Miss W will no longer be coming to school to teach blogging unless requested by your teacher. But many of you have shown an interest in having your own personal blog. Miss W is prepared to help you look after your own blog, but you need to prove you deserve your own blog and you know how to be safe while using your blog.

What do you need to do?

On a Word document, write the following posts:

1. All about me – remember to be internet savvy about personal information, written in two paragraphs
2. 6 random facts about me – cannot be included from your about me post – use bullets or dot points
3. My favourite colour
4. Being safe on the internet
5. Reflection of term 1 – where you went well, where you need to improve etc 

Create your avatar

Attach your word document and your avatar as a jpeg to an email and send to Miss W. In the body of the email, mention your name and the username you have been given eg jamesholl12

Now that you are starting to leave comments on blogs, you need to have a user avatar. There are many websites to create avatars.

I have linked a photo to 4 of the avatar websites. You must save your avatar as a jpeg file.

Step 1. Create your avatar

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self – middle right
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer – middle left
• The Hero Factory – far right
• Adventurer Maker – girls only
• Wimp yourself - relates to ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’
• Mess Dudes
• Hogwarts student – girls only
• Mii character
• Harry Potter and others saves as GIF
• Caracature
• Block head – like Lego

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar -  far left

Step 2. Using printscreen to save your avatar or use the snipping tool

So you decided to create an avatar like “Hero Factory” or “Build your wildself” or “Mini Mizer” where you can’t save it easily. You need to take a picture of the screen first. Most computers have a printscreen button on the keyboard or if using Windows 7 you have an icon called “snipping tool”.

When you press printscreen or use the snipping tool an image of your screen or part of it  is now copied to your clipboard. You will still need to crop and resize to get an avatar that fits well on your blog.

Open MS Paint and click control V to paste your image from the clipboard. To save, you need to go to File>Save As> computer> your drive> open blogging folder> change the name of the file to yourname with ava eg  sueava then underneath change the file type to JPEG. Save.

Go to your drive> open blogging folder and right click on the icon for your avatar image and  “Open with” choose MS Picture Manager. This might be in Microsoft office tools.

In the icons at the top, go to View> task pane.  On the right go to edit pictures > crop.  Now move the black bars on the side of your image in, to crop your picture to what you want in your avatar.

Click OK, then back to edit pictures. Now click on resize. In the box “custom width and height” put  97 in both boxes. These numbers might be slightly different but one has to be 97 and the other smaller than 97. Click OK.

Back up to file>save as> call it sueava2 or similar> make sure it is still JPEG. Make sure you have saved it to your drive again.

Step 3. Upload avatar to your Edublogs blog

Now to upload to your blog or class blog.  Go to your dashboard> users>your avatar> browse to find your image on your school drive>alternate upload.  This is your comment avatar.

If it now looks like a black coloured square then you haven’t cropped the image to the correct size in step 2 using printscreen. Or maybe you didn’t save the image as a JPEG in step 2 using printscreen. Go back and make corrections.

What else can we do with our avatars?

Look at what these classes have done with their avatars.

Grade 3 dreamers, Grade 5N,

Many of you are now starting to visit blogs of classmates or your class blog. Some of you have ventured out and visited students overseas taking part in the student blogging challenge or classes that are also taking part.

What type of comments are you leaving?

• Check out this post  and video from Mrs Yollis’  grade 3 students about how to write a quality comment.
• This teacher created a glogster poster about commenting.
• Check out how these students are carrying conversations through great comments. Max and Abbey, Ethan and Clarissa, Jack and Abbey, Lily and Colton

Are you going to accept all comments?

• Some comments you receive are actually spam – Nike shoes, handbags, essay dissertations etc Often these comments will have a link in them directing you to a website where they want you to buy something.
• Other spam comments often have facebook.com or google.com or yahoo.com in the email address. Sometimes these comments make sense but they will often have a spelling error and they usually have nothing to do with the post you have written.
• Make sure you don’t approve these type of comments but click  spam instead.
• Some people might leave a comment like ‘Wutsup?’ – this would go in the trash.
• Some students who don’t know about quality comments might say ‘This is a cool blog. Please visit my blog at ……’  This would also go in the trash. Or maybe you visit their blog first and thank them for leaving a comment on yours but mention it was not acceptable as it didn’t relate to the post.

In your profile, have you included your user name and your class or own blog URL? Before leaving a comment on another blog that is the same platform as you eg Edublogs, Blogger, make sure you are signed into the blog. This way you won’t have to fill in lots of information when leaving a comment. Will also mean the owner of the blog you commented on will only have to click on your name or avatar and they will be directed straight to your blog.

