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Nominations now open

Here is the form to fill in with your nominations for the student and class sections of the Edublog Awards.  If you want to check out the other sections, visit this link. If nominating in the other sections, make sure you read how to nominate them. Slightly different to what we are doing here.

If you have nominated here on our form for either student or class, you DON’T have to nominate again on the Edublog Awards page.

  1.  Nominate in both categories if you want!
  2. You can’t nominate yourself ;)
  3. Nominations must be made somewhere public – your blog, a forum on a ning, a school website, etc.
  4. Even if  your favourite has already been nominated, it is best to nominate them again
  5. Categories are competitive, and only the most nominated will make it to the voting round
  6. Share your nominations using twitter (#eddies13), facebook, Google+ and email

 

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Week 9 – Part B

Over the last couple of weeks you have been looking at what makes a great post. This week we are expanding that to

What makes a great blog?

Naturally, a great blog will include great posts but what else will there be.

Maybe you will also need to look at

  • the layout of the blog
  • background design
  • sidebars
  • widgets
  • header

A person might write excellent posts, but then have widgets on the left sidebar that overlap on the writing. There might be loud music playing as soon as you open the blog. There might be a noisy pet chirping away in the background while you are trying to read a post. There might be snow falling all over the blog distracting you from the posts.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the Edublog Awards.

You are being invited to take part in the awards by nominating great student blogs and great class blogs. Here are lists of the nominated blogs from last year for students and classes. In my opinion, being nominated is just as important as winning one of these awards. Not all nominations go forward to the final list.

In order for your nomination to count, you MUST do the following.

  1. Write a post on your blog nominating one blog.
  2. Give reasons for the nomination, why you think it is a great blog.
  3. You cannot nominate your own blog.
  4. In your post, include a link to the blog of the person you are nominating.
  5. When you have published your post come back here to fill in the form below. Your nomination will not count, unless you fill in the form below.

You may only nominate one blog for each category. There are other categories you could use such as new blog and individual blog.

So in total, you could write 4 posts nominating a blog in each of these categories – student, class, new and individual. Fill in this form for each post you write.

PS I will add the form later today

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Week 9 – Part A

Blue mists at Snoqualmie Falls
Photo Credit: joiseyshowaa via Compfight

The challenge this week is in two parts. You will actually have two weeks to do the challenges in. I will be publishing Part B later on this week.

Last week’s challenge was all about what makes a great post. Having read many of your posts, I came up with the following essentials in a great post.

  1. catchy title
  2. includes a visual whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet or glogster
  3. interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through
  4. well written and not copy/pasted from somewhere else
  5. shows it has been proofread and spellchecked
  6. written in paragraphs
  7. includes links to other websites on similar topics

So this week’s first challenge is for you to write your best ever blog post. Try to include all those things mentioned above.

Topic choices:

My favourites

Places I want to visit overseas

My future

Your own narrative

When you have finished your post, please come back here to the blogging challenge and leave a comment on this post. Mention which topic you wrote about and leave a link to your post. There is no form to fill in for this challenge.

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Week 8 – Questions

question mark ?
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: LEOL30 via Compfight

This week will more or less be free choice but I do have some questions I would like you to answer in a post. Remember to give details not just a one sentence answer for each question.

Activity 1.

  • What makes a great post?
  • When you are out visiting blogs, what makes you stop and read a post?
  • How do you find great posts on a blog?

Activity 2.

Visit at least 10 blogs; even more if you have time. Maybe check out some posts in the flipboard magazines. Leave a comment on each of those blogs. Make sure they are quality comments – address the author, add to the conversation, sign off remembering to include URL of your blog.

G’day Miss W.

I really enjoyed that post about Tasmanian Devils. As you know, I am a well travelled Tassie Devil and luckily have never contracted that facial tumour disease. I did hear though, that some scientists in Tasmania think they have found the cause of it.

From Davo Devil http://mrdevil.edublogs.org

Activity 3.

  • What is a great post you have written?
  • What made it stand out from the other posts?
  • On your blog, are you able to write posts about your own interests?
  • Do you think this would make your blog more interesting? Why?

Activity 4.

Write a post mentioning three great blogs you have visited. Do not include any from your school; at least one must be from another country. In the post mention why you consider it a great blog. Explain in detail.

STOP PRESS  News about next week

1.  Next week you are going to write your very best post for the challenge. While visiting blogs this week, take note of what you consider should be included in a fantastic post.

2.  Next week, you will also be nominating a student blog and a class blog that you think should be part of the Edublog Awards. So make sure you have visited lots of blogs and taken note of those you consider stand out from the others. You will need to explain why they stand out in a post next week.

