This is our last post for the Student Blogging Challenge until we start again in March 2017. I hope you have enjoyed the activities and the chance to make connections with other students and classes around the world.

We have had a great 10 weeks of blogging. You have learnt so many skills to help you improve your blogs. Many of you have improved those writing skills or maybe digital skills with using a variety of tools to embed on your blog. But it is now time to evaluate your progress as well as the progress of the blogging challenge itself.

This week there are two things to do:

1. Evaluate your own blog
2. Evaluate the actual blogging challenge

1. This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of October 2016.

• How many posts did you write?
• How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge?
• How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers or overseas students?
• Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
• Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
• Did you change blog themes at all and why?
• How many widgets do you have? Do you think this is too many or not enough?
• How many overseas students do you have on your blogroll?
• Which web tools did you use to show creativity on your blog?

Now ask another student and teacher/parent from your school who might not have read your blog to do an audit.

Sit beside them while they navigate around your blog, record what you observe as they interact with your blog. When finished, ask them the following questions:

1. What were your first impressions of this blog?
2. What captured your attention?
3. What distracted you on the blog?
4. What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?

Write a post about your blog audit.

2. Evaluating the challenge.

This is the seventeenth challenge and sometimes I feel like the activities are getting stale especially for those students who have taken part in more than one set of challenges. So over the next few weeks I will be adding new pages that you all can contribute to. Every month of the year, there are special events, festivals, birthdays of authors etc. Which ones do you think it would be interesting to write about? Find the post ideas page for that month and add your ideas in the comments. (These are found above the header area)

I usually have a form to fill in here but this time I would like you to leave a quality comment giving your opinion of the challenge. You might want to mention some of the following things:

• the most interesting challenge for you
• how often you visited other blogs and left comments
• whether you read the challenge flipboard magazine
• a PMI or plus/minus/interesting point about the challenge
• the most important thing you learnt while doing the challenge

Thanks again for taking part in this challenge. Hopefully you will take part again in March next year. If you have taken part in at least two sets of challenges, you can also become a mentor, so watch out for the mentor post in February.

Keep writing, keep reading the magazine, and if you have a great post you would like me to add to the magazine over the Christmas break, feel free to leave a comment here.

Mike Trimble via Compfight

So we are one week away from the end of the challenge. As some schools finish soon, I will be posting the last challenge early this week instead of next weekend. Look out for it about Wednesday.

Do you think you have improved your blogging skills since you began earlier this year?

Now is your chance to show off.

Activity 1

Write the very best post you can for your teachers and visitors to read.

Remember essentials for a great post:

1. catchy title
2. includes at least one visual (with attribution) whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet or glogster
3. interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through
4. well written and not copy/pasted from somewhere else
5. shows it has been proofread and spellchecked
6. written in paragraphs – at least three of them
7. includes links to other websites on similar topics – at least two of these
8. ends with a question to lure your visitors into leaving a comment

Your choice of topics:

• Favourites – eg music, author, colour, holiday etc Just write about one of these.
• Science – any topic within science – astronomy, chemistry, physics, the environment, animals etc
• Travel – where to go, where you have been, future travel, what to take when travelling, planning a trip etc

When you have finished your post and your teacher has published it, then return here to leave a link to the post. We still have some students just leaving a link to their blog rather than the exact post.

Activity 2 **EXTRA CREDIT**

Do you have a favourite blog (not from your class though) that you visit often?

Write a post about that blog and why you keep going back there. Does the author deserve to be nominated in the Edublogs Awards? Give reasons for you nominating them.

Still got time left then visit other blogs and leave quality comments. Read the magazine and visit posts to leave comments on.

University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment via Compfight

A week or so ago, I took part in a global education conference. The people who presented and listened to all the sessions are part of a network of educators around the world. They have their own little community or network.

As a student or teacher what type of communities or networks do you have both in school and outside of school hours?

These communities might include

• sporting groups
• after-school activities
• networks online such as Twitter, Facebook, Minecraft
• local community groups eg gardening or Boy Scouts
• country level groups
• global groups

This week the theme to write about is community.

You might like to think about the following and mention some in your post.