Your job this week is to visit at least 10 different blogs in your team. One member of the team is to keep a list in Word of the blogs you visited and the comment you left. Your responsibility is to leave a quality comment on the blog, copy what you wrote and put in an email for the person keeping the list.

This is an example:

I went to Kids in the Mid and I left a comment on the commenting post. I said,

Dear Miss W,

I really enjoyed watching that video the grade 3 students made. Could we make one to put on our class blog?

♥ John ♥

Your first week activities included:

• creating an email signature
• learning how to create folders and documents on your school computer hard drive
• looking at student about pages and creating yours on Word
• attaching your Word document to an email asking for a blog to be created for you to use and sending it to your teacher

Now let’s head into week 2 of our  basic blogging activities.

Activity 1: Learning to log in to my dashboard

Miss W. created a username for me. I received an email at school from Edublogs which gave me my username and a funny looking password.  So what do I do now?

• Go to Edublogs and log in using the username and password in your letter.
• I suggest you copy and paste the password exactly. Untick the remember me box as lots of other students use your school computer.
• If you have forgotten your password from last year, then put in your blog username  and ask for a new password. Check your email and follow their instructions.

Activity 2: Change some of the major settings.

The dashboard is where you do all your blogging work.  But so you can login very easily without having to copy that password each time, you need to do the following things using the left-hand sidebar:

Change password: Click on users> your profile

Put in your first name, nickname ( be sensible and internet safe with choice of nickname), password (something you can remember easily – maybe same as school password), same password a second time, then finally update profile button. When that has updated go back in and choose from drop down link for display name publicly as. Update profile button again.

Activity 3: Your teacher will change these settings for your class blog after some discussion with the students.

Change name of your blog: Settings > general – discuss first

Change your blog title and tagline – again be internet safe in what you choose. Make sure timezone is Hobart and choose how you want dates and times to show on your blog. Finally save changes button.

Notification of comments: Settings > discussion

Tick the following boxes: all default article settings; other comments – boxes 1, 4 and 5;  before a comment appears – box 1.  If you are going to visit your blog dashboard regularly then you might not need an email sent otherwise click the email me when comment held for moderation.

Further down the page under avatars – show avatars, G rating, then choose what avatar will appear if a reader has not created their own. Finally save changes button.

Changing the theme of your blog: Appearance > themes – discuss first

Only click on preview if you want to see what it will look like, activate when you have decided definitely on that theme. You can change your theme as often as you like as you are a moderator of your blog. Do you want 1 or 2 sidebars on your blog? Once you have personalized your blog and published lots of posts, you will be able to ask your teacher to upgrade your blog – you will then have about 100 themes to choose from.

Widgets you must have: Appearance > widgets

You must have the following widgets: Blog avatar, pages, recent comments, recent posts, links, categories, archives, Meta

Activity 3: Editing our class ‘About’ page in the blog – discuss first

Your teacher will do this for the class blog. Go to your blog dashboard. Click on the arrow next to pages. Click on ‘All pages’.  Hover under ‘Sample Page’ and click on edit. Delete what is already in the white body of your page.  Click on the kitchen sink icon, to allow more options like pasting in a word document and changing colour of your fonts.

Discuss as a class what should be included in this page for all the world to see.  You can also change the title of the page eg All about us

When you have finished creating the ‘About’ page, click on blue button on the right ‘Update page’

Activity 4: Writing my first post

So that your readers get to know something interesting about you, your teachers want you to write a post titled’ 8 random facts about me’.  Check out these posts by students in other schools – Amber, Mrs Daugherty’s grade 5 students, another Amber

Make sure you read the comments on Mrs Daugherty’s class blog as her students have left lots of random facts that might give you some great ideas for your post.

To write your post, go to your dashboard, click on arrow next to post, add new, type in a title for your post and write the body of your post. Make sure your work is in sentences, paragraphs, if words need capital letters you have used them such as I or a person’s name. Tick the category “About us” .When finished click the Publish or review button.

Activity 5: Leaving a quality comment

As a class we will visit this blog and watch video created by some grade 3 students with their teacher. What do they expect if you leave a comment on their blog? What are you going to accept as a comment on your blog?

Extra activities to do

1. Leave a comment on a post on Mr Devil, Image a Day, Read all about it, DownUnder Squirrel.
2. Go to the list of students who are taking part in the March 2012  blogging challenge. Visit some of their blogs and leave some comments.
3. Visit the blogs of some of our students and leave some great comments.

