will be September 14 or if you have Edublogs reader, click on follow then you will be able to read posts in your reader.
5. Make sure you have some great posts written so others can leave comments.

If publicising any posts on twitter, please use the hashtag   #14stubc

So you have read everything above this line, now is the time to register

 

The next student and class blogging challenge starts in September 2014. This is a special challenge being the 13th one organized. I hope this is not an omen of bad luck!!

Why do we need mentors in the blogging challenge?

When I first began the challenge back in 2008, there were only about 200 students taking part and I could visit each of them three times over the ten week period.

But in the last few challenges, there have been  over 1300 students and there was no way I could visit them regularly.  So in 2010 I started asking people in education to mentor a small group 20-30 students over the ten week period of September to November or March to May.

If you register to be a mentor, please keep checking back on this post as I will allocate the students to you and mention in your comment reply who you will be visiting. I will also send you an email reminding you about checking this post early in the challenge.

As soon as students start registering in early September, I will allocate mentors so please keep checking out the student participant’s page in the main header above to find out who you are mentoring.

Who can be a mentor?

• classroom teacher or homeschool teacher
• principal or senior staff or faculty members
• trainee teachers
• students who have taken part in at least two sets of previous challenges
• educational coaches or trainers
• regular blogger about educational matters

What do you do if you are a mentor?

• Visit your allocated student blogs at least three times throughout the challenge
• Leave comments on posts written by the students
• Continue conversations in the comments
• Remind them about visiting the main blogging challenge page each week
• Contact me by email or a comment if having concerns or problems (contact is on right sidebar)

So you have read the above and have decided you have the time to visit the student blogs, now it is time to register.

In a comment below, mention the following:

• A short bio of yourself including some interests
• Link to your own blog, especially a class blog or your personal blog – allows me to check validity as an educator
• Age group you would like to mentor

Finally fill in this form with a way I can contact you eg your email address – preferably a school or education email address