DA Literary Challenge 3!

The Creative Writing and Literary Magazine club is happy to announce its third writing challenge for the Spring 2018 issue. Use the following prompt to inspire your creativity, and email the result to Mrs. Howes by May 1. The winner will receive a small, ridiculous prize, automatic publication in The Locker, and the opportunity to read their work at a Community Meeting. Here is the prompt:

Base a piece of writing or art on a weird fact or several odd facts that you know. 

Credit: Pexels

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?

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.