Next lesson will be creating your avatar.

Image: ‘Keep up and blog on‘

Now is the time to begin your unknown journey into the world of blogging. Read and follow instructions carefully. Ask members of your team if unsure.

During the first week of the new semester, you will need to check if you have completed the following things.

Activity 1: Change your email signature.

Log onto your computer. Then from the school intranet page, right click, open email in a new tab. Change your signature by click on options> edit your signature> make it look like this

• John Doe – your name
• 6/7H Mrs Stag – your class and home group teacher’s name
• 2012

then save and close twice.

Activity 2: Create a Blogging folder on your home drive.

Click on start icon on bottom left corner> click on computer> double click on your own network drive> right click then open ‘New’> Folder>name folder as blog2012

Activity 3: How to open a new document

From inside your blog2012 folder> right click on new>choose now which type of document you will be using eg Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel

To rename actually open the document, now go to top left Office button>save as whatever you will call your document.

Activity 4: Create an ‘about page’ that will be put in your blog later.

Check out these student about pages. Notice they have been aware of  internet safety – not mentioned surname, school, town they live in, email address

• Teegan from New Zealand age 11
• Katy from USA age 13
• Anna from Australia age 12
• Daniel from Australia age 12
• Alanna from Australia age 12
• Georgia from Australia age 12

Open a Word document, rename as an “About Page” for you to use in your blog when you have one. Remember every three or so minutes to save your work. When you have completely finished your ‘About’ page activity, save your document.

Write your own ‘About’ page or if you already have one, update your ‘About’ page in your blog.

Activity 5: Email your document to your classroom teacher

• Open a new email.
• In To box, put in your  teacher’s email address. New students, please add Miss Wyatt’s email address too.
•  In Subject box, put my about page.
• In the body of the email, mention what you are sending your teacher. Also include a sentence asking for a blog to be created or telling your teacher that you already have a blog. eg
  • Hi Miss W, I am sending you my about page. Could you please create me a blog to start using next week? Thank you.
• In icons, find the paperclip and click, choose your file to attach by clicking on browse, (go to folder and find your document), click attach, then close.
• On your email, you should now see an attachment underlined, click send.

Activity 6: Change our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page

Look at these class blogs ‘About’ pages. What do you think would need to be included in our ‘About’ page for ‘Kids in the Mid’ to represent us in 2012?

• LMS Eagles – grade 6 social studies
• Mr Miller - grade 6 class
• Mr Carson – Canada
• Mr Carmichael - Canada
• Miss T  - New Zealand

Still got time left this week? Check out the links under challenges on the left sidebar.

• Visit the student blogging challenge for March this year and visit some students who will be taking part.
• Visit Downunder Squirrel’s blog and create an avatar using paint or something similar. Attach to an email and send to Miss W.
• Visit Davo the Devil’s blog and leave a comment about a visit to a student.
• Visit the blogs of some of your friends in other classes. Leave them a comment on a post you found interesting.

Leave a comment at the end of this post telling us three things we should include in our ‘About’ page for Kids in the Mid. 

Image: ‘Long Train Home – Explored!‘

Last week, you learnt how to create a link on your post. Your readers could click on the link and it would take them to another website or blog.

This week we are going to look at linking images in your posts. Images certainly make posts more interesting to read especially when the image relates to the information in the post.

Can you use any images that are on the internet? The answer is definitely NO!!

But can’t I just go to Google search and use images from there? The answer is definitely NO!!

Not all images on the internet are free for everyone to use. Some newspapers have paid a lot of money for a photographer to take images for their newspaper articles and if you want to use these images, you might have to pay money to either the newspaper or photographer. These photos or blog/website articles are usually called COPYRIGHT.

But there are some photographers who take photos that are free for others to re-use or mix or use for public display. These images have a CREATIVE COMMONS license. Check out this website for information about Creative Commons. Each country has slightly different licenses.

If you get images from Flickr, then here are what the different licenses mean (Thanks Sue Waters from Edublogs for this image)

Notice, whatever license you use, you HAVE to attribute the original author. This means you have to acknowledge the person who created the original image. At the end of your blog post, or linked within the post,  you must attribute the image and you must link the photo back to its original photo page.

Well, how can I safely find images to use in my posts?

Check out Miss T’s blog for lots of places to get photos. They might not all be creative commons so be careful to check out the license involved.

