It is now time to join in on the bi-annual student blogging challenge!

This challenge is all about having fun, improving blogging and reflective writing skills, and building readership and connections with a global audience.

Last year, the two challenges included thousands of students from over 15 countries around the world!

What is  the Student Blogging Challenge?

• The Student Blogging Challenge runs twice yearly.  A new Challenge starts March and September, each year.
  
• It is made up of a series of 10 weekly tasks all designed to improve blogging and commenting skills while connecting students with a global audience.
  
• Starts mid-September – but registration is happening now
• The Challenge is open to both class blogs and to individual student bloggers from all over the world and of all ages – blogs doesn’t need to be hosted by Edublogs to participate!
• Participants can complete as many of the tasks as they like and in any order
• The Student Blogging Challenge is coordinated by Sue Wyatt,  Sue Waters and Ronnie Burt.

Past challenges have included adding comics and widgets, writing creative posts, discussing travelling, comment etiquette, and more.

How do I start?

We’ve now opened registration for students and teachers who would like to participate in the challenge which starts in mid September.

Here’s the links you need to visit to register:

• Teachers – register your class blogs here
• Students – register your individual blogs here

Who’s registered so far?

You can check who has registered so far here:

• Teachers – heres’ where you’ll find all the class blogs listed
• Students – here’s where you’ll find all the individual student bloggers

How do I get the latest news from the Student Blogging Challenge?

All weekly tasks and upcoming events will be published on Challenge Yourself to Blog (the Student Blogging Challenge blog).

We recomend you either subscribe to:

1. The Challenge Yourself to Blog RSS feed using a feed reader like Google Reader – here’s how to set up Google Reader
2. The Challenge Yourself to Blog email – just add your email address to the form below

Enter your email address:

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Do you have any ideas for challenge tasks?

This is the fifth challenge Sue Wyatt have organized.  She would love  ideas for cool challenge activities.

Please help with ideas for challenge activities by sharing your ideas here!

And for extra incentive to share your ideas — we’ve decided to give away ten Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to the 10 best challenge ideas!

Can you help us?

Every challenge, Sue Wyatt tries to visit each individual student blog at least 3 times over the period of the challenge.

This is becoming harder to visit all the student blogs — due to the numbers of students participating!

We are looking for volunteers who are willing to leave least one, preferably two, comments on student blogs such as:

1. A few clues about how to set up their blogs would be great for the newer students who have only had their blogs less than a week or so .
2. Alternatively choose a post they have written or look at their about page to leave a comment for them.

We would like to do is allocate about 20-30 student blogs to each volunteer.

This is excellent for teachers and preservice teachers (student teachers) who are:

• Wanting to increase their understanding of how blogs can be used with students.
• Unable to participate with their students in our current Challenge but who want to learn more about the Student Blogging Challenge.

Also excellent for students who have participated in previous Student Blogging Challenges and who would love to support other student bloggers!

And off course, we appreciate how busy everyone is so we’ve decided to give away twenty free Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to our twenty best helpers!

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to become a Student Blogging Helper!  Can you also tell which age group of students you would like to work with!

And here’s your badges

We thought some of you might like to add badges to your blogs to let your readers know you’re participating in the Student Blogging Challenge.

So here they are!

For Better Bloggers

For Better Commenters

For Student Blogger Helper

Adding your badge(s) to your blog is as easy as:

1.  Download this Student Challenge Zip file – contains the HTML code for all badges with links back to the Student Blogging Challenge blog
2.  Unzip the downloaded file to a folder on your hard drive.
3.  Open up badgecode.txt (contained inside the zip file)
4.  Copy the HTML code for the required badge(s)

5.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your Dashboard
6.  Drag and drop a Text Widget from the Available Widgets or Inactive Widgets areas on the left into the Sidebar area on the right
7.  Now just paste your HTML code into the text widget, then click Save and Close

Setting up your class-blog

You may be just getting started with your class blog or are looking for ways to make improvements.

The following 9 steps will help ensure that your blog is ready to go for the challenge:

1. Set up your class blog
2. Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Teaching Commenting Skills and Etiquette – Guest post byKathleen McGeady
4. Help Parents Connect With Your Class Blog
5. Add Students To Your Class Blog So They Can Write Posts
6. Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
7. Setting Up Student blogs
8. Add your student blogs to your blogroll
9. Add Your Student Blogs To A Folder In Google Reader

FINAL THOUGHTS

The thousands of students that have participated in the past have found it a great way to improve their blogging and commenting skills and love the global interaction among the community that it builds.

For more information on the student blogging challenge, visit the Challenge F.A.Q. here.

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to become a Student Blogging Helper!
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Starting your journey into the online world can feel like a crazy place where the inhabitants speak a totally new language.

So here’s a glossary of commonly used terms we’ve created to help you!

Avatar

An avatar is a computer user’s online representation of themself or their alter ego.

Your avatar is an important part of your online identity.

It’s an online representation of you that shows up in places such as where you leave comments, forum posts or on social networks and is part of how others visualize who you are.

For more information refer to:

1. Creating And Uploading Your Comment Avatar
2. Want A Comment Avatar That’s Globally Recognised By Most Blog Platforms? Here’s How!

Blog

The term blog originated from the blend of the term “web log”.

