Adding Links to Other Blogs!

This is directly from the Week 3 Challenge Post by Miss M:

Here are the instructions for adding links to your sidebars.

Have at least five other student and/or class 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.

Try to have a few different link categories like

  • Global Students
  • Global Classes
  • My Overseas Friends
  • Other Class Blogs
  • Blog Buddies
  • Blogs of the World
  • SBC Friends
  • SBC Student Blogs

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

Edublogs – Learn more about blogroll using this link.

Celebrating Week 3 of the Challenge!

Each day, we, as humans, are bombarded by media. Week 3 of the Student Blogging Challenge encouraged us to slow down and think about the creators of the media that fills our lives. Our class discussed Creative Commons, the importance of attributing our sources of media (and how to write those attributions), and reviewed a selection of Creative Commons image websites.

Our posts this week are as varied as the media we explored. Despite their variety, they had one common thread – include an image, video, or music in the post and properly attribute the source!

Where did our creativity take us?

Lily stopped to share about the Little Things in Life She Notices. 

Ava Rose started a Zoom post story – add your comment to continue to story she started with a picture!

Do you know how to turn a picture into a puzzle? Check out Allison’s post to learn how!

Ben reviewed some Creative Commons websites, do you agree or disagree with his assessments?

Jude and Quin wrote sentences using only pictures, add a comment if you think you know the meaning!

Learn more about our class. Who likes basketball? Who has the perfect ideas for a holiday from school? Which student loves to listen to music?

Let the Tournament Begin!!

What is your favorite book you’ve read this year? How can you even decide? In honor of the NCAA basketball tournament, our LA class is starting our own “March Madness” Tournament of Books! Which novel will be our class favorite? What is your favorite book you’ve read this year?

Thanks to FABULOUS 5th-grade teachers at my school, Mrs. Goldstein and Mrs. Parry, for the great idea!

Thanks to the Brown Bag Teacher for the FREE printable signs!

Book Bracket

Photo by Ms. Mack

Mack 17-18 Bracket

 

Ready for Week 3?

Which activity will YOU CHOOSE for the third week of the blogging challenge? Pick ONE!

Activity 1. Do some more research on the topic of attribution and licenses and perhaps create your own class video about using images, music and videos in class.

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

Activity 2Take a photo or 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

Activity 3. Similar to activity 2. Take a photo or find an interesting landscape image (include attribution) or create the beginning of a video.  Write the beginning of a story relating to your image or video. 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.

Activity 4. Write a sentence using just images – no words OR find 5 images that create a story – again no words only the attribution for each image.

Activity 5. Create a slideshow, photo gallery or poster about your interests to add to your about me page or as a separate post. Your final slide should include attribution for each image. Noah created a great gallery with captions

Activity 6. 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. MakeBeliefsComix.com
  2. ToonDoo
  3. Befunky
  4. Big HugeLabs
  5. PhotoFunia
  6. Wordle

Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts! Leave a comment on this post, if you or your class can recommend some other image sites to add to this list.

Activity 7.  Zoom out from an image

We first tried this activity in the challenge in September 2010. Choose a picture, and have your readers zoom out, so to speak, by leaving comments.  Check out the example from Huzzah who finished their story. If doing this activity, include the word ‘zoom’ in your title so I can find it easily. Remember to give attribution. Most important here is to read previous comments, so you can add to the story.

Check out these zoom pictures: BeckyJacquelineAbbey

Activity 8.  Go back to previous posts

If you have used images in any previous posts you have written, then you are ethically obliged to give the correct attribution or take the image out of the post if it does not have the right creative commons license.

Activity 9.  Create a jigsaw from your image. Mrs Schmidt’s class has done this using Jigsaw Planet. Here is her explanation

Last week (2014) my students made some jigsaw puzzles about famous places in our area.  First each student created one Power Point Slide showing a photo and some facts about a location in our area.  They saved the slide as a JPEG and then uploaded it to Jigsaw Planet.  Once the puzzle was created, they published a link to it on their Kidblog. Click on Niamh’s puzzle link. Maggie created a tough jigsaw. Anisha created a jigsaw from her avatar.

Activity 10. Make a game using images. This class in Australia based their game on 4pics 1 word app.

DA Literary Magazine Challenge 1

ATTENTION Durham Academy Students:
The Creative Writing and Literary Magazine club is happy to announce its first writing challenge for the Spring 2018 issue. Use the following prompt to inspire your creativity, and email the result to Mrs. Howes by March 27. The winner will receive a small, ridiculous prize, automatic publication in The Locker, and the opportunity to read their work at a Community Meeting. So here is the first prompt:

Think of an abstract idea (like “joy,” “hunger,” or “stupidity”). Imagine that abstraction as a character. It can look like a person, an animal, or a creature of your own invention. Once you have the character in your head, set it in motion–make it DO something. For example, “Joy” might ride a bicycle, “Hunger” might go to the movies, or “Stupidity” might dig a hole. Tell the story of what happens, in the form of either writing or artwork.