When using flickrcc, you right click on the photo and copy the image location or image URL. Paste this in first when you upload. Then choose where photo will be on post: left or right are good choices. Now go back to the image on flickrcc and copy the http:// part above the photo. Put this in the section: link image to. Remember finally to add the attribution at the end of the post.

When using Compfight, make sure on the left sidebar you have the following in black: tags only, creative commons, show originals and safe.

Once you have found an image you want to use, click on it. You will now go to the image in flickr. Make sure you only use the small or medium size image.

When using Pics4Learning the images are often very large. You might have to download to your computer hard drive, then resize. Remember still to give attribution about where you found the image.

Now for some fun with images

1. Write a post explaining the differences in creative commons licenses. Include an image from Flickrcc giving correct attribution.

2. If you have used images in posts already, go back and give correct attribution or find new images to use with attribution.

3. Write a post about your favourite colour. Find three images and include them in a gallery – check here how to upload and insert a gallery into your blog.

4. Write a sentence using only images – give attribution at end of post.

5. Write a post explaining how to insert images in a post. Include some good sites to find images that are creative commons.

Attribution for images used in this post.

Creative commons license by Sue Waters

Los Angeles from the air by Marshall Astor

Establishing Shot: The 405 by Atwater Village Newbie

Mission Beach Boardwalk by Melinda Kolk

One of the most important skills you need to know when blogging is how to:

• link to other people’s websites,  blogs and photos

Let’s look at creating a link.

You recently visited another blog such as “The Blogger’s Cafe” , “Student Blogging Challenge” or “Travelling with Mr Davo Devil“. While you were there you got a great idea for a post you could write about on your blog eg the parks we have in our local area.

When you write your post about the parks, it is polite to acknowledge that you got the idea from another blog. To do this, you include a link back to the post  where you got the idea.

So how do you add a link? Sue Waters, from Edublogs, does this very well, so I am going to have you visit her post about linking.

…………………………………………………

To prove to your ICT teachers that you can add links in your posts (this is part of your checklist activities), write a post about linking and why it is important. Add links in the post to both this Kids in the Mid post and also to Sue Water’s post.

Also write a post about visiting three of your school friends’ blogs. Write about a post you enjoyed reading in their blogs and create a link back to that post.

This might start like this:

Today I visited Isabella’s blog and read her post about the Scout and Guide regatta. Reading that brought back memories of the times I also went to Snug for the regatta when I was in Guides.

Looking at Isabella’s blog, did she link correctly in her posts? How can you tell if she did or not?

Or maybe you could write a post about joining the student blogging challenge. Make sure you include a link to the post about registering and also a link to the page with the student participants (Check in header area). Mention some activities you think we should do in the challenge. Maybe you have started visiting other student blogs from overseas. What did you enjoy about their blog posts?

Attribution:

Your first seven activities included:

• creating an email signature
• learning how to create folders and documents on your school computer hard drive
• looking at student about pages and creating yours on Word
• attaching your Word document to an email asking for a blog to be created for you to use and sending it to your ICT teacher
• looking at class about pages and recommending in a comment what we should include on our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page or for Mr Devil’s about page

Your next six activities included:

• learning to log into your blog
• changing settings such as password, appearance and widgets
• editing your about page
• writing a post
• leaving a comment

Now someone else is going to help you this week to create an avatar.

Once you are starting to create online, you often need to have a special identity. This is usually in the form of an avatar. You created them for World Maths Day, you have them in Facebook and, of course, you have them when leaving comments on blogs. So, this week’s activities relate to avatars and online identities including creating a positive digital footprint.

Activity 1 – make an avatar

Step 1. Create an avatar for your blog and for you to use when leaving comments.

Avatars are a representation of yourself. Check out this post about avatars.  Create your avatar using one of the websites below. Sue Waters from ‘The Edublogger‘ has written a great post about avatars, including giving instructions on how to save them and then upload to an ‘Edublogs’ blog. Many of the sites mentioned below are included in her post.

Most important is remember to save as a jpeg file if using Edublogs.

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self – middle left
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer – middle right
• The Hero Factory – far left
• Adventurer Maker – girls only
• Wimp yourself - relates to ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’
• Mess Dudes
• Hogwarts student – girls only
• Mii character
• Harry Potter and others saves as GIF
• Caracature
• Block head – like Lego

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar -  far right

But over 13, need parental or guardian permission for these.

