Challenge for Week 6

Commenting really creates a community of learners. Once students beginning commenting on your blog, it transforms into an interactive community where learning takes place. There's something about the term "global audience" that encourages students to write their best. Therefore, blog commenting does lend itself to improving the quality of student writing. But, with every writing assignment, preparation is key. Teachers should model the commenting process, share examples of good, not so good, and bad comments. Once commenting guidelines and expectations are established, though, students tend to thrive where commenting is concerned. There are even ways the teacher and his/her students can use commenting to keep the conversation going among learners. Students, no matter there age, love sharing their work, and what better setting than that of 'blogging and commenting.'

Watch this video created by a California classroom explaining the importance of commenting. They give multiple tips for encouraging good blog comments.



Here are your tasks for this week:
Task One: Create a new page called, "Commenting Guidelines." Create a list of guidelines you would like for your students to follow as they post and leave comments on your blog. For example is correct grammar important. What about not revealing any personal information, like where you live and a your last name? A good place to start would be to check out other teacher blogs who have already established commenting guidelines. Listed below are a few you might get some ideas from:
Ms. Ward's Classroom Blog-Scroll down until you see Ms. Ward's Blogging Guidelines.
Mrs. Sprinkle's Classroom Blogs
Huzzah!
Commenting Poster

Task Two: Create a post that discusses commenting. Include an image or embed a video. Remember to give proper credit.

Task Three: Leave a comment on this blog about the importance of leaving quality comments. Leave the URL of your blog post.

Task Four: Complete the survey (coming soon here) about the blogging challenge.

Task Five: After you have completed each of the challenges, send a copy of your log with your hours to Ms. Ward for your points. Keep on blogging!

Challenge for Week 5

Embedding Media: Edublog, Blogger, and Classblogmeister allow you to embed media like slides, videos, comic strips, polls, and much more into your blog posts. Use this code to add interactive media to your blogs, to give your reader a way to interact with your blog beyond just using text and images.

Here are some great sites to explore:

Cartoon maker: Toondoo

Glogster - Glogster gives you (or students) the ability to combine images, photos, music, video, and audio for interactive posters. Here's an example of a student's glog embedded on Ms. Ward's blog.

SlideShare - a site where you upload powerpoint presentations to share with others.

Scribd - a site where you can upload Word Documents, PDFs, or powerpoints and then embed on your blog.

VoiceThreads - you can create an interactive slideshow with videos or images. Readers can comment on the images/videos by adding text, audio, or video. See an example on Mrs. Sprinkle's blog.

PhotoPeach - a great program for uploading photos to make slideshows. Mrs. Sprinkle used it here on her classroom blog.

Youtube and Teachertube - both sites have videos that are uploaded and can be embedded in your blog posts.

Activity 1 - Embed a video on your blog. For Blogger and Edublogs, copy the embed code from Youtube or Teachertube. Paste the code into your blog post. If your video is located on your computer, click the 'Add Video' button on your menu bar to upload your video. For Class Blogmeister, copy the embed code from Youtube/Teachertube. In text mode, post the code into a new article. Classblogmeister will not host the video for you, so if you want to use your own video, you must upload it to Youtube or Teachertube first.

Activity 2 - Embed a powerpoint presentation or slide show. Choose from powerpoints other people have provided on slideshare or create your own and upload it to slideshare or scribd. For Blogger and Edublogs, copy the embed code and paste into your blog post. For Classblogmeister, paste it into a new article while in text mode.

Activity 3 - Check out your fellow bloggers videos! Leave a comment on two other participants' blogs about their media choices.

Activity 4 - Respond to the following question in a comment below: If a picture says 1000 words, what does a video, animated slide show, or multi-media say?

(credit teacherchallenge.edublogs.org)