Here is a link to the winners and nominees for 2012 – Student blogs and class blogs

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Week 7 – Connections

How well connected are you? No I don’t mean if you are related to royalty or the president of your country.

I mean are you a connected person?

Twenty three years ago when I did my first trip around the world, I was not very well connected at all. To communicate with my parents I needed to write a postcard or mail a letter. Often I would get home before that letter arrived in the mail. Or I could phone them from a local phone using a phone card that I had prepaid. But I needed to know what time it was in Australia so I didn’t wake them up at 3am for my phone call.

But on my last trip to America, I could communicate immediately via Facebook or email. They could see my photos as soon as I had loaded them onto Flickr. They could read about what I had been doing by visiting my blog. My connected teacher friends could read my tweets.

New technology has changed the way we connect with each other in our small world.

October has been Connected Educator Month around the world (but particularly America) There have been lots of activities for teachers and other interested educators to take part in from online bookclubs, competitions, podcasting, blogging, pinterest etc. But often these special events are only known to those educators who are already connecting often.

Activity 1. Survey or poll the teachers at your school  to find out how they are connected. Did they know about Connected Educator Month? How do they connect with other teachers in their state? How do they connect overseas? How do they connect with family? What do they use to connect? Write a post about your results telling us some statistics about connectedness at your school.

Activity 2. Create a mindmap showing how you connect as a student. Include the tools you use to connect as well as who you connect to. Think carefully about all the ways you connect to different members of your family.

Activity 3. Here is an example of a connected teacher. Do you think this is similar for a connected student? Explain the differences and similarities. Click on the image to get a larger version.

 

Being connected with all this technology means everyone is leaving a digital footprint.

Activity 4. Watch the two videos below then leave a comment on this post about something that you found very interesting in one of the videos. Write a post explaining the differences between the videos. Which did you prefer and why?

Activity 5. After watching the two videos, write a post about your digital footprint. Is it positive or negative? Would you be proud to have your grandparents or your future grandchildren look at everything you have included in your digital footprint? Why or why not? Maybe Google your name to see what is online about you, that you might not have put there.

Activity 6. Imagine your are debating this topic: It is better to have a negative digital footprint than no footprint at all. Give three reasons to support each side of the debate.

Activity 7. Here are some websites to visit related to cybersafety and digital footprints. Visit some of them and write a post, create a poster or glogster, create a cartoon about what you found out. Your teacher might also give you other websites to visit.

  • ACMA Australia – cybersafety for young kids, kids and teens.
  • Google has some digcitizenship adventures relating to digital footprints – more for middle and high school students
  • Kidsmart from the UK has some great tips and information

Activity 8. Mainly middle and high school students – There are 9 elements to being a good digital citizen. Read this post then write your own post about what you consider are the most important parts of the nine elements. Are there certain areas you need to improve on? Why?

Activity 9. There are both advantages and disadvantages to being able to connect and communicate more easily. Write a post or run a debate on this topic. Maybe create a comic strip showing each side.

Security

Teachers

Here are some links to  sites relating to digital footprints and internet safety

Still time left

Visit other student and class blogs, read our flip magazines, add links to your blogroll of blogs you visit often. Try to categorize these eg class blogs, overseas students, my friends etc.

 

Image source from flickr

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Week 6 – Our World

abuelos
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: 3dom via Compfight

Our world is a very complex one, yet like the song says it is a small world now especially with technology and ease of transportation. This week we are going to look at the world of your grandparents and even further back if you can. Look at how their culture might have affected the world in which you live.

The world of our grandparents

Activity 1. Survey the students in your class or school. Where were their grandparents born? How many are immigrants to the country they now live in?

Activity 2. Are there any foods you eat that come from your grandparents home country? What recipes have been handed down in the family?

Activity 3. Are there any cultural events that directly relate to the old country from which your ancestors came?

Activity 4. How many generations do you go back before you find an ancestor immigrating to your present country? For example on my mother’s side of the tree, I can go back 5 generations to my great great great grandparents who were sent out from England as convicts to Australia.

Activity 5. What is the most important invention created since your grandparents were born? You might need to ask them and others of their generation.

Cultures of the world

Activity 6. Write a post in your native language. We have students from over 20 countries taking part in this challenge, many don’t speak English as their first language.

Activity 7. Visit blogs written by students from other countries.

Activity 8. How different is your world to that of the other students in this challenge? Write a post asking questions for overseas visitors to answer. Think about water, food, transport, technology rather than singers, movies etc. Watch the video to get more ideas for questions.