• Meez
• Tizme
• Wee World
• Voki
• Bless this chick
• Hero Machine
• Marvel Hero
• Doll Maker
• Grabba Beast
• Sega Sonic
• Manga face maker
• Make your avatar

14 or older with parental permission

• Face your Manga

Step 2. Using printscreen to save your avatar or use the snipping tool

So you decided to create an avatar like “Hero Factory” or “Build your wildself” or “Mini Mizer” where you can’t save it easily. You need to take a picture of the screen first. Most computers have a printscreen button on the keyboard or if using Windows 7 you have an icon called “snipping tool”.

When you press printscreen or use the snipping tool an image of your screen or part of it  is now copied to your clipboard. You will still need to crop and resize to get an avatar that fits well on your blog.

Open MS Paint and click control V to paste your image from the clipboard. To save, you need to go to File>Save As> change the name of the file to yourname with ava eg  sueava then underneath change the file type to JPEG. Make sure you save your avatar to your drive.

Go to your drive, right click on the icon for your avatar image and choose “Open with” choose MS Picture Manager. This might be in Microsoft office tools.

In the icons at the top, go to View> task pane.  On the right go to edit pictures > crop.  Now move the black bars on the side of your image in, to crop your picture to what you want in your avatar.

Click OK, then back to edit pictures. Now click on resize. In the box “custom width and height” put  97 in both boxes. These numbers might be slightly different but one has to be 97 and the other smaller than 97. Click OK.

Back up to file>save as> call it sueava2 or similar> make sure it is still JPEG. Make sure you have saved it to your drive again.

Step 3. Upload avatar to your Edublogs blog

Now to upload to your blog.  Go to your dashboard> users>your avatar> browse to find your image on your school H drive>alternate upload.  This is your comment avatar.

Now for your blog avatar. Dashboard>appearance>widget> blog avatar drag to your sidebar.  To upload the avatar, dashboard>settings>blog avatar> browse to find your image on your school H drive>alternate upload. Go to your blog page and refresh. Your blog avatar should appear on your blog now.

If it now looks like a black coloured square then you haven’t cropped the image to the correct size in step 2 using printscreen. Or maybe you didn’t save the image as a JPEG in step 2 using printscreen.

Activity 2 – Write a post describing your avatar.

How much does it look like you? What sort of personality does your avatar have? What makes it typically you? Remember to include your avatar as an image in your post.

Activity 3 – Register for the student blogging challenge

The first set of activities will soon be published for the blogging challenge. There could be over 1000 students from 16 countries taking part, most of them your age. Make sure you get ready to complete the first activities.

Activity 4 – Visit 10 student blogs in the challenge where you have the same interests.

Write a post telling me who you visited and what post you commented on in their blog. Why did you comment on that post?

Extra activity – Create 9 different avatars and save them to your H drive.

Now create an animoto with your images to embed in your blog – remember to get a special code from Miss W. if you create lots of avatars.

If you don’t want to create an animoto, then add the avatars in a gallery to your blog post. Check out how Max created his animoto.

Your first seven activities included:

• creating an email signature
• learning how to create folders and documents on your school computer hard drive
• looking at student about pages and creating yours on Word
• attaching your Word document to an email asking for a blog to be created for you to use and sending it to your ICT teacher
• looking at class about pages and recommending in a comment what we should include on our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page or for Mr Devil’s about page

Now let’s head into week 2 of our ICT basic blogging activities.

Activity 1: Learning to log in to my dashboard

Miss W. created a blog for me. I received an email at school from edublogs which gave me my username and a funny looking password.  So what do I do now?

• As you are at our middle school blog, just right click on your name on the left sidebar and open in a new tab.
• Find the Meta widget and click on ‘Log in’
• If you have a blog from last year and do not have a Meta widget, then after your URL type  /wp-admin
• This will now open to a log in area, where you put in your username and the password that is in your email.  I suggest you copy and paste the password exactly. Untick the remember me box as lots of other students use your school computer.
• If you have forgotten your password from last year, then put in your school email address or your blog username  and ask for a new password. Check your email and follow their instructions.

Activity 2: Change some of the major settings.

The dashboard is where you do all your blogging work.  But so you can login very easily without having to copy that password each time, you need to do the following things using the left-hand sidebar:

Change password: Click on users> your profile

Put in your first name, nickname ( be sensible and internet safe with choice of nickname), password (something you can remember easily – maybe same as school password), same password a second time, then finally update profile button. When that has updated go back in and choose from drop down link for display name publicly as. Update profile button again.

