Week 8: Where in the world?

There are only 2 more weeks of the Student Blogging Challenge after this week.

This week’s topic is all about where we live and travel. We’re going to learn more about the world while sharing with others. STUBC Week 8 Where in the world

Week Seven Recap

Trophy image -- great work Many students were on holidays over the last week but we still had some great posts submitted about celebrations.

You can find them all here (or click on the week 7 box on the sidebar).

Let’s take a look at just some of the fantastic work we spotted last week:

Terril wrote a poem about Fall Leaves.
Mr Matt told us about Chinese New Year in Taiwan.
Sophia wrote a great post about how her family makes Pysanky Eggs.
Tobias wrote about his Easter Celebrations.
Brady told us a bit about all the holidays he celebrates.
You can view more great work on our 2019 Student Blogging Challenge Flipboard.

A Very Special STUBC Post

No doubt you heard about the terrible Notre Dame Cathedral fire in France recently?

Serge Galligani’s class in France are on holidays but 3 students (Anna, Kenzo and Axel) returned to school to make a video about the fire.

Click here to see their post and click on the green box that says ‘comments’ if you’d like to leave them a comment. They’d be very grateful!

Reminders

Here are a few more important reminders:

The Google Forms for weeks 1-5 are now closed. You can still submit posts in the Google Forms for weeks 6 and 7 if you’re catching up.
To become a better blogger, before you publish consider: have I proofread? Is my text broken up in short paragraphs (bullet points can be good too)? Do I have an image? We’re talking more about images in this post.
Please keep approving comments quickly!
Remember if you’re adding Google Doc/Form/Slide presentations in your post, please check these are public so others can see them. You’ll find the instructions here. This is still an issue on many blogs.
If you have school holidays, you can catch up or skip weeks. Do whatever suits you!

Have You Taken Our Celebrations Poll?

Remember last week we ran a poll to see which holidays our STUBC participants celebrate?

As so many of our participants are on holidays, let’s leave this poll open for another week.

Here is the link to the poll if you haven’t had time to leave a response. Either teachers or students can respond.

https://forms.gle/WveMwfzy5Yq6cAgk7

Where In The World?

We have a diverse group taking part in the Student Blogging Challenge.

We had students and classes register from 6 continents and 26 countries (not all are still taking part or are only occasionally submitting responses).

There are lots of ways we can learn about the world:

Travel
Talking to others from different countries
Exploring online resources like maps and videos

Learn more about the world

You might have learnt a lot or a little about the world at school. Let’s go over some important facts.

Continents

Our world is broken into 7 landmasses called continents.

The continents are:

Africa
Europe
Asia
North America
South America
Australia (or Oceania)
Antarctica

Last year I was teaching a subject called Global Studies. My students enjoyed this catchy song to help them learn about the continents.

Oceans

An ocean is a large area of water between continents.

There are 5 oceans:

Atlantic Ocean
Arctic Ocean
Indian Ocean
Pacific Ocean
Southern Ocean

This fun song helps us learn about the 5 oceans.

Hemispheres

The Equator is an imaginary line around the middle of the Earth. The Equator divides the Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemispheres.

Which hemisphere do you live in?

I live in Australia so I’m in the Southern Hemisphere although around 90% of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere. Wow!

One of the big differences between the Hemispheres is the seasons. They are opposite; it’s currently Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

By User:Cburnett – Image:World-map-2004-cia-factbook-large-2m.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Countries

There are 195 countries in the world today. You can find out more about the countries here.

The top 5 countries by population are:

China
India
U.S.
Indonesia
Brazil

Each country has their own unique flag.

Week Eight Tasks

This week there are 3 tasks to choose from to share or learn more about the world.

Our graphic summarises the tasks and I will explain each task in more detail below.

As this is a new STUBC topic, I don’t have examples to share this week. Maybe I’ll be able to use your post as an example in a future challenge!

Week 8 of the STUBC blogging challenge is Where In The World

Task 1: Tells Us About Your Country

We’d love to learn more about where you live!

This task involves researching and sharing some interesting information about your country.

You might include information like:

Size
Population
Location
Landmarks
Capital city/Major cities
Flag
President/Prime Minister
History
Language
Religion
Climate
Plants and Animals

Ideas for presenting the information in your post:

A Google Slides presentation (please make sure it’s public)
A quiz
Text and images
A video
A comic (try a tool like Make Beliefs Comix, ToonDoo, or Canva)

You might also be able to use some of the fabulous Google tools for this topic like Google Earth and Google Maps.

Eleni Kyritsis shows us how to create a virtual tour with Google Tour Creator.
Matt Miller explains how to make a Google Map walking tour with Screencastify.

Task 2: Learn About Another Country

This task is the same as task 1 except instead of telling us about your own country you will research and share information about another country.

Be sure to tell us why you chose the country. Why does it interest you?

Task 3: Travel

Have you been lucky enough to travel to another country or city? Or perhaps you have dreams to travel somewhere?

Our commenting team leader Miss W recently travelled to South Australia and took some great photos which she’d like to share with you. Click here to visit Miss W’s website.

This task involves writing a post about travel.

Ideas for your travel post:

Write about a holiday you went on that you really enjoyed.
Make a list of the top 10 travel destinations you’d like to go to.
Create a slideshow of your ideal holiday destinations.
Create an imaginary itinerary if you could travel anywhere and had an unlimited budget.

You might have your own ideas!

💡 Safety Tip

It’s fun to talk about travel, but it’s a good idea to avoid mentioning your specific travel plans online.

For example, instead of saying, “I’m going to visit Sydney next Monday” try “I’m planning a holiday to Sydney” or “I’m looking forward to visiting Sydney later in the year”.

Also, remember not to post pictures of yourself or others on the blog without permission.

Visit Others

Don’t forget to try to visit a couple of other bloggers once you’ve published your own post. You might learn a lot about where they live this week!

Submit Your Post URL ⬇

If you’d like a commenter and others to visit your post, fill in the form below.

This video shows you how to find your URL…

Note, this isn’t a real class blog. Just one I used for testing 😉

This graphic below should help you understand what a post URL looks like if you’re using Edublogs/CampusPress/WordPress

The Google Form

Edit: Enter your details in the Google Form below or click here to open it in a new tab.

Teachers, feel free to put the Form URL on your class blog if it’s easier for your students to access.

https://forms.gle/bRKcAfUYEqkYeifz5

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Next week’s topic: Putting It All Together!

Remember, the Student Blogging Challenge runs for 10 weeks so we have 2 more weeks to go!