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Photo Credit: Sarah Joy via Compfight

A new blogging challenge starts tomorrow (Australian time). But are you and your blog ready for all the visitors you might receive?

Here is a checklist of things to look at now:

Can visitors leave comments and read posts?

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.

Have you added the 2014 badge to your sidebar?

Check the post written by the Edublogs team to learn how to embed it. Depending upon the blogging platform you use, the text box or image widget might have a different name.

Are you on the student list only once?

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 above the flags 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 this post giving me 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. Not sure how to do this, 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.

Finally, 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. Direct them to this post where they can register.

Good luck in the challenge!

First set of activities tomorrow!

7 thoughts on “Are you ready??

  1. These videos were interesting and told me a lot of new things I did not know about digital footprints. It can be weird to have people be able to see everything you have ever done on the computer.

  2. I think the videos were very interesting. It really made me think about what I post. It surprised me that you what you post on the internet never goes away. It also surprised me that your digital footprint starts from before you are born. The videos really made me think about what I post online.

    1. This video was a great video. I think it will teach others about the social media and how they can hack you or try to contact you even if you dont know them.

  3. This video really taught me a lot. I never even knew some of this stuff until I watched this video. It is a little unsettling knowing that anyone can see what I do online.

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