avatarbigrealsueMiss W or tasteach

Whenever you see either of these avatars or images on the world wide web, you will know it is me. I am a retired teacher who began blogging with students in 2008. I still blog with teachers and students in Tasmania, Australia. I also blog about my family history and whenever I travel, Davo the Tasmanian devil keeps a blog about his adventures with me. But the event I enjoy most is running the Student Blogging Challenge twice a year, with the help of the staff at Edublogs.

Teachers – Remember you can adapt the activities to suit what is happening in your class at that time or you can cut and paste parts of it on to your class blog. Just remember to give credit where you found the ideas by linking back to the challenge post somewhere on your post.

Students – Most weeks there will be lots of activities to choose from. You don’t have to complete them all. But by early November, your mentor or I must see your ‘About Me’ page or post as well as two other posts relating to the challenge. If they can not be found, your name will be taken off the list of students participating, especially if you have been given a mentor.

Mentors – They are there to give you some clues about blogging, reminding you of the challenge as well as carrying on conversations in your posts. Remember to read and reply to their comments politely and in a timely fashion.

This challenge we have many new students and classes taking part so let’s get some admin out of the way before we start our activities for this week. Anything written in bold and blue is a link you can click on to take you to another blog or website.

Admin for week 1

  1. Check that your name appears only once on the list of participating students. Leave a comment on that page if I need to remove your name from the list – give me your name, URL and age so I can find you easily.
  2. If all the students in your class have blogs and your teacher has a section called ‘My class’, you should have a widget called ‘Class blogs’. Make sure this is on your sidebar.
  3. Add the challenge badge to your sidebar – here is link explaining how to do that.
  4. Can visitors leave comments on your blog posts? If your country is in bright pink, then you might need to change your privacy settings. Check this post for how to do this using Edublogs, Blogger and Kidblog.
  5. Once you have done your activity for this week, remember to come back here and leave a comment on this post. Include a link to your blog post so I can try and visit in the next week. Great posts will be added to our Flipboard magazine on the sidebar.

With so many new students and teachers taking part, you might like to start with this video created by the team at Edublogs. Here is a PDF activity about blogging terms that you might want to use after watching the video.

Time now for the two activities for this week

Activity 1: Create an avatar to use on your blog.  There are many different avatar creation sites on the web. I have been to many of them and created lots of different avatars. Some you just save and download to your computer to then upload into your blog. Others you need to use the snipping tool to save a square image of your avatar. It is always best to save as a jpg format.

Here is a symbaloo of websites to use for avatar making. Feel free to add this to your blog. Along the bottom are pages where teachers have listed lots of sites as well as shown examples. The easiest to do are on the right hand side and look like my avatar.

 

To add your avatar to your blog, if using Edublogs, check here. If using blogspot, check here.  Teacher might need to change some settings in Kidblog to allow students to add own avatars.

Did you find a great avatar site not mentioned here? Write a post about your avatar and how it represents you. Include a link to the website where you created the avatar.

Activity 2: Write or update your About Me page.

Whenever I visit a blog for the first time, I always check to see who the person is that is writing the blog posts. Do they have similar interests to me?

If you already have an About Me page, you might want to create an About my State or Province page as well. Be creative:

What is the difference between a page and a post?  Check out the information here.

If using Edublogs, below are instructions for creating your page. If using blogspot, check here. If using weebly, check here. If using Kidblog, you will need to write a post.

  1. Login to your blog, go to Settings> Discussion and make sure the default setting is ticked for allow people to leave comments> save the changes at the bottom
  2. Now go to the dashboard>pages>add new
  3. Change the title to About Me or something similar.
  4. If you only have one row of icons above the box, click on the last icon called the kitchen sink or toggle. This opens a second row which allows you to change font colours.
  5. In the box, write a bit about yourself remembering to be internet safe. Make sure you have checked out the pages from other students mentioned – many of them have been blogging for a while.
  6. In the area under the page writing box, you should see a Discussion box – open this and make sure you have ticked Allow comments.
  7. When you have finished click the big  button on the right side of your screen – probably says update or send for review.
  8. Once you have saved your about me page, go back and delete the sample page.
  9. If your theme doesn’t show pages in the header area, then you will need to go to dashboard> appearance> widgets and drag across the Pages one to your sidebar.

Finished the work for week 1?

Then head off to the class or student list above the blog header and start visiting other blogs. You might not want to comment this week but maybe check them out. Are there any students with interests the same as you? Do you have a mentor yet? Have they left you any comments?