Blogs are normally made up of the following main elements:

• Posts - Posts are where you normally publish the latest new or new article on a blog.  They are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order with the most recent post at the top of the page.  Blogs are designed to have only one Post page.
• Comments - Posts commonly allow readers to publish comments on the posts they read.  This is where the reader can share their thoughts, connect with the blogger and interact with other readers.
• Pages – You normally use pages for information that you want to share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently.  Not all blogging software includes the ability to add Pages.

Blogs are written on just about any subject and for a wide range of purposes, including personal, business, work and sharing news stories.

Here’s some examples of how blogs are used and educational blogs to check out:

1. Top ten ways educators use blogs with students
2. Class blogs:
   • MrToft.ca (Grade 5)
   • Huzzah (Grade 6/7)
   • Blog, blog blog blog, blog some more (English I)
3. Student blogs:
   • Jazzing up Eight Grade
   • Lauren’s Life
   • Dominique’s My Blog
4. Education blogs listed on PostRank

Cloud Computing

In really simple terms, cloud computing involves using off-site providers that you access via the Internet, and paying for what you use as it’s needed, instead of managing aspects such as hardware, computer applications and data storage on-site.

The term “cloud” is used as a metaphor for the Internet.

Examples of cloud computing include using:

• Google Apps for purposes such as email, messaging, documents, spreadsheets, calendar
• Skype for free online calls, messaging, video conferencing, applicaton sharing, file sharing
• Facebook as a free Intranet

Watch Cloud Computing in Plain English for more information.

Personal Learning Network (PLN)

Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are all about using web tools such as blogs, wiki, twitter, facebook to create connection with others which extend our learning, increases our reflection while enabling us to learn together as part of a global community.

PLNs increase our opportunities to ask questions and receive help compared to our normal daily face-to-face interactions.

Best part of a PLN is it’s personal!

You make all the choices:

1. What tools you use!
2. Who you connect with!
3. How you want to learn!
4. When you want to learn!

Terms like Personal Learning Communities (PLC) and Personal Learning Environments (PLE) are occassoinally used in a similar context to Personal Learning Networks (PLN).

Check out PLN Yourself to learn more about building your own PLN.

RSS

RSS is an acronym which stands for Really Simple Syndication.

In simple terms, RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the website to check for new updates.

How it works is you subscribe to your favorite website using the RSS feed in a RSS feed reader such as Google Reader.  Whenever new information is added to the website it is automatically sent to your RSS feed reader  where you can read it at your convenience.

For example, whenever your favorite blogger publishes a new post it is automatically sent to your Feed reader.

Sites with RSS feeds are normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon.

For more information:

1. Watch RSS in Plain English
2. Follow these instructions to subscribe to blogs using Google Reader — just replace the student blogs with your favorite blogs and news services

Please note :

• Blogs on all standard blogging platforms automatically include RSS feeds and don’t necessarily use words or an icon to indicate the presence of the RSS feed
• RSS lets you do lots of cool stuff including adding latest updates from your favorite blog(s) or news website(s) to your own site using RSS widgets like FeedWind’s RSS widget

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking enables people to bookmark and tag online content such as websites they find useful so they can use for future reference or share with others online.

Using social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Diigo means that you can access your stored references anywhere, anytime on any computer.

Social Networking

Social networking is the act of communicating and building relationships with people online.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook,  Ning communities, LinkedIn, Flickr are all examples of popular social networking sites used by educators to develop their Personal Learning Network (PLN).

Tag

Tags are keywords or terms used to classify content and organize content stored online.   Tags are commonly assigned informally by person who creates the content.

The purpose of tagging is to help make it easier for the content to be easily found.  Tagging is an important part of many web 2.0 tools including:

1. Blog posts
2. Images stored on photosharing websites such as Flickr
3. Bookmarks stored on social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Diigo

You’ll often see tag clouds used as a visual representation of tags used on a website.  The larger the size of the word in the tag cloud the more content has been tagged using that term.

Web 2.0

The term “Web 2.0″ begun its rise into popularity when O’Reilly Media and MediaLive hosted the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004.

It’s used to refer to the supposed second-generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in new ways.

Blogs, wikis, podcasting, video sharing websites (e.g. YouTube and Vimeo), photosharing websites (e.g. Flickr and Picasa), social networking sites (e.g. FaceBook, Twitter) are all examples of Web 2.0 technologies.

The phrase “Web 2.0″ hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web.

The early web development, retrospectively now labelled Web 1.0, involved static websites, the use of search engines, and surfing from one website to the next, and consuming of consumer created by geeks and web coder.

Web 2.0 involves a more dynamic and interactive World Wide Web where anyone can create content and connect with others to collaborate to build on each others content.

Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows easy creation and editing of webpages using your web browser.  Wikis are normally powered by wiki software.

The term wiki is derived from the Hawaain word ‘fast’ because non-technical users can use them quickly and easily to create their own websites.

Wikipedia is the best example of a wiki being used colloboratively by a community to create content.

Commonly used wikis providers chosen by educators include Wikispaces, Wetpaint, and PBWorks.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks to everyone in my Twitter network who provided input into which terms should be included in this glossary and for sharing links to references.

There is a good chance that in attempting to keep the explanations short we haven’t covered them in sufficient details.  So would love to hear your thoughts:

1. What terms need better explaining? Or explained differently?
2. What other terms would you like included?

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