• The pros and cons of being in a community
• Which communities you are part of now
• Which communities you would like to join or be part of later in life
• Roles within a community
• Responsibilities when part of a community
• How to find out about communities to join
• Value of being in a community

Remember to have your post flipped to the magazine you need to have a great post as mentioned in previous posts in the challenge. This week I have flipped about 200 new posts to the magazine but I have also left comments about making sure you have included images and links within your great posts.

Keep visiting other students and reading posts from the magazine.

Next week

You will have a chance to nominate a great student and class blog for the Edublog awards. These blogs do not have to be from the Edublogs platform but just be a blog about education.

You will also have a chance to show how well your blogging has improved since beginning this challenge.

It has been interesting reading posts from students in different countries of the world. I wonder how similar or different your school day is! So this week’s theme is all about school. I am going to give you some suggestions but what you post about is up to you. Use one of my ideas or think of something for yourself. Check out what these three students have done:

Kaiya – lunch time choices

Brooke – interview a staff member – make sure they know beforehand you will be putting it on your blog for the world to see

Maraya – report on an event at school

I have included a few videos and links  you might like to check to give you ideas for posts.

So what could you do for a post this week?

• Create polls about how people get to school or work, or favourite school subject or …..
• What is your weekly timetable like, compare with other students – time you start and finish school, number of lessons each day, breaks during the day, days in year you go to school
• Choices of subjects at school – remember to explain abbreviations you might use eg LOTE , ELA
• Your dream of what you will be doing once you leave school
• If you were principal for a week, what would you do? If you were a teacher for a week, what would you do?
• Research the history of your school and create an about my school page
• Research a famous person who attended your school
• Technology in your school
• What do you do at break times?
• School bell has gone – what do you do now?
• Food you eat at school – what is in your lunchbox or your school meal – good activity for taking photos
• If you could improve your school, what would you do?
• Your ideal school – maybe include a map of what it would look like
• How has schooling changed over the last 100 years? Maybe interview parents, grandparents and ask questions about schooling – use an audio app then embed in blog
• The view outside your classroom window – maybe explain plants that might be seen, the weather, seasons etc
• Hold a debate about uniforms or school starting times or subjects or …..
• Anything else that relates to schooling around the world

If you create polls or surveys, make sure you contact me so I can publicize on Twitter to get other classes around the world to join in. Use #16stubc or #globalclassroom if you are doing it yourself.

Check out this gallery of classrooms around the world

Martha Payne’s blog turned viral overnight – check out this interview and her blog about school lunches  Make sure you read her very first posts on her blog.

Collaborate with some other schools to create a video like these global classrooms did – Dancing around the world

 

Remember to leave a comment here including a post URL telling me which activity you have done. If your post is great, it will be added to the Flipboard Magazine.

Hurca! via Compfight

There are two activities this week and they are in the form of a game. They involve visiting other blogs, leaving quality comments and writing a post about the comments you left.

Admin this week

I have asked mentors to get back to me with those students who have not been doing the activities relating to the challenge. I have coloured their country pink on the student participant list. I will be deleting these students from the list over the next week if I feel they have not really been participating in the challenge.

Out of 106 comments left on the challenge blog over the last couple of days only 61 included the URL of the actual post I needed to visit. Many students are still leaving just the URL of their blog rather than the post. I only visit and flip to the magazine when a post URL is left here.

Before playing the games, make sure your blog is ready for visitors.

1. You have lots of interesting posts for visitors to read and comment on.
2. Visitors can find posts by using tags or categories on your sidebar.
3. You have a visitor widget to see where your visitors are coming from.
4. You have at least five student blogs from other places around the world on your sidebar.

Game week is all about visiting other blogs.

Remember one of  the main aims of blogging includes commenting and carrying on conversations with the author of posts and their other readers.

A good commenter will have:

• read the post carefully,
• checked out the links in the post
• read the previous comments before they leave one of their own
• added to the conversation with a quality comment – remember that video from Mrs Yollis’ class.
• included a link to their own blog or a similar post on their own blog

Game 1: 

This is a game we have run for many challenges and allows you to connect globally.  Those who have taken part in a challenge before know the game of  ‘Count Out Three’. Here are the instructions:

1. click on a blog on the student list or class list– count one
2. now click on a blog from the new student’s blogroll – count two
3. finally click on a blog from that new blogroll – count three
4. leave a comment on an interesting post at this third blog.

