Week 2: It’s a small world

Welcome to the second set of activities. But first a little bit of

ADMIN

Firstly, with over 1000 students now registered, I am sorting out mentors to be allocated to students. I don’t want one student to end up with  more than one mentor but this will happen if you are on the student list more than once. So PLEASE check the student list and leave a comment on this post if you are on there more than once. I will need your name, URL, country and age to make it easier for me to find you on the list.

Secondly, we still have some classes and students who have privacy settings not allowing others to read posts and/or comment. To check if this is you, go to your blog but DON’T login. Now  try reading and commenting. Are you allowed to? If not, then neither will your visitors. Please change the privacy settings. Any students or classes who still don’t allow comments by Easter will be deleted from the lists.

Thirdly, instead of filling in a Google form each week of the challenge, please come back to the post and leave a comment including the URL of your blog post.  In April I will be starting a new flipboard magazine and will be adding the great posts from both students and classes to that.

Now let’s get to the challenge.

Only 220 years ago, it used to take a sailing ship about 4 or 5 months to sail from England to Australia with convicts on board.  It took me 24 hours, including time zone changes, to fly from Australia to Vancouver, Canada with a short stop in Hawaii for a couple of hours. Yet it took only seconds for my class to connect  in 2008  when we used Skype to make a call.

Students born in the last twenty years  should be taking it for granted that they will be working collaboratively with students and teachers across the world using modern technology.

So this week’s challenge is to tell the world about the area you live in – your town, your state or province, your country in general. But hopefully you will also be having international visitors coming to your blog, so you need some way of knowing where they are coming from. There will be many options of what to do this week ranging from adding widgets, creating avatars, writing posts, leaving comments by visiting international blogs.

Activity 1 Adding widgets

When adding widgets to your sidebar, go to your dashboard>appearance>widgets> drag text box to sidebar area. Now copy and paste the embed code into your text box.

  • Save then close.
  • If the widget is too wide, you will have to adjust the number next to ‘width’ in the embed code.
  • This might appear more than once in the code.

If using blogger rather than Edublogs, you might need to check out the instructions for adding widgets and images etc from Bling For Your Blog, written by a teacher in New Zealand. Thanks Allanah.

Activity 2. So that you are known globally, you need to have an avatar that represents you.

But can’t I use a picture from Google?

No, most pictures on Google or other search engines are copyright and belong to someone else.

Here is a post with links to lots of different avatar sites for you to create an image that looks like you and here is a post for Edublogs or wordpress explaining how to upload your avatar. Blogpost or blogger students check here to upload, Kidblog check here,

Activity 3. Being such a small world now, many classes take part in global events such as Earth Hour (coming up very soon, so register this week), Safer Internet Day (back in February), Global Read Aloud Day (ideas for books needed), Pi Day (just passed) and Clean Up Day (just passed in Australia). Write a post or posts about special global events you or your class have taken part in. What did you learn from the event? Why should it be global?

Activity 3. If I were to visit your state or province, what would be the ‘must see’ places and why?

Activity 4. Create a quiz about your state, country; this website is good for embedding a quiz. Try my quiz about Tasmania

Thanks to Celia for reminding me that this site is only for those over 13 years old.

Activity 5. Finally, just for fun, if you have completed one of the other activities perhaps you could try this activity.

When “daddysitting” my father who is just out of hospital, I asked him to give me an activity relating to the topic for this week. He said what about a story about the journey of a small animal like an ant. Remember be creative, use a different webtool and embed into your blogpost.

Still got time left this week:

  • Visit other student and class blogs and read the about pages. Leave quality comments.
  • Check out these maths challenges from Ms Hutchison’s class.

Remember, come back to this post and leave a comment when you have written your post or embedded your quiz. Include the URL of the actual post not just your blog in general.

Attribution: Image: ‘It’s a Small World!‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/16600310

78 thoughts on “Week 2: It’s a small world”

  2. My name is Dan and I live in Joliet, Illinois. Our weather is usally mild during the year. A spot that you can visit is the Bean in Chicago.