Activity 9. Check out some of these games and websites about different cultures of the world.

Still got time left this week - visit the classes and students taking part in the challenge. Leave great comments and continue conversations.

Read the post in our Flipboard Magazines. Great posts from this week will be added to the One World, Our World magazine. But remember, you need an image with attribution or links to a blog or website, paragraphing, spellchecker put through your post if you want it included. Also remember to fill in the form below so I know you have written a post.

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Week 5 – BAD and commenting

Ignorado
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Pablo Flores via Compfight

Not much this week regarding choice of activities as I want you to concentrate on writing a fantastic post for Blog Action Day on Wednesday 16 October. Remember the topic is

Human Rights

Here is a link to the actual Human Rights document from the United Nations. There is also a convention on the rights of a child and here is a link to that.

Remember to include an image in your post and give references or link back to where you found your information. Write in your own words, don’t copy and paste from another website. Try to be very factual in what you present but also be prepared to give your own opinion and justify that opinion. Think of an original title for your post, not just Blog Action Day. Try to include the hashtags #BAD13  and #13stubc in your post somewhere. This will make it easier for me to pick up some posts that might not be included in the form below.

We have started a special Flipboard magazine called “One World, Our World”  We will be including great posts about global issues from week 4 challenge and also those well researched and informative posts from Blog Action Day.

Mrs Neidlinger’s class - please make sure this is a post like you did for digital literacy and stereotyping and not part of your Student Blogging Challenge page on your blog. I will only be flipping posts that are solely about the topic for Blog Action Day.

Admin regarding comments

Here are some great conversations happening between students and mentors, teachers and other students. Are you remembering to check your comments especially if you don’t moderate them?

Gillian and her mentor, Olyvia and her mentor(s), Annabel and her relatives and friends, Mackenzie and other students

Remember to also visit those classes where students don’t have their own blogs but are leaving fantastic comments such as Mrs Boyd’s class,

 

On the student participation list have you noticed some student ages in a green box – why?

  •  incorrect blog URL,
  • no commenting allowed (have to login) or
  • not enough challenge activities completed

These will be deleted this weekend, but I will check first in case you have caught up some of the activities.

 

I have also been finding some great posts by students, but they haven’t filled in the form at the end of each week’s challenge. So make sure you check out our Flipboard magazine as your posts may be in there.

To be included in Flipboard magazine from now on – writing in paragraphs, include an image with attribution or links to other websites, show that you have used a spellchecker and checked grammar/punctuation.

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Week 4 – Global issues

Over half of all Syrian refugees are children.
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Oxfam International via Compfight

Listening and watching the news over the last few days, I’ve heard about some real global issues affecting many of the countries represented here in the student blogging challenge.

This week’s activities relate to these topics:

Activity 1

Imagine you are a journalist researching one of these topics. What are some of the questions you might ask someone you are interviewing? Remember questions start with

  • who
  • what
  • where
  • when
  • why
  • how

Try to find the answers to your questions by researching news articles. Remember some articles might be biased to one side of the topic, so check out articles for both sides of the debate. Check out some of the links in activity 4 to get information as well. Write a post as an imaginary interview. Include links back to the newspaper articles, websites or videos you used for information. Post here for Edublogs and Blogger and a video for Kidblog about linking.

Activity 2

Which of these topics affect your country? What is your government doing about it? If you are able, without getting into trouble, give your opinion of the topic and how it affects you as a student. What could you as a student or class do to help solve the problem?

Activity 3

Have you or your class ever held a fundraiser for a global issue? Write about it in a post. What was the event? What did you do? How much did you raise?  How did you feel?

Activity 4

Check out some of the links on these pages about human rights and global issues. What did you find interesting? Something new you learnt? A myth busted?

Activity 5

Do something about a global issue. Here are links to games and activities for kids about global issues. What did you choose to look at? Write a review in your post.

Teacher resources – Global citizenship from Oxfam, Globalkids connect, Action Aid resources,

Still more time to spare – visit students and classes from the other countries involved in the challenge. Leave a comment or question relating to a global issue that might be affecting them.

Leave a comment on this blog telling Miss W. the global issue you think is most important to be solved. It might not be one of those mentioned in the post. Give reasons why it should be the first issue solved.

 

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Holiday or vacation time

For the next two weeks, schools in Tasmania are on holiday so I thought we would take a break from the blogging challenge for just one week.

Oh, no!

What can I do this week when there is no challenge?

Here are some suggestions.

Make sure you have checked the student or class list. Are you  only listed once and  the link to your blog works?  To test this out, make sure you have logged out of your blog and testing as if you are a visitor. Can your visitor read your posts and leave comments or do you need to change some settings?

