Challenge 10: Evaluating and nominating

I’m sorry to say we are at the last challenge for 2011. Remember we start again in March 2012, on this blog again. But even though the challenge is over, you can still keep up with your new friends by visiting their blogs and leaving comments. The list of class and student participants will be left up on the blog until early February 2012.

Activity 1 – students and classes

Please evaluate the challenge mentioning something about the following topics:

Registration: Is two weeks early enough for registration to begin before the first challenge?

Subscription: Did you subscribe by RSS or email in order to get the posts as soon as they were published?

Student and class participants: How useful are these pages in the header of the blogging challenge?

The challenges:

  • Did you visit the actual challenge on the blog each week or did your teacher have a post on your class blog?
  • Which challenges were the most useful?
  • Which challenges were the most interesting?
  • What would be some other topics you would like included in future challenges?
  • Are more tutorial type challenges needed? eg how to make a link in your post
  • Were the ‘Visit these’ posts useful?
  • Were the challenges where you had to embed ie polls, cartoons, wallwisher etc interesting or could you not embed due to being a free Edublogs blog or a blogging platform that didn’t allow embedding?
  • Were there enough chances to visit blogs from overseas and make links with other students/classes?
  • Classes that registered – were there enough activities specific to classes?
  • Did you make global connections?
  • Anything else you would like to mention about the challenge in particular

Activity 2: This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of September 2011.

  • 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?

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:

  • What were your first impressions of this blog?
  • What captured your attention?
  • What distracted you on the blog?
  • What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?

Activity 3: Nominating a blog for the Edublog Awards 2011

This year we would like classes to nominate two blogs they feel are excellent student blogs. They can be blogs from anywhere in the world. Choose a student from your class to write about the nominations in a post after you have discussed this as a class. eg best student blog or best new blog.

Teachers you may also take part in the nominations but you might like to check out the other sections where nominations are available.

Mentors we would also like you to nominate one or two of the blogs you have been mentoring to go in either the best student blog or new blog sections.

Students we would prefer you work with your teachers to nominate some great student blogs, but if there is a student blog (not from your class or school) that you feel deserves a nomination then write a post and fill in the nomination form. Remember, as a student, you can’t nominate a blog from your class or school.

Here are the rules you will need to follow to make your nomination valid. Notice you only have until the end of November to put in your nominations. Remember to write your post and then send in this nomination form with a link to your blogpost.

Also remember to visit the Edublog Awards page to vote between 2nd  and 13th December. You will only be able to vote for one in each section. Winners are announced on 14th December.

After the challenge is over

Continue:

Congratulations to:

  • gamekid27  who has earned over 8000 grains so far
  • bbsam and bbjoseph  who have earned over 4000 grains each so far
  • Jake G, teeganr4 and Gpower12 who have earned over 3000 grains each so far

Finally, leave a comment on this post about who you nominated or ideas for the next challenge in 2012.