    Reply

  3. Greetings, Sue.
    Week 2 activity.
    I wanted to post this widget here so that you could share it with students next challenge.
    As my family and I were driving around we noticed that the flags in our area were at half mast. We investigated and came across this site.
    HALF STAFF AMERICAN FLAG NOTIFICATIONS
    http://halfstaff.org
    You can add a widget to a blog to remind you of how to fly the flag that day. It also gives you specifics for your state.
    I’m passing it on to my group of students.
    Dinah

    Reply

  9. Hi!
    I am capoeira9. I finished most of the challenges, here’s my URL: symba5.edublogs.org. Thank you!

    Reply

    1. G’day Anastasia,
      What is it that you like about my blog?

      I just visited your blog. You have done a great job in the short time you have had the blog. I liked your post about digital footprints. It doesn’t take long to start having your name appear on the internet once you are using a blog, using twitter or instagram and other social media.

      Reply

    1. Hi Kathy,
      Are the Tech Team asking all students at the school to fill in the form to gather data and work out how to help the other students with their tech questions?

      Reply

  20. Hello, dear bloggers!
    Although we are not registered as a class, we were only able to do some collective work last week, as my senior students are very busy already preparing for their final exams. Of course, we tried to do our best. Would you like to do a quiz about Russia and find out how well you know our country (http://kidblog.org/MrsFlowersNewClass/olgak/its-a-small-world/)? We also took part in World Read Aloud Day on March, 5 and made a short video we’d like to share with everybody (http://kidblog.org/MrsFlowersNewClass/olgak/world-read-aloud-day-2014/). We would be happy, if we could give our visitors some pleasant moments!

    Reply

  21. Hello Miss W.,

    I am a homeschool mom, and this is my first experience with blogging. Sometimes I think that setting up a homeschool class blog is silly, but I am hoping that it will broaden our horizons and help us learn a little more about the world of technology. My children certainly love their video games and such, so my hopes are that they will learn more about how to use the technology they love to enhance their education. I am not exactly sure how to go about setting up our homeschool class blog, ❓ so it is an experiment in progress. The student blog challenge has been a great start for us to learn more about what to do. Thank you, Miss W.! You are an amazing woman! I have added the post about where we live to our class blog. Here is the link: All About Arkansas
    P.S. Sorry this comment is so long; it is the first comment I have ever made on the internet. I know, sad, right? 😯 But, I am looking forward to more blogging and commenting.
    Most sincerely,
    Amoris Verum

    Reply

    1. G’day Amoris Verum,
      Great to have you and your home schooled students taking part in the challenge. In the pages above the flags on the challenge blog, you will find an area called Class blog help. It will take you to a teacher challenge area and give you lots of ideas for setting up a great class blog. Also if you want to connect to other classes around the world, go to the Class March 2014 list above the flags.

      Reply

  22. Something I thought was very interesting about the videos is that everything you do on the internet even before your born or after you died.

    Reply

  26. Hi Miss W.,

    This is the link to our post sharing about Must-See Michigan. http://edublogs.misd.net/techiekids/2014/03/23/michigan-must-see-places/

    We think you’ll like it because we share a bunch of helpful facts with some pretty pictures. This combination will really help readers “visualize” our area. For some extra fun, I’ve shared a cool tool that new bloggers would like to know about. It’s called 360 Cities. Scroll to the bottom of the post to see a picture that allows you to click and spin around within the image 360 degrees. My students love it and we think you will too.

    Thanks!
    Mrs. Moore and the Techie Kids

    Reply

    1. G’day Mrs Moore and students,
      It was certainly a very visual tour of your state. Loved the 360 view. Will have to look into that when we do a post on images.

      Reply

  28. Hello Miss. W,

    I was really excited to write my post and share places to visit in California here it is—-http://jack18sms.edublogs.org/

    Jack

    Reply

  35. Dear Miss W,
    My students have completed this post. We were not able to use the quiz site because the children are not 13 years old. So instead we created a slide with facts about different places in our state and country and then turned them into puzzles with JigsawPlanet. Here is a link to those posts:
    http://kidblog.org/SISClassof2019/tag/blogging-challenge-2/
    Thanks!
    Mrs. Schmidt

    Reply

  40. Hey Miss W,
    I’ve posted my About Me and my Small World challenge. I’m super excited to be doing this blogging challenge!!!