Change name of your blog: Settings > general

Change your blog title and tagline – again be internet safe in what you choose. Make sure timezone is Tasmania and choose how you want dates and times to show on your blog. Finally save changes button.

Notification of comments: Settings > discussion

Tick the following boxes: all default article settings; other comments – boxes 1, 4 and 5;  before a comment appears – box 1.  If you are going to visit your blog dashboard regularly then you might not need an email sent otherwise click the email me when comment held for moderation.

Further down the page under avatars – show avatars, G rating, then choose what avatar will appear if a reader has not created their own. Finally save changes button.

Changing the theme of your blog: Appearance > themes

Only click on preview if you want to see what it will look like, activate when you have decided definitely on that theme. You can change your theme as often as you like as you are a moderator of your blog. Do you want 1 or 2 sidebars on your blog?

Widgets you must have: Appearance > widgets

You must have the following widgets: Blog avatar, pages, recent comments, recent posts, links, categories, Meta

Activity 3: Editing my ‘About’ page in the blog

Go to your blog dashboard. Click on the arrow next to pages. Click on ‘All pages’.  Hover under ‘About’ and click on edit. Delete what is already in the white body of your page.  Click on the kitchen sink icon, to allow more options like pasting in a word document and changing colour of your fonts.

Paste in your about page document then change text colours if you need to.

When you have finished creating the ‘About’ page, click on blue button on the right ‘Update page’

Activity 4: Writing my first post

So that your readers get to know something interesting about you, Mr Clark and I want you to write a post titled’ 8 random facts about me’.  Check out these posts by students in other schools – Amber, Mrs Daugherty’s grade 5 students, another Amber

You might want to leave a great comment on one of those blogs or add a comment to Miss W’s post about random facts.

To write your post, go to your dashboard, click on arrow next to post, add new, type in a title for your post and write the body of your post. Make sure your work is in sentences, paragraphs, if words need capital letters you have used them such as I or a person’s name. When finished click the Publish button.

Activity 5: Leaving a comment

Visit this blog and watch this video created by some grade 3 students with their teacher. What do they expect if you leave a comment on their blog? What are you going to accept as a comment on your blog?

Activity 6: What have I completed

Remember to check the pages in the header ‘Welcome to 2011′ to see if your parent has left a comment yet. Then look at the page ‘Students check here’ to see what Mr Clark and I have already marked off that you have finished.

Extra activities to do

1. Leave a comment on a post on Kids in the Mid or Mr Devil.
2. Think about some topics you can write about for your early posts in your blog. If you are a student in your second year of ICT with Miss W, then what type of passion blog will you create? Check some of them out on the left sidebar of this blog. Remember you can create a passion blog with some friends in other classes as well – check out the cricket blog run by Daniel, Braydon, David and Liam.
3. Go to the list of students who took  part in the March 2011  blogging challenge. Visit some of their blogs and leave some comments.
4. Visit the blogs of some of our students and leave some great comments.

Next lesson will be creating your avatar.

On this post on Kids in the Mid, leave a comment telling me what you think a good comment will look like.

During the first week of the new semester, you will need to check if you have completed the following things.

Activity 1: Change your email signature.

Log onto your computer. Then from the school intranet page, right click, open email in a new tab. Change your signature by click on options> edit your signature> make it look like this

John Doe – your name

6/7H Mrs Stag – your class and home group teacher’s name

2011

then save and close twice.

Activity 2: Create an ICT folder on your home drive.

Click on start icon on bottom left corner> click on computer> double click on your own network drive> right click then open ‘New’> Folder>name folder as ICT2011

Activity 3: How to open a new document

From inside your ICT2011 folder> right click on new>choose now which type of document you will be using eg Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel

To rename actually open the document, now go to top left Office button>save as whatever you will call your document.

Activity 4: Create an ‘about page’ that will be put in your blog later.

Check out these student about pages. Notice they have been aware of  internet safety – not mentioned surname, school, town they live in, email address

• Teegan from New Zealand age 10
• Katy from USA age 12
• Anna from Australia age 11
• Daniel from Australia age 11
• Alanna from Australia age 11
• Georgia from Australia age 11

Open a Word document, rename as an “About Page” for you to use in your blog when you have one. Remember every three or so minutes to save your work. When you have completely finished your ‘About’ page activity, save your document.

Write your own ‘About’ page or if you already have one, update your ‘About’ page in your blog.

Activity 5: Email your document to your ICT teacher

• Open a new email.
• In To box, put in your ICT teacher’s email address. Students in 6/7A or 6/7B, please add Miss Wyatt