Earlier in this set of challenges, we learnt all about you – your interests, your favourite foods, music and lots of other things when you wrote your ‘About’ page. This week we are going to learn all about the area or country in which you live.

When you write your posts or use web 2.0 tools, remember to be internet safe and not give away any personal information. Check with your teacher or parent, to find out if you can mention your school name or town.

But firstly, a few administration pointers.

• I have started deleting students who have only a Hello world post, or have not written a post yet this year or have no avatar post or about me page.
• Please check to make sure you have the following widgets visible on your blog’s sidebar: class blogs, pages (if not in header area), recent comments (10), recent posts (10), blogroll or links, categories.
• In your profile page, do you have your blog URL included? – this links to your name for when you leave a comment.

Categories: You will notice I mentioned having the category widget in your sidebar. This is a way to group your posts eg book reviews, history class, #16stubc for the student blogging challenge. Here is a link to a post about adding categories when using Edublogs.

Sharon Mollerus via Compfight

Now let’s get to the activities.

Activity 1. Add a widget to find out where your commenters are coming from 

There are many different widgets you can use – clustrmaps, flag counter, feedjit or revolver map.  Have you seen any others while visiting blogs of other students? Write a post about why you chose the commenter widget you have put on your blog.

and Add one or more widgets about your area of the world

This might include a clock or weather or a translator widget in case students who don’t speak your language can translate your post. Write a post about why you selected the new widget about your area of the world.

When adding widgets to your sidebar, copy and paste the embed code into a text box on your sidebar. 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.

Activity 2. Write a post about 3 tourist attractions in your country.

Miss W and Mr Davo Devil will be visiting outback New South Wales and outback Queensland for two weeks in April then at the end of June going to Denver, Colorado USA for 10 days. They enjoy looking at historical places and nature. Suggest 3 tourist attractions in your country they would enjoy visiting. Don’t copy and paste, write about them in your own words. Try to make it a personal piece of writing if you have actually been there.

Activity 3. A year in your town

Write a post, create a glogster, make an audioboo tape, create a Storybird or add a Voki telling Miss W about the festivals held in your town throughout the year. Which festivals do you enjoy the most and why? When are the festivals held in case she can visit one while she is travelling? If under 13, check with your teacher or parent if you want to use a web 2.0 tool rather than writing a post in your blog.

Activity 4. Visit other participants and ask questions

Visit at least five other blogs from students or classes around the world and ask some questions in your comments.

Classes from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Hong Kong, China, Ireland, England, Spain, Philippines, Serbia, Nigeria, UAE and Italy taking part in the challenge.

Students born or living in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada,  China, Ireland, England, Spain,Serbia, Italy,Mexico. Pakistan, Dubai, Bahrain, Scotland, Holland, France, Denmark, Iran, Korea, South Africa, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Burma, Puerto Rico, Russia, Thailand and Venezuela.

Then, write a post asking questions about the different countries mentioned in activity 5. Have at least 6 questions in your post.

Activity 5. Where I would love to visit and why

Write a post or use a web 2.0 tool telling your readers about a place you would love to visit and why. Try to include some hyperlinks (links that are underlined in your post area and take your readers to another website)

Activity 6. Create a game or quiz about your town, state or country

A few places to do this include: Quiz Revolution, Class Tools, Scratch

Remember to check with your teacher or parent before using these web 2.0 tools. Sometimes your teacher or parent will create an account that is moderated by them and is therefore safe for students to use. Do you know any other places to create games and quizzes?