    Reply

    1. G’day Ridhi,
      Oh dear I only got three questions correct. I need to learn more about Canada.

      If you want your work put in our flipboard magazine, you will need to write them as posts instead of adding to your blog challenge page. You might need to mention this to your teacher as well as the other students in the challenge.

      Reply

  45. Dear Miss W,
    It’s okay! I can use the one I have created! Thanks for
    letting me know! Oh, and I have written a comment back to your comment!
    Have you been to the Oregon Zoo?
    From,
    Anika 🙂

    Reply

  46. Hi everyone,
    I’ve just completed the all about where I live post. It was a lot of hard work! 😯 I hope you ENJOY it. Here is the link to my blog: TheWarriorKat
    Bye!
    WarriorKat

    Reply

  47. Hi Miss W,

    I was wondering, if you go to the widgetbox (which I’ve been there already)
    how can add the widgets? I’ve asked several teachers and some of my class-mates that are also doing it and they don’t know how to either??????

    Anika 🙂

    Reply

  51. Dear Miss W,
    I have made a post on my blog about Oregon(USA) and have put up my
    Voki, so has everyone else in my class. Is it okay that I don’t use a person avatar as my avatar? Let me know!
    From,
    Anika

    Reply

    1. G’day Anika,
      Thanks for leaving great comments on the challenge blog. As an avatar is supposed to represent you, it is better to have a fun one you have created. If you have used an image for the avatar, is it a creative commons image or is it one you, your family or teacher have taken? If it is just an image you got from Google, then it might be owned by someone who doesn’t want it to be used anywhere else on the web so it is copyright to them.

      Reply

  53. Hello everyone! Our class was able to add some widgets, a couple of posts, an “About Us” page, and a link to our student blogs at another site. We also have new post in the works about our favorite places to go in our area. We will let you know when those are finished! Happy blogging! Here is our link:
    http://rautiosclass.edublogs.org/

    Reply

  54. Hi Ms. W,

    I have more than one mentor. My name is gymnast3, my URL is gymnast3.edublogs.org, I live in U.S.A., and I am 10 years old.

    Sincerely,

    gymnast3

    Reply

    1. G’day gymnast3,
      I just checked your blog. I left a welcome message (see my avatar on the comment) but Mrs Hamman is your actual mentor for the challenge.

      Reply

        1. Just checked this site out and is for 13+ year olds – will add it to my new avatar list I will be creating over Easter.

  56. Hi Ms. W,
    I just finished a blog post about the city I live in, Shenzhen! I hope you find it interesting. Here is a link: share.sis.org.cn/21yw01/shenzhen.
    Sincerely,
    Felix

    Reply

    1. G’day Felix,
      When leaving your URL as part of a comment, start it on a new line and add the http:// part as well then it will appear as a link.

      Reply

  57. Hi! I began blogging with first graders last year on Kidblog and set up this year’s class on it as well. I have found, however, that it may be hard for “others” to see our posts for the student blogging challenge via Kidblog. So, I have set up a new account at edublog. Can you switch my blog URL to : http://rautiosclass.edublogs.org/

    Reply

  58. Hi Miss W,
    There are 2 of my students who ended up on the list twice. You can remove both Ricky and Jessica from the 8 year olds under Mrs. Watanabe. Jessica is in there twice and Ricky is under 9’s. He accidentally wrote 8 for an age so he resubmitted it again with 9.
    Ricky – http://kidblog.org/SISClassof2019/author/54d50acf-357c-4a2f-ae57-48d572d0b621/
    Jessica http://kidblog.org/SISClassof2019/author/48d5c43b-b58a-44f4-ac40-ca38b6306730/

    I’d be happy to be a mentor if you need more help.
    Thanks,
    Tina Schmidt

    Reply

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