This is the final Student Blogging Challenge post until we start again in October 2020.
We know many of you have been working on the challenge during very unsettled times. Well done!
It’s time to reflect and celebrate.
Week Seven Recap
Many students are enjoying sharing posts about emojis.
You can find all the submitted tasks here (or click on the week 7 box on the sidebar).
Here’s just a handful of excellent work we spotted recently:
- Tushil from New Zealand made a unique basketball emoji and has a guessing game.
- Lainie from Australia invites you to guess the movies from the emoji clues.
- Olivia shared some interesting details about break time in New Zealand.
- Eleanor from the USA made an emoji story using the prompts from Byrdseed.
- Liv wrote an amazing poem about her school in New Zealand.
- Ervins from Latvia came up with some emoji maths. Can you guess the answers?
- Serge Galligani’s class in France came up with a fun idea. The students turned their faces into emojis. Can you guess the answers?
Reminders
- The forms for weeks 1-6 are closed. If you’re catching up you can submit your tasks from weeks 1-6 in the week eight Google Form in this post. All Google Forms will close May 24th.
- If you’d like to join us again for the next challenge in October 2020, make sure you’re on our mailing list. You’ll get an email in September when registrations are open. Otherwise, check this blog in September for all the news.
- Follow The Edublogger — If you’re not already receiving the email newsletter from Edublogs, maybe you’d like to sign up? I send out an email regularly sharing the latest blog post.
Thank You
The Student Blogging Challenge is a real team effort. We couldn’t do it without the support of our wonderful volunteers.
Many of our volunteers and participants have worked on the challenge during difficult circumstances. We admire your efforts immensely.
To Sue Wyatt…
Miss W/Tasteach/Sue Wyatt works tirelessly behind the scenes to help our commenting team, support participants, and keep our spreadsheets up to date. We appreciate you, Sue!
To Marg Grosfield…
Marg is a special commenter who does a wonderful job behind the scenes helping with the spreadsheets. Marg generously volunteers her time to ensure everyone is looked after. Thank you, Marg!
To our commenters…
Another big thank you goes to our team of commenters who provided an authentic audience for our students and classes each week. Your comments really helped our students with their confidence and motivation. We hope you’ll return again as a commenter in October.
To our participants…
It has been fantastic to see such enthusiastic participation from our students and teachers despite difficult circumstances! I hope you’ve all learned a lot and made some connections.
Spread the word about the next Student Blogging Challenge!
Summary Of The Student Blogging Challenge
We had a good number of registrations for this Student Blogging Challenger, however, participation was naturally down due to over 90% of the world’s student population being affected by school closures.
Let’s look at STUBC by the numbers…
- Number of registered individual students: 1043
- Number of registered classes: 111
- Number of countries represented: 24
Number of tasks submitted
These are the edited numbers after incorrect and duplicate URLs were removed.
- Week 1 Introductions – 343 posts
- Week 2 Commenting – 93 posts
- Week 3 Photo fun – 171 posts
- Week 4 Free choice – 131 posts
- Week 5 Earth Day – 165 posts
- Week 6 School Around the World – 204 posts
- Week 7 Emojis – 121 posts as of 10th May
What Makes A Quality Blog Post?
I hope you’ve learned a lot throughout the Student Blogging Challenge! Perhaps if you look back to your posts from a few weeks ago you can see that you’ve improved.
To wrap all our learning up, I invite you to take a look at this poster. It goes over some of the essential ingredients of a quality blog post. You might have your own ideas too!
You’re welcome to add this poster to your blog.
>> Download a PDF copy of the poster
Week Eight Tasks
This week there are 3 tasks to complete. If you don’t have time to write a post, please just spend 5 minutes completing our survey. We’d really appreciate it!
There is a separate survey for teachers and students.
Teachers, please help us in making sure your students fill in the correct survey (for students)
Task 1: Evaluate The Challenge
Please complete our short survey so we know what you enjoyed most about the challenge and what we could do to improve things in the future.
There is a separate survey for teachers and students.
Student survey
👉🏽 Click here to open the student survey
Teachers, add this URL to your class blog or LMS if you like https://forms.gle/XVcj8gutKWa4ENgJ7
Teacher survey
👉🏽 Click here to open the teacher survey
Remember, the teacher survey is not for students.
Thank you!
Task 2: Audit Your Blog
Option One: Write a post on your blog reflecting on your participation in the challenge.
These are the sorts of prompts you could answer in your post:
- How many weeks of the challenge did you participate in?
- How many posts did you write in the 8 week period?
- How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers, or other visitors?
- Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
- Which web tools did you use to show creativity on your blog?
- What are your plans for your blog now? Will you keep posting?
Option Two: Ask a friend or family member who might not have read your blog to do an audit.
Send them your blog URL and ask them some questions.
For example:
- What were your first impressions of my blog?
- What captured your attention?
- What distracted you on the blog?
- What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?
Task 3: Your Blogging Plans
While the Student Blogging Challenge is coming to an end, we hope this is not the end of your blogging journey. We encourage you to keep blogging and connecting. To do this well, you might need a plan.
Write a post about how you plan to keep blogging:
- Perhaps you’d like to publish a list of ideas you have for future blog post topics.
- Or, you could ask your readers for suggestions on what they’d like you to write about on your blog. You could even run a poll.
- Write about anyone you have connected with throughout the challenge that you’d like to stay in touch with. Are there any blogs you’ll keep reading and commenting on?
Blog post ideas for students:
More advanced bloggers and teachers might enjoy these two posts on The Edublogger:
- A Plan For Writing A Weekly Blog Post In 10 Minutes A Day.
- 12 Tips For Maintaining Momentum With Blogging
If you’re working as a class on this activity, perhaps students could contribute post ideas which the teacher compiles. Readers could be invited to comment or vote.
Student Certificates
Congratulations on completing the Student Blogging Challenge!
Download a certificate to celebrate your achievement.
Note for commenters: I’ll email you about accessing your certificate during the week.
>>Click here for a PDF copy of the student certificate
Submit Your Post URL ⬇
If you want a commenter and other participants to visit your final task on your blog, remember to fill in the Google Form below.
The Google Form
Teachers, you’re welcome to put the Google Form URL on your own blog or LMS if it makes it easier to share with students.
https://forms.gle/XQyGmTtyBFrfdgQm6
If you have any additional comments about the Student Blogging Challenge, feel free to leave a comment below!
Thank you!
This is an awesome idea! I would love to do something similar this year. Are you running the challenge this spring?
Hi Gina, due to the pandemic and changes happening in education, the Student Blogging Challenge is on pause for now, however you are welcome to join our self paced challenge https://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/
Hello.
I just wanted to point out, the year on the participant symbol on the certificate is given as 2019. Would that require rectification?
The entire challenge was quite fun! Thank you!
Mahikaa
Hi Mahikaa,
Thanks so much for pointing this out! I appreciate it. I have now updated the certificate!
Kind regards,
Kathleen
I enjoyed writing about all these things. I will miss them over the summer.
Thank you
Evan
I’m so glad you enjoyed it, Evan. I do hope you keep finding time to blog! I also hope you are able to join us again in October.
Thanks so much for letting up know you enjoyed the challenge,
Kathleen