The second part of the reflection involves thinking about the challenge tasks.  Sue wrote

Evaluating the challenge.

This is the fourteenth 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)

Now for your final activity – please evaluate the challenge by filling in the following form.

Please take your time and think about your responses, taking this opportunity for feedback seriously.

Sue has many things for us to do as a reflection on the challenge.  I have split them over two weeks.

This week we will evaluate our own performance and effort in the challenge.  Next week we will think about the challenge itself and suggest ideas

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.

1. This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of March 2015.

• 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. You might copy the questions above and then write your answers. 

The topic this week is :

ANIMALS     ANIMALS     ANIMALS     ANIMALS

Favourites

Problems like poaching, cruelty, extinction

Anything to do with animals

You are asked to ensure your post includes the essential elements in a great post.

1. catchy title
2. includes at least two visuals whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet, glogster, wordle etc
3. interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through, shows well researched topic
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. attribution for any images, video, music or clip art used – including those used in slideshows etc

This week Sue invites you to imagine you have just turned 18, left high school and deciding if you will go onto university. What will you do for the next year? Many people will travel the world, working in lots of different countries and learning about cultures that are of interest to you.

This week’s activities are all to do with travelling. If you don’t like the ideas, do something that is of interest to you but related to other countries.

Please use one or more web tools you haven’t used before – eg glogster, storybird, flipbook, bitstrips, Kizoa – there are lots of tools to use on the sidebar of this blog as well as here and Edublogs staff have put together a great list including how to embed into your blog.

Planning your trip

• Look at passports, visas, working permits for 3 countries you would like to visit.
• Create a map showing your proposed journey – remember this may change
• What will you need to pack? Remember weight limits when flying.
• How will you travel?
• Where will you stay?
• Create budget for part of your journey

On your way

• International signage for toilets etc, signs on roads
• What will my money buy?- exchange rates – how much is a cup of coffee in 3 different countries?
• Contacting mum and dad – know your time zones, how to use skype or similar
• Flight times – using 24 hour time – how long are flights between major cities?

Visit at least one country in each continent (include Antarctica in Oceania)

• Make a collage of where you visited
• Teach us some of the language of at least three countries eg How much is a cup of coffee? Where are the toilets?
• Create a story of your journey
• Interview some of your employers or relatives you stay with
• Create a playlist of 9 pieces of music or dance from your journey – not in English

Home sweet home

• How will you tell your friends about your journey?
• What were the highlights and lowlights of each country?
• Where would you visit again and why?

If you need to use images remember to find those that are creative commons. I have also found some at Pixabay  where you have to download the image to your computer and then upload to your blog post (just include the name of the photographer at the end of your blogpost) and photos for class where you download an image to your computer and it will automatically have a watermarked attribution included.

I think Sue has provided a wonderful topic this week – one which you will appeal to all of you.

Alan Cleaver via Compfight

From Sue’s post:

Activities to choose from:

1. Research board games – when, where and why were they invented?

2. Create a new game for someone to de-stress from their lifestyle.

3. Your family are stranded on a deserted island, with nothing but your clothes. How will you entertain yourselves?

4. Research ball games around the world – find out the rules and then try playing something similar at school or home. How did it go?

5. Find out the ways soldiers and sea captains used to relax over 100 years ago.

6. The electricity grid went out in your country. What would change in your lifestyle? How would you relax?

7. Survey class members about games they have at home. Are you going to include computer games? Create some interesting graphs about results.

8. Find an image that has a relaxing feel to it. Write a poem remembering to give attribution correctly.

Make sure you are ready for our game in a week or so.  To take part in this game, all classes and students will need the following:

•  a user avatar if possible
• an ‘about me’ PAGE if using Edublogs or a post if using other platforms
• a clustrmap or flag counter widget – if your clustrmap is greyed out, check my post here to fix it if using Edublogs widget
• at least four interesting posts – could be topics of your choice not necessarily from the challenge
• your ‘Recent Comments’ widget on the sidebar with 10 comments as the choice – Edublogs
• your ‘Recent Posts’ widget on the sidebar with 10 posts as the choice – Edublogs
• Your ‘Pages’ widget on the sidebar or pages in the header – Edublogs
• at least 10 student and/or classes linked on your blogroll
• at least three overseas blogs on your blogroll
• posts tagged or categorized to make it easier to find interesting posts on each blog
• the more students or classes you have linked on your blog, the more fun the game will be

The most important of these are the links to other student blogs on your sidebar. Try to have a couple of different headings like

• My Friends
• Class Blogs
• Overseas Blogs

Having lots of  links to student blogs from other countries will help spread the game.

Welcome back

As many schools are on breaks or have just had them, new challenges are not being added again till Sunday 19th April. So we can use this week to catch up!

Please review the tasks and ensure you done at least one task to each week. In summary, it would be great if you have all done the following tasks as well as the posts for the weekly challenge:

1. Created or updated an About me page / post
2. Added the Class Blogs Widget
3. Added a Flag Counter Widget
4. If you have received a comment from another student and/or your mentor – make sure you reply on your blog as well as visiting their site and commenting there are well (if they left a link)
5. Ensured any images you have used are ‘attributed’ correctly and are not Copyright images.
6. If you are completely up to date – you can always leave more comments, write on your own topics!

It was lovely to meet you all last week – you are doing wonderful work on your blogs ! The Help page I recommended was  http://help.edublogs.org/ .  Just type your question or key words into the search bar.

Activities for this week are all to do with the globe or the world we live in. (all from Sue’s post)

Pick one or two of the tasks this week.  Remember to write a post explaining what you did and linking to the challenge task.  Also don’t forget to comment on other blogs (leaving a link to yours) – perhaps this week make sure you find someone from another country (Activity 3)   The list is here 

Activity 1.