Celebrating Week 1 of the Challenge!

Our 6th-grade LA crew has been hard at work completing Week 1 of the 2018 Students Blogging Challenge! While we started blogging in September of this year, the challenge has really infused new life into our posts & pages! Check out some of their creations and leave them a comment:

The All About Me pages of Kyla, Camille, and Kevin got a makeover with an A-Z post!

Ava Rose found a word cloud site that actually works on the iPad, Word it Out, and used it to bring a little something extra to her All About Me page.

Wordle was Lily’s program of choice to let you know all about her and then her family went Sims!

Allison used Bitmoji to represent herself in her post Another Me.

Maddie created an avatar using Avatar Maker which inspired her Hello World Post – explore it to find out more about her!

Did you know Claire loves to read? She created avatars for her favorite books using Chibi Maker.

Haven’t gotten enough of avatars? Check out some of these unique avatar posts – Ava Rose’s My Bitmoji Hero and Kenna’s Drag Queen Avatars.

Ben introduces you to the world of sabre fencing. 

Lauren urges you to take up her favorite free choice activity – reading – by picking up one of these 5-star books!

The links to our class blogs can be found in the sidebar – check them out to learn more out our class. I can’t wait to see what else is created during this week’s challenge!

Do you have a post, page, or blog you’d like our class to check out? Leave it in the comments below!

Killin It

Week 1 – Let’s Introduce Ourselves!

Mack LA Students – It is finally the time to start the first week of the Student Blogging Challenge! Since we’ve been blogging for a few months now, I’ve adapted the first challenge from Miss W’s original post, but you can find the original post here – http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/2018/03/04/week-1-lets-introduce-ourselves-2/

Week 1 – Let’s Introduce Ourselves

When you meet a new person or join a group, there are three things you will most likely do.

  1. Look at the outside view of the person – do they look like the type of person you would enjoy being with?
  2. Then you would go deeper by asking some basic questions about the person and their interests.
  3. Finally, you would connect through shared interests.

HiWe are going to cover those three things this week by creating an avatar to represent our outside view, create our about me page to show your visitors the type of person you are and your interests then you are going searching for other students your age who also have similar interests.

 

 


General Information about Challenges

Students: 

  1. Most weeks there will be lots of activities to choose from. You don’t have to complete them all.  
  2. When you complete an activity, remember to fill in the Google form at the bottom of the post found of each week’s Student Blogging Challenge post.We got this!
  3. Once you’ve filled out the google form, a commenter will visit to give you some clues about blogging, reminding you of the challenge as well as carrying on conversations in your posts. Remember to read and reply to their comments politely and in a timely fashion.
  4. This challenge we have many new students and classes taking part so let’s get some admin out of the way before we start our activities for this week.
  5. Anything written in bold and red is a link you can click on to take you to another blog or website.

Admin for Week 1

  1. Add the challenge badge to your sidebar.
  2. Once you have done your activity for this week, remember to come back here and fill in the Google form.

THE TWO TOPICS FOR THIS WEEK: Avatars & About Me Page

TOPIC 1: Looking at Avatars (3 activity choices)

Activity 1: Create an avatar to use on your blog.  There are many different avatar creation sites on the web. I have been to many of them and created lots of different avatars. Some you just save and download to your computer to then upload to your blog. Others you need to use the snipping tool to save a square image of your avatar. It is always best to save as a jpg format.

To add your avatar to your blog, if using Edublogs, check here.

Did you find a great avatar site not mentioned here? Leave me a comment mentioning the site so I can add it to the Symbaloo.

Activity 2 was for classes, so I removed that one!

Activity 3: Write a post about your avatar and how it represents you. Include a link to the website where you created the avatar. Remember to include your avatar as an image in your post. If writing a post about your avatar, choose an interesting title, not just avatar as this will cause an error on your blog.

Activity 4: Create a series of avatars to represent your family members. Use different avatar websites depending on the person’s interests. Write a post about your family and include the avatar for each person and explain how it represents that person.

Remember – be internet safe, no personal information.


TOPIC 2: About Me Page (2 activity choices)

Activity 5: Update Your About Me page.

Whenever I visit a blog for the first time, I always check to see who the person is that is writing the blog posts. Do they have similar interests to me?

If you already have an About Me page, you might want to create an About my State or Province page as well. Be creative:

Activity 6:  What are some apps or websites you could use to create something interesting to add to your About me page? Tell me about them, costs, age to use etc Perhaps a word cloud or glogster – brainstorm as a class.

Fascinating


Finished the work for week 1? – Visiting other blogs

One important aspect of blogging is commenting on other blogs. Classes and student participants are grouped according to similar ages. Visit some other blogs, read posts, get ideas from them, leave a comment. Make sure you include your blog URL so they can come to visit your blog.  Are there any students with interests the same as you?

If you want a commenter to visit your blog, remember to fill in the form below at the bottom of the Week 1 Post each activity you complete this week.

http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/2018/03/04/week-1-lets-introduce-ourselves-2/

Enjoy