Teachers: If you are moderating student comments, please make sure you are up-to-date with that this week as students can be very disappointed when they think they have no comments, yet many are in the moderation queue ready to be published.

Students: Make sure you are also replying to any comments that have been left for you.

Do this activity at least three times and finally, write your own post saying which blogs you visited and which posts you left a comment on. Why did you choose that post? Remember to include a link back to the post you left a comment on.

Game 2:

This is a new one I have thought of for this challenge. Many great student posts are being flipped to the #16stubc Flipboard magazine, but I am not sure how many of you have actually checked them out. So here are the instructions for this game.

1. Click on the flipboard magazine link here
2. Click on the title of the post of what looks like an interesting image or a catchy title
3. You should now be taken to the actual blog post, read it and leave a comment
4. Come back to the magazine again and repeat two more times

Write a blog post mentioning the blog posts you read and the comment you left.

Get to it – start visiting and leaving quality comments that show you have read the post. 

How many quality comments could you leave this week? Can you leave 10, 20 or maybe 50?

Write a post about the commenting you have done this week or throughout the challenge so far.

• What have you enjoyed about commenting?
• What is annoying about commenting?
• How have you found interesting posts to comment on?
• Are your posts getting lots of quality comments? Why or why not?

Create a list of great comment starters to help new students to blogging. There are some lists on the web but try to create your own. Here are a couple of examples from Anne Davis:

•  Another thing to consider is…….
• I can relate to this…….
• This makes me think of…….

Write a quick post then include 5 great examples of comments as part of the post – use some interesting comment starters for each comment.

Aikawa Ke via Compfight

Different activities this week but first some posts worth visiting. These students and classes have been leaving the URL of their POST so I could visit easily. Many of you are only leaving URL of your blog rather than the actual post, so I only approve those comments but don’t visit.

Students:

• Kate created a Powtoon for her comment tips
• Danika created a series of posts for her #BAD2016 as well as a badge for her blog
• Love the conversation happening here in the comments on Andrea’s blog
• Can you finish these stories- Emily , Kemi,  Fatima,  Ibrahima,  Nicholas,  Keller?, Lea, Jagga, Jennifer, Rosane
• Zoom out on this posts – Alice, Angela,
• Some great videos –Mafalda and Margarida, Jose and Paulo, Thanumi,

Classes:

• Mrs Gadzala has three classes she is blogging with – check them all out
• Students from Portugal learning English – check blogs on sidebar.
• Visit the Tech Kids – blogs down bottom of sidebar.
• Check out the Huzzahnians and their BreakoutEDU for Global read aloud
• Excellent image posts from students at McDowell Media
• Teachers check out using a padlet each week for great posts in your class
• Mr Ellsworth adapts a challenge post to suit his students (sometimes I can get very wordy – Miss W.)

Lots of posts have been added to the #16stubc Flipboard magazine – is one of your posts in there yet? Over 500 posts are there from the two sets of challenges in 2016.

Now to this week’s activities

Instead of me writing a post, I invited some other teachers, educators and mentors to create posts on their blogs. So you will need to choose where to go. You can visit one or as many as you like.

Remember if you leave a comment on the post, make sure it is a quality comment. If you include a link in your comment make sure it goes to your blog or the post you have written on your blog.

Mike Farmer

A retired science teacher (living in Spain) and mentor in the challenge invites you to discuss the Gaia hypothesis. Visit here if under 12 years old, here if 12 and older.

Mrs Yollis

Grade 3 teacher (from California) who creates videos for the challenge, invites students to talk about playing outside at school. PS Make sure you leave excellent comments here – maybe include some HTML code to impress Mrs Yollis and her students. Leaving a comment here will be different to your normal Edublogs blog.

Mrs Smith

Grade 6/7 teacher (from Vancouver Island, Canada) invites you to discuss how prepared you are for emergencies where you live. This includes a survey she would like you to fill out.

Eugene

Member of staff at Edublogs, invites you to visit, virtually, his country South Africa – lots of activities to choose from here

Still got time left this week?