189 thoughts on “Week 1: G’day, my name is ….

  1. Hello!
    I’M EMBARRASSED! Sorry for sending this late. I have finished this activity and it would really make me happy if you had the time to check out my blog as well. mariannella.weebly.com

  2. Good afternoon! I’m a little late in posting this comment, but I’d like to invite you all over to our class blog http://mcdowellmedia.edublogs.org/ to find out what’s going on in our school. To meet the authors, select the “Authors of McDowell Media” category in the right side bar.

  3. Hi Miss W,
    My name is Lily I have completed the task for week 1 of the Blogging Challenge.
    My link for my about me page is http://techkidlily.edublogs.org/all-about-me/
    I’m so excited to be a part of this awesome challenge world wide I think it is really cool that you started this Challenge.
    Please check out my blog I would really apreciate it!

    Your Friend
    Lily

  4. All three classes are finished with week 1!
    bit.ly/Leader5G
    bit.ly/5Lbrainblog
    bit.ly/5Mclassblog

  5. Dear Mrs. W,

    I have finished my week one assignment. I only did the second activity because I have already participated in the Student Blogging Challenge in the past, and I am still using the same avatar. Think is the link to my blog:
    This is the Link to my Blogr.

    I hope you like my post. 🙂

    Thank you,
    Naho

  6. First time participatant in the blogging challenge. I’m hoping my students can gain some awareness of online protocol, appropriateness, and protection/control of identity. I also hope it can just be a little fun away from the normal blogging about what they read.

    We are a little behind (my bad), but everyone is registered and has an avatar. I’m planning to work on the “About Me” pages tomorrow, then move on to commenting later in the week.

    BTW, I made “My Class” a page instead of a widget. Aesthetically, it seems better to me than 25 students sprawled down the side of the blog. Personal preference, I guess.

    I’m looking forward to seeing how this unfolds. Thanks for spearheading it! 🙂

    Blog is http://mrellsworth.edublogs.org (it’s not letting me enter that below).

    1. G’day Seth,
      Great to have new teachers and classes taking part in the challenge. I tried to look at your student blogs but the links were sending me to the admin page of each blog instead of the home page, so it wouldn’t allow me to read them. You will need to change the links so others can visit, read the blogs and leave comments.

      1. Thanks for the heads up. I wish I’d read your response last night, as I discovered in first period this morning what you pointed out. All are now fixed (one advantage of 2nd period planning, I guess).

        Thank you for responding. This is going to be fun, if only for me. Hopefully the students will get something out of it, too.

    1. G’day Annie,
      As I live in Australia, I publish the posts on a Sunday each week, so depending where you live it could appear on a Saturday or a Sunday. There are no due dates for the posts – I come back and check comments for all the challenge posts so even if you are a couple of weeks behind, your comment is read and maybe your post goes into the flipboard magazine.

    1. G’day Madysyd1
      You need to read the week 1 activities and choose at least one of them to complete on your blog. Once you have completed an activity, come back here and leave a comment including the URL of your blog.

  7. Hello 🙂
    This is going to be so much fun :3
    Thx for writing this, it was very helpful 😀
    –Z

    1. Hi Sonia,
      Looks like Seth has deleted the Hello World post so we will give him a chance to get a post done for the challenge before deleting him. Anthony and Robert I have put in pink. Hope they get back to us with the correct URL.

  8. Hello Miss W. I have finished your first challenge and I am so excited for you to view my progress. I hope you come to check out my blog at http://2021msg.edublogs.org

    Don’t forget to leave a comment…you would be the first to comment on my blog! How exciting.

  9. Hi Miss W. I would like you to look at my recent blog and learn a little bit about myself. If you do read my blog I hope you enjoy it. Thank you!

  10. Hi there Miss W. I had a hard time finding my page and here is why. My name on the spreadsheet is mixah so if you could please change it to Micah. Thanks!

  11. I do not see my name on the list (Desiree Beard), and I do not see my name. I entered all of my students into the challenge. Please help!

    1. G’day Mrs Beard,
      I checked the list and they are there under the 17 and 18 year old groups on the student list. Your name wont appear on the student list but I have it on my spreadsheet at home in case others want to connect with you.

  12. Hello! I am done all of those above, so my teacher said to comment that I’m done. Hopefully this is the right page I need to comment on. Lol.

  13. Hiya. I’m trying to add visitor section on my blog. Could you please assist with how to do this. Thanks.

    1. Hi Miss Farley,
      There are a few visitor widgets you can add to your blog. We will be including them in next week’s challenge activities.

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