Week 1: Student Blogging Challenge

We are about to get started on our student blogging challenge. The ideas for this challenge are coming from the edublogs website. Use our comments section to submit your activities.

Week 1: Let’s talk about us

Students – The point of the blogging challenge is to try a different blogging related idea each week. As digital citizens we will be writing and revising our thoughts in an online forum.  We will be trying to make some new friends from all over the world. In order to do this we will also be exploring other people’s blogs and commenting on their work. Week one is all about letting people get to know us, and trying to learn about them as well.

Remember to be internet safe with all of these activities! No personal information. See class blogging guidelines.

Let’s start the activities

Whenever 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.

We are going to cover those three things this week. First we will create an avatar to represent our outside view. Next, we will be updating our about page to represent our class and our interests. Finally, you are going to search for other students your age who also have similar interests by reading and commenting on blogs.

Creating  avatars:

Activity 1: Create your own avatar. This will be an online representation of yourself. Save it to your iPad camera roll or your own computer as a jpeg file format no larger than 200 x 200 pixels. Once it is saved, upload it to Google Drive and share it with Mr. Helpern. You might need to crop and resize.

Avatar websites that work on an iPad:

DoppelMe | CodeCanyon

iPad avatar apps:

WeeMee | Cute Avatar Creator | Avatar Creator

Avatar websites for the computer:

Marvel Superhero | Build Your Wild Self | Face Your Manga | Avachara | My Blue Robot

Activity 3: Class activity

As a class create a slideshow of our user avatars. Once I have your avatars from activity 1 (shared through Google Drive), I can put them together to create a slideshow.

Activity 4:  Write a comment describing your avatar. How much does it look like you? What sort of personality does your avatar have? What makes it typically you?

Activity 5:  What are some apps or other websites you could use to create an avatar?

About page or post

What shout we add to our class About page?

Activity 6: Create your own About Me comment. Be careful about how much personal information you include. Try to be creative in both your words like Felix, or by including visuals like Warrior Kat. More students to check out: Nicole, Kendall,  Tina,

  • Write a poem
  • Write an A-Z paragraph eg I am an athletic, yet brainy child who decided that saving the environment is one of my future goals.
  • Create a video like our mentor Dinah has done
  • Students in Ireland paired up to create their about us page, Ms Seitz’ class did the same

Activity 7:  What are some apps or websites you could use to create something interesting to add to your About me page? Perhaps a word cloud or glogster – brainstorm as a class.

Activity 8: class activity

Create a class avatar using Voki. Look at these examples from Mrs Essen’s class and Mrs McKelvey’s Blogging Frogs

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 our blog URL (https://helpernshelpers.edublogs.org) so they can come to visit our blog.

Activity 9: Are there other students your age with similar interests to you? Visit them and leave a comment on a post or their about me page.

Make sure you read their comments and reply back to them. In fact, you should reply back to any interesting comments you receive – that is how conversations get started.

Post your activities in our comments section.

Leave a comment on this blog post when you have finished your activity or activities for this week. What activity did you do? Why? What did you enjoy about doing the activity?