Challenge 2 – Sept 2010

Lots of choices again this week in the challenge.

1. Create an avatar for your blog and for you to use when leaving comments.

Avatars are a representation of yourself. Check out this post about avatars.  Create your avatar using one of the websites below. Sue Waters from ‘The Edublogger‘ has written a great post about avatars, including giving instructions on how to save them and then upload to an ‘Edublogs’ blog. Many of the sites mentioned below are included in her post. If using Blogger, here is a link to show how to add a photo to your profile.

Most important is remember to save as a jpeg file if using Edublogs.

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self – middle left
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer – middle right
• The Hero Factory – far left
• Adventurer Maker – girls only
• Wimp yourself – relates to ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’
• Mess Dudes
• Hogwarts student – girls only
• Mii character
• Harry Potter and others saves as GIF
• Caracature
• Block head – like Lego

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar –  far right

But over 13, need parental or guardian permission for these.

• Meez
• Tizme
• Wee World
• Voki
• Bless this chick
• Hero Machine
• Marvel Hero
• Doll Maker
• Grabba Beast
• Sega Sonic
• Manga face maker
• Make your avatar

14 or older with parental permission

• Face your Manga

2. As a class, put together a post, movie or slideshow including your avatars.

Mrs Yollis’ class made lucky hat avatars last year.  Here is an example using animoto.

3.  Create a quick brief tour of your classroom or school (walking around showing the grounds/playgrounds/classroom) and then  embed it or upload it to the classroom blog. You might use vimeo , a slideshow, photopeach, YouTube, Smile Box etc.  Next week visit other classes who did the same activity and compare your schools or classrooms.   Thanks Mr Webb for this suggestion.

4.  In a post, please answer this question: When do you think it is appropriate for students to use real photos of themselves on their blogs and why? See if you can research this on the net and find responses from other educators. Remember to link to their post if you use information they mentioned. Hyperlink as well to this challenge post, so I can read your answers. Andrea wrote a great response in March this year.

5. Visit this website and leave a comment on the topic posted.  Look at the other topics to write about at Ignite to Write.  Create a couple of these to put as posts on your blog.  Thanks Tatiana for this suggestion.

6.  Create a Voki to put on your blog sidebar or post. Have the Voki talk about a place you would love to visit. Give at least three reasons why. Try to use an appropriate background for the Voki relating to that place. Don’t actually tell us the place eg Egypt, let your readers guess from the information you mention.

7. Visit Mr Pepper’s blog and leave a comment on this post.  If you are a new blogger, answer the grade 7 question.  If you have been blogging for a while, answer the grade 8 question – you might want to create your own ‘Commandments of blogging’.

Remember, whatever activity you choose to do, create a hyperlink back to this post somewhere in your writing. That way I can visit your blog and add you to one of my ‘Visit these’ posts in the future.