• Visit other classes and students taking part in the challenge.
• Read the #16stubc Flipboard magazine – link on sidebar
• If you have some favourite blogs you visit, make sure you have them linked on your sidebar or in a page on your blog or in a special post. You will need these links in a couple of week’s time when we play a game.

Pedro Luna Guillen via Compfight

Next week we will be playing a commenting game. But you need to get prepared for this.

1. Make sure you have at least 5 other student blogs linked on the sidebar of your blog, in a page near your header area or in a recent post that your visitors can find easily. Make sure these are blogs from other students around the world, not just those in your class or school. Perhaps have a blogroll or link category called Global students or Global classes. Here is how to add a blogroll if using Edublogs or Blogger. If using Kidblog write a post mentioning at least 5 great blogs you enjoy visiting.
2. Have some visitor widgets on your blog sidebar – maybe a revolver map or a flag counter – this way you can see where your visitors are coming from. Remember only one visitor in 30 will actually leave a comment.
3. Make sure your blog looks interesting – maybe change your header to suit what you are writing about. Do your pets make a noise as soon as your blog is opened in a tab? That can be annoying so make sure the visitor can click on the sound button if they want to hear your animal pet. Have you changed the tagline under the title of your blog? Have you included some tags or categories to help your readers find a great post?

This week’s activity

Have some interesting posts for your visitors to read when they get to your blog. Last week you visited some class blogs and throughout the challenge you have visited some student blogs.  I am not going to give any clues as to what to put in your posts but remember the following, especially if you want a post flipped to our magazine.

Having read many of your posts, I came up with the following essentials in a great post.

1. catchy title
2. includes at least one visual (with attribution) whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet or glogster
3. interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through
4. well written and not copy/pasted from somewhere else
5. shows it has been proofread and spellchecked
6. written in paragraphs – at least three of them
7. includes links to other websites on similar topics – at least two of these

When you have finished your post, please come back here to the blogging challenge and leave a comment on this post. Mention what topic you wrote about and leave a link to your post. Those posts covering the seven things mentioned above will be added to the flipboard magazine. Many students are forgetting to add links to other websites relating to the topic they have written about.

 

Classes

• The students in Serbia presented about Shakespeare – to read in English, go to the translate button under the challenge badge.
• Students in Mrs Ives class wrote about fun facts for their country.
• Beech class have lots of great book reviews for you to check out – use the category on the sidebar area.
• This teacher in Portugal created a survey to see how well you read the information on Eugene’s post about South Africa.

Students

• Thanumi from Thailand is showing her video skills with this fun facts about Greece
• Celeste is part of the WriteAbout community and has written some posts for you to comment on.
• Roman created a jigsaw puzzle using an image
• Naani has an interesting story and she would like your opinion .
• Kaan decided to get ready for the apocolypse

 

Still more time left this week

• Read some of the posts in the flipboard magazine – your teacher might want to create a class flipboard magazine to add to your class blog
• Visit other classes and students in the lists above the header of the challenge blog.
• Reply to any comments left on your blog especially if from a mentor.

October 16-22 is Digital Citizenship Week in USA. CommonSenseMedia have lots of great ideas for activities.

One important aspect of being a responsible digital citizen is our topic for this challenge.

Yes, this week we deal with using images, music and sounds in your posts.

But can’t I use any image, music or sound that is on the internet?

No, you must use creative commons or in some cases the fair use rule.

But where can I find these images, music and sounds? Can’t I use anything when I google an image?

No, your blog is public so you must use creative commons images, sounds, music and videos.

……………………………………………….

Have you read Sue Waters’ post yet?

Off you go then come back here for more information and the activities for this fortnight.

Now for the activities: Select only ONE

 Activity 1. Find an image or piece of music. Add it to your post (with attribution) and write a poem relating to the image or music. Invite your readers to write their own poems. Here is Fernando’s example, Samantha is confused

See what a few students wrote about last year: Kylinn and Sarah.

Activity 2. Similar to the activity above. Find an interesting landscape image (include attribution).  Write the beginning of a story relating to your image. Remember to include a conflict of some sort between your characters. Invite your readers to finish the story. How many different endings can you get? Which ending do you prefer? You might need to visit some other bloggers and invite them to finish your story. Remember to leave the URL of your post for them to click on.

Check out these stories from interesting images: McKenzie and Trinity.

