Yay! I found a way to automate the student blogs blogroll. You should see them in my sidebar now.

Let me know if you’re not there.

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This is something another teacher is doing. I didn’t tell you all about this in class because I felt it would be too overwhelming for you at this point. However, if any of you are interested, here’s the information. It sounds like a fun way to meet other students who are blogging. You might pick-up some tips and tricks.

They are on week two, but it isn’t too late to jump in. I looked at the activities and it looks like a really good way to get your blog growing! I really encourage all of you to join in.

About the Student Blogging Challenge

Our last blogging challenge had over 1000 students, from 15 countries, aged 6 to 18 years old, writing posts, commenting and getting to know about each others cultures while improving their blogging skills and connecting to a global audience.
The growth of the students’ blogging skills during each challenge is totally amazing and inspiring; check out these examples of student work.

The Challenge Categories

This time we’ve expanded the challenge into two separate categories; both designed to improved student skills.

Students (or classes) can choose to participate in either or both:

1. Better Bloggers Challenge – emphasis on better blogging, improving your blog design and connecting to a global audience.
2. Better Commenter Challenge – focusing how you write comments, whether you are trying to continue conversations through comments and how to write posts that invite lots of comments.

The reason why we’ve added the comment challenge is commenting is an important part of blogging. It’s often where most learning happens.
Unfortunately educating students on effective commenting practices is hard. We hope to change this while also providing new tasks for students who’ve participated in previous challenges.

What’s Involved

Both the Better Bloggers and Commenters categories will have weekly activities for:

1. Students who have their own blog
2. Students who don’t have their own blog but want to participate through commenting.

These weekly activities are designed to improved your skills. Don’t stress if you miss a week — the tasks are designed so they can be completed later!

To participate you need to:
1. Discuss with your teacher (or students
2. Drop past Miss Wyatt’s blog and register your details
3. Keep an eye on Miss Wyatt’s blog for the blogging challenge information and your weekly task

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In order for me to differentiate your weekly reader posts I need you to to either tag your post as “weekly reader” or categorize your post as “weekly reader”. You can do either or both, it is your choice.

Also, I would appreciate it if you would add a widget to your sidebar showing your tags or categories (depending on which you use to identify the weekly reader).

Tomorrow I am going to do a video showing you how to do all of this. However, if you can figure it out now, go for it.

I have some examples on what I am calling my example site.

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Everyone please take note!…

If you are using IE6 that browser is awful, terrible and no good. You are likely to have problems on this site (as with many others on the Internet). If you are using IE6 you need to go upgrade to the latest version. Or better yet, switch to a better browser like Firefox or Safari.

Let me know if you need help or have questions.

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Sorry, everyone, it only just occurred to me that I have multiple students with the same first name.

It actually wasn’t my intention to do the blogs with all my classes right away, so I didn’t think about the multiple name thing. So here’s what I need you to do:

If you already have a blog, you are fine, ignore all of this!

If you need to sign-up: use your first name and the first initial of your last name. So my blog would be: http://www.lahaiseslair.com/paigel

Hopefully this works and there aren’t multiple people with the first name and first initial that are the same. If you have a problem signing up, stop and then tell me tomorrow (or send me an e-mail).

As of right now, 8:50 PM Wed., I have disabled the registration ability because I need everyone to see this in order to minimize my work fixing things. I will re-instate registration in an hour or so.

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I’ve been working hard to post screencasts showing you how to use the various parts of your blog. One thing I am not going to screencast is the difference between tags and categories. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, so, if you want to know what each does (and you DO), go to this great site: Edublogger

Also, you should check-out her fantastic post about how to write your “about” page. It is a great post with helpful tips!

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This school year you will be involved in a project that will require you to have an RSS reader. I recommend using Google, but if you have one that you currently use, or have another service in mind, that’s fine. If you have a Yahoo or AOL account then you probably already have a RSS reader there that you can use. However I don’t know how to use those systems, so I won’t be able to offer you much help.

Here are the steps you want to take (based on getting a Google account).

1. Go to Google Reader and sign-up for an account (note that if you already have a GMail account, then you already have Google Reader and don’t need to sign-up again).

2. Watch the short video from Common Craft about Google Reader. If you have more questions go here. There is a ton of good information there.

3. Start searching around the internet for a blog that you can follow. Make sure it is something that is interesting to you. I have about 30 blogs I follow, regarding a variety of topics.

4. Once you have found a blog (or more) that you want to “follow”, click on their RSS button and add them into your Google Reader account.

5. Go to some of your friends blogs and add them to your Google Reader account.

6. Add Lahaise’s Lair to your Google Reader account.

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