Challenge 1 – Sept 2010
The first week of challenges involves lots of things which I hope you have already done to your blog. Just go down the page like a checklist and tick off as you get the activities completed.
1. Changed your theme.
All Edublogs blogs begin with the same theme. There are over 100 different themes to choose from. Some have one sidebar, some have two sidebars, some allow you to change the headers. But you need to decide which theme suits you best. Check out this post about themes To change your theme, go to your dashboard > appearance > themes.
You might like to write a post about why you chose that particular theme. How difficult was it to choose? What were you looking for in a theme?
If you use Kidblogs I don’t think you have a choice of themes, so you won’t be able to do this activity.
2. Written your ‘about’ page.
Remember pages stay in the one place and are located in your header or in the ‘Pages’ widget. What you will be writing normally are posts and they will gradually disappear off the bottom of the column on your blog. If using blogspot, you have an ‘About’ area in your profile, those using Kidblogs will need to write a post about themselves instead. Check out the example ‘About’ pages below:
About pages – classes
- Mrs Partlow in Washington State, USA
- Mr Mac in South Australia
- Mr Toft in Ontario, Canada
- C-O Connections in Texas, USA
- Mrs Seeley – only been blogging a few weeks with her students
About pages – students
- Abbey
- Skye – changed since previous challenge – notice comments
- Loretta
- Amelia – new to blogging like three weeks only
- Kylie – same as Amelia
If you have already written an about page last year, you might need to update it for this year. Things will have changed. If you know of a great example of an ‘About’ page, please leave a comment on this post. Make sure you have added the ‘Pages’ widget to your sidebar. Dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag ‘pages’ across.
3. Added your blogger, commenter or helper badge to your sidebar.
As you are taking part in the challenge, a designer Tammie at Edublogs has created a badge you can put on your blog sidebar. Click on this underlined link and it will take you to the post telling you what to do. If you can’t add it to your sidebar, you could put it in a post instead. Make sure you have added your ‘Recent comments’ widget to your sidebar.
4. Write a post about why students and classes should visit your blog.
Why is your blog going to be interesting? What will you be posting about? What could they learn from reading your blog? Make sure you hyperlink back to this challenge post somewhere in your post. That way, I will get a trackback or pingback and I will be able to visit your blog to read your post, otherwise I won’t know if you have written anything about this challenge.
eg. This post is for Challenge 1 in the September 2010 challenge. Highlight ‘Challenge 1′ then use the Link icon – chains joined – and type in the URL for this post. Check out how Abbey has created the trackback here.
This is one of the most important skills to know when blogging – how to make a link – if unsure check out this post for Edublogs or this post for blogspot.
5. Leave a comment on this post telling me three interesting things about you then ….
Check out the page called “Sept. 2010 students’ and visit ten blogs there where students have similar interests to you and leave a comment on their blog. Then come back here and leave a comment mentioning a blog you found really interesting – remember to tell me the student’s first name, country and blog URL so I can then go and visit them as well.
6. Classes only
Each week you will need to have visited the blog of the class on either side of your name on the ‘Sept. 2010 classes’ page. This will make sure each class gets visited by at least two other classes. Remember to check out any student blogs that are on the class sidebars. Then choose some other classes from the list that you would like to visit – students of similar age perhaps. If browsing with Internet Explorer, remember to use the ‘Sept 2010 classes use IE’ link.
On your class blog, write a post about why students and classes should visit your blog. What will they learn from reading your posts? Are there any skills your class has that they could pass on to other classes and students?
7. Now students like Abbey who have already taken part in the challenges in March will already have done most of these things, so I want you to write a post on the following topic.
Think about something important you have learned outside of school – remember we should all be life long learners not just learners while at school. How did you learn it? Why is it important to you? Who or what taught you about it? How has this learning helped you in your life?
This idea is from a prompt at this website – Teaching that makes sense.
Original image: ‘Dive off!‘