Join our Free Rice group called Student Blogging Challenge or create one for your class. Every answer you get right, means 10 grains of rice donated to the World Food Programme. Since October 2011, we have had 86 students join and donate 116, 300 grains of rice. I wonder how many we could have by the end of Easter? Can you add a widget to Free Rice on your blog?

Activity 2.

Write a list of international events you have taken part in since Christmas 2014. What were they celebrating? What did you do to celebrate?

Activity 3.

Visit at least 5 blogs from countries other than your own. Leave a comment on a post at each blog. Now write your own post including the comment you have left and linking to each post you commented on.

Activity 4.

If you could create an international event, what would it be called? What would we be celebrating? Create some of the advertising material you might use – eg logo, banner, image, flyer

Activity 5.

Think of a special celebration in one country of the world. Find three images of the event. Under each image, give a clue as to the event.

On the final line, write a bit more about the event for your visitors to read. Include a link to another website giving more information on the event. Remember to include attribution for each image and perhaps a question for your readers to answer.

Activity 6.

Write about one special event you have taken part in. It might be an educational global event or an international event from the United Nations or a special event from your country. Find an image to add to your post. Remember to use attribution correctly. Include a link to another website giving more information on the event.

Activity 7.

Add at least five international blogs to your blogroll or links ready for a game we will hold after Easter. If you can’t add links on your blog, add them in a post instead.

Activity 8.

What are some games or apps you use that relate to global studies or geography of the world? Include a link to the website or app.

Activity 9.

What could you, your class, your school, your town do to help with the climate change problem for more than the one hour on Saturday 28 March 2015? Earth Hour

My summary of this week’s challenge from Sue’s Page 

Most important learning from this week’s challenge is:

You must understand that just because an image is on the internet, you may not have the right to use it on your own work.

Jorge Quinteros via Compfight

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

Activity 1 Watch this video about sharing work and write a post about what you learned. Include words such as attribution, share alike, licences and derivatives to show you understand what the video was about. Do some more research on the topic and perhaps create your own poster, slideshow or video about using images, music and videos online.

This video is the reaction of students in Mrs Yollis’ class when she mislabelled their artwork. How would you have felt?

Activity 8. 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. Image Generators such as ImageGenerator.org
2. Comic Generators like MakeBeliefsComix.com,  ToonDoo
3. Photo Editors like Befunky, fd’s Flickr Tools
4. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle
5. Graph Creators including GraphJam and Crappy Graphs

Here are some wonderful tips on inserting images into your blog.

My extra challenge:

Have a look at WikiMediaCommons  

1. Search for an image that represents one of your passions or interests.
2. Insert the image into your post with the correct attribution – you will need to read the instructions carefully as there are a number of ways to do this task.

Blogging is all about writing for an audience and encouraging comments.  Commenting skills are very important.  Watch these videos :

How to Compose a Quality Comment! from yourwonderfulteacher on Vimeo.

Here is a summary of the week’s challenges from Sue,

“Activity 1: Write a post, create a video or create a poster about commenting.  

Might be tips to get more visitors,  guidelines for acceptable comments on your blog, examples of good and bad comments – think outside the square. 

Here are some links to commenting guidelines written by students and classes. Class in New Zealand, grade 11/12 class in USA, Huzzah class blog in Canada, Abbey has a blogging guideline page, Mrs Allen created a poster about commenting, Shaffer writers, WarriorKat uses lots of visuals in her guidelines,  Sophie had a great post, the Blogging Frogs have some great tips, Cole wrote about commenting,

 Activity 2: Write a really interesting post that you think will get lots of comments.

Often writing about one of your passions will get lots of comments, so will something controversial where your readers could agree or disagree with your opinion. Remember to end with a question so your readers can give an answer. Leave a comment on this challenge post so Sue can add it to twitter.

Here are some posts written by students saying how to attract visitors to your blog –Alexandra,Jake, Ashleigh, Leif, Mrs Vazquez’ class wrote about a global challenge they took part in, Corinna asked a question about the school year, Alex asked about iPhones

Activity 4: Write a post about the overseas blogs you have commented on.

We have over 35 countries represented in our class and student blogging participants. Visit some of them, read their posts and leave a quality comment. Why did you choose that blog and particular post?

Here are the countries from classes and students participating in this challenge: USA, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, China, Bangladesh,  Canada, UAE, Russia, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Philippines, South Korea,  Taiwan,  Spain, Indonesia, Vietnam, Madagascar, Japan, Italy, Marshall Islands, Turkey, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Sweden, Armenia, South Africa, Romania, Georgia, Bahrain, Kenya, Nigeria, India, Guam, Uganda, Brazil, Norway, Honduras, Algeria .

Activity 9. Questions in a post

Write a post asking questions about one country mentioned in activity 4. Have at least 6 questions in your post. If your questions are interesting you might get lots of comments. Remember to get your teacher to tweet about it or leave a comment on this post, so I can tweet.  #stubc15″

Also, remember :

• Respond to any comments you may already have received
• If they left a link to their blog, visit it, read their posts and leave a quality comment
• Add the Class Blogs widget to your blog (it will look like the one on your teachers blog) –  in your dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across Class blogs to your sidebar. Change the number to 30 or however many in your class.

Here is a wonderful example of this week’s post response http://stephanietsl.global2.vic.edu.au/2015/03/13/commenting/

Hi everyone,

It is great to see you have started with your blogs. It is time to collect a little bit of information so that we can register you for the Student Blogging Challenge.   Can you please fill out the form below as soon as possible.