Activity 3. Create your own images and add to a post of your choice. In your post add a link to the website or tool you used to create your image.

Other options for creating your own images include:

1. Comic Generators like MakeBeliefsComix.com,ToonDoo
2. Photo Editors like Befunky, fd’s Flickr Tools
3. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle

Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts!

Read Lydia‘s blog from last year.

Still got time left:

1. Visit other student and class blogs – leave some quality comments
2. Reply to comments on your own blog
3. Start using tags and categories with each post you write to make it easier for people to find posts on certain topics. Make sure you have the tags and categories widgets in your sidebar.
4. Have at least five other student blogs linked on your sidebar – students from other classes and schools – not your own. We will need this for a game we play in a couple of weeks. Having lots of  links to student blogs from other countries will help spread the game.

Here are the instructions for adding links to your sidebars. Edublogs

 Most important learning from this fortnight’s challenge is:

Use creative commons images, not just any image on the net. Always include attribution of where you found the image. Compfight plugin does this for you.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

I will only be adding posts to the flipboard magazine that:

• are written in paragraphs
• have been proofread
• include an image, sound or video with attribution

So make sure you have taken note of this week’s learning about creative commons.

Miss W visiting your blogs

From this week onwards, I will only be visiting blogs where students or classes have left the URL to the post in a comment with an explanation. If your teacher is moderating your posts, you will need to wait until it has been published before giving me your URL. Check out the difference between a blog URL and a post URL.

Blog URL: http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org

Post URL : http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/2015/10/10/raise-your-voice/

Visit these blogs that couldn’t be flipped or were very interesting to read:

Students:

Grace finally wrote her About Me page, Palin used Thinglink,

Classes:

Mrs Arendt has three classes of students so visit them all

Mrs Kimball has five classes blogging – check them out here under 7ELA blogs

Mr Ellsworth is a new challenge class and they have their blogs here

Mrs Vazquez’s class update their Meet the class page each challenge

Ms Farley’s class in England made a great google slide presentation – the students write on their class blog rather than have their own

Mrs Beard has her student blogs in a list under the posts

These students from Portugal have a survey for you to fill in after checking out their info about their school and country.

From the official Unity Day Event:

Make it ORANGE and make it end! What are your true colors when it comes to bullying? If you care about safe and supportive schools and communities make your color ORANGE on Unity Day. That’s the day everyone can come together – in schools, communities, and online – and send one large ORANGE message of support, hope, and unity to show that we are together against bullying and united for kindness, acceptance and inclusion.

“One of every four school-aged children will be bullied this year – upwards of 13 million students,” said Julie Hertzog, director of PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center, which sponsors Unity Day and founded National Bullying Prevention Month in 2006. “It’s important these students know they are not alone and that they have the right to feel safe. By joining together and wearing ORANGE on Unity Day, we can send the unified message that we care about student’s physical and emotional health and that bullying will no longer be accepted in this society.”

When asked, share why you decided to support Unity Day. A few ideas include:

• I’m united for kindness, acceptance and inclusion!
• I want to support students experiencing bullying.
• I care about safe and supportive schools and communities.
• Bullying has hurt too many for too long, I am united to make it end.

The first Unity Day was held in 2011. The “Unity Dance,” featuring Tristan McIntosh, the 2016 American Idol finalist, was also created that year.

Your extra credit post should be focused on Unity Day. Consider the following as you craft your post:

1. According to Webster’s English Dictionary: Unity. noun, plural u•ni•ties. The state of being one; oneness of mind, feeling; concord, harmony, or agreement. Synonyms: harmony, peace, consensus, solidarity, or agreement.
2. What does unity means to you?
3. How does unity relate to preventing bullying and creating a safer school?
4. Reflect on the statement, “When we stand together, no one stands alone.”
5. How will you spread the word to let others know about wearing orange to take a stand against bullying on Wednesday, October 19th? 
6. Make sure you include the hashtag for#UnityDay2016 somewhere in your post.

Remember a great post will have:

1. catchy title
2. written in 1-2 paragraphs
3. include visuals like images and videos
4. be proofread carefully

To create a post, simply click Posts on the left sidebar of your blog dashboard, and then select Add New.

Still need more direction? Check out the Unity Day FAQ…