Have you started visiting the other students in your colour group? Everyone should have written an about me post or page. Leave some comments especially if they have similar interests to you. Remember the comments should be quality not something like

Cool blog. Come and visit my blog too.

Have you checked out the September Flipboard magazine? Compare these posts to yours – do yours need an improvement?

Have you completed the challenges from week 1,2 and 3? Could you improve those posts now that you have checked out some others?

Be warned

During early October, I will be deleting any student blogs that:

  • don’t link properly
  • don’t allow commenting
  • have no posts other than an about me page or post

If you only joined the challenge in late September, I will not be deleting yours.

Why am I doing this?

We try to have mentors for student blogs and if your blog does not work properly or you are not writing posts, then you don’t need a mentor. I can slip another person into your place instead.

Get ready for October

One important activity we do in October is take part in Blog Action Day. Check out their blog, read the instructions, register your blog, add the badge to your sidebar. Start researching the topic and planning your post. Do not publish it though, until the date of the Blog Action Day.

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Week 3 A week in the life of …

Class photo
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Anna M via Compfight

Admin to be completed first

Students: We now have about 1000 students registered for the challenge, yet many of you have registered more than once, probably accidentally or because you needed to change the URL of your blog. Could you all please check your age group on the list and leave me a comment on this post if your blog is listed more than once. Tell me your first name, your age and name of mentor or colour of group as well as URL so I can adjust the list.

Students: You should be starting to get comments now from your mentor (if allocated one) and others in the challenge. Remember it is good manners to reply to these comments to keep the conversation going. You should be moderating your comments at least once a week.

Students: To be mentioned in the flipboard magazine, you need to fill in the form at the bottom of each week’s activities. Preferably write posts rather than add to one page – you can always use categories/tags/labels to find these posts later.

Students: If your age is coloured in green on the list, it means there is something wrong with your blog – either it is private and people çan’t leave comments or the URL is incorrect. I will be deleting these blogs in early October, so please make changes and/or leave me a comment on this post.

Teachers: Thanks for all the good work you do with students in teaching them blogging skills. But I noticed a few animoto and slideshows that are not including the attribution for images used. These should be included at the end of the video etc. Here is a post which is part of the teacher challenge run by Edublogs (use any blog platform though) explaining images, copyright and creative commons. It includes links to many safe image collections.

Classes: If the name of your class on the list is coloured yellow, it means there is something wrong with the blog – generally privacy needs to be changed to allow other classes to comment or I don’t know your correct blog URL. Please leave a comment on this post once it is fixed.

This week’s activities

But before writing your post or leaving comments, please visit this post by Mr P. He has left some hints or commandments about blogging. Leave a comment on his post answering his questions. Remember to explain giving reasons why.

We are now getting down to the nitty gritty where we can start making comparisons between schools, states, provinces, countries so this week activities are based around Time in the life of …

Answer some of these questions by writing one or more posts or present using a variety of tools mentioned in the sidebar:

  1. What time do you normally get up to go to school?
  2. What do you normally have for breakfast, recess, lunch, tea (dinner, supper)?
  3. How do you get to school?
  4. How long does it take to get to or from school?
  5. A typical lunch at school
  6. Subjects you have to do – remember to explain abbreviations like LOTE and ELA
  7. Specialist subjects or electives, options
  8. Technology in your school
  9. A typical schoolday with timetable and breaks
  10. What do you do at break times? Games, activities etc
  11. School bell has gone for end of day – what happens now?
  12. Do you have to wear uniform?
  13. How many days per year are you at school? How is this arranged – terms etc?
  14. What do you enjoy most about school?
  15. If you could improve your school, what would you do?

You might like to run some surveys in your school re questions 1,3,4 and 10

Here are some examples of different web tools being used by students and classes in the challenge.

Isabella used Prezi,  Mrs Donofrio’s class used Photopeach, Mrs Rabe’s class used a mixture of their own images as well as creative commons images from compfight, Em used animoto and Google maps, Mrs Carpenter’s class used slideshare, Ariana used Picture Trail, Mrs Tucker’s class created a tagxedo, Mrs Hamman’s class created a video via Vimeo, Mrs Martinez’s class used Smilebox, Liah created a Voki, Sadie showed us what a well presented post looks like written in paragraphs and using great punctuation,

Whenever you write a post or leave a comment, remember Mr P’s commandments. The world could be reading what you have written so be very careful in what you say.

Nothing personal about yourself or anyone else, nothing about personal or family problems and definitely nothing about where you will be at a certain time on a certain date in the future.