Student blogging competition starts September 2008.
Do your students enjoying blogging? Do they write fantastic comments on other students’ blogs? Would they be interested in taking part in a blogging competition just for students? It would involve 10 weeks worth of activities, one challenge each week with some bonuses for those who want to go overboard.
Please visit my class blog to register and watch out for a page there called the Student blogging competition 2008 during the month of September. Each challenge will be added ready for the students to do.
One question the students have to answer is “Have you told your teacher you are participating?” This is so each school can award a small prize to the best blogger or most improved blogger in their school. I don’t have the facilities to organize a world wide prize but hopefully each school could find a little bit of spare cash for a small prize.
So far we have students from Australia and New Zealand registered and a couple of teachers from the USA thinking about it for new students after their holidays. If you have any good ideas for challenges for beginners or experienced student bloggers, please comment here and I will add them to the challenge.
The teacher from each school can tell me the winner of the prize and I will mention them in our class blog.
Any students who are taking part will be included in the blogroll on my class blog so it will be easy for students to visit each other’s blogs.
Miss W.,
I have enjoyed checking out your blog! I am always looking for inspirations to keep my own blogs from getting stagnant, so your creativity is appreciated.
Do you have any examples, in general, of topics for your weekly challenges? I mean, would it be something like the number of comments left on other student’s blogs? Or???
I haven’t done this with my students in the past, and some of my current and former students, I believe, will be thrilled to be able to communicate with a kid in Australia, or Europe, or South America, or San Francisco, California. (They were blown away to see the locations of visitors through Cluster Maps and Feedjit.)
What about having them describe a certain aspect of their daily routine, like what their school is like? Then the kids could compare and find what they have in common, and what is distinct to their school/location. Or, what (appropriate) slang words they use to refer to various things like friends, food, family, pets, music, etc.
Seems like a decent icebreaker to get to know one another and feel more comfortable in their commenting.
Here’s looking forward to it!
-Tim Madden
http://mrmadden.edublogs.org
http://madwordsnow.edublogs.org
Hi Sue, this sounds like a great idea. Anne and I have had discussions about students needing a bit more savvy in terms of what they blog and remembering that the audience is global. I also like Tim’s comments (above) in terms of this sharing of information between students in different countries. I have this ideal that with all this blogging, the students will atually discover that despite race, creed, language, country etc, that basically we are “not so different” after all. Count me in - with my year 6’s at Hawkesdale P12. I will speak with Jess and Anne when I see them tomorrow. Like Tim, I am also conscious of trying to keep my blog dynamic and fun, so trying out something like this has come at a really good time in my blogging journey. Talk soon, Marg
[...] If you’ve been looking for opportunities to help your students develop better blogging skills (posting and responding), check out what Aussie educator Miss Wyatt is sponsoring: Student Blogging Competiton! [...]
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G’day @Tim, @Marg and @Gail,
Thanks for getting back to me re the competition. Tim, you will find many examples of what I will be choosing from on the PAGE on my classblog http://wyatt67.edublogs.org labelled “Ideas for the competition”
One of the first activities will be introducing themselves to their readers either in a blog post or comment but remembering to be internet savvy as they do.
ola miss W . tambem tive a ver o blog da filipa e tambem acho que e competicao entre blogs vai ser muito giro. adeus e bom dia
I think your blog competition sounds like a fantastic idea. As part of my kindergarten curriculum we have to do a unit on children from around the the world. I have been lucky enough to find a website where you send postcards (from your state) to other classes around the United States and other countries. My students enjoy getting “mail” and hearing about other kids. We have a map on one of our walls and we put a sticker on the place where each postcard comes from. I hope you continue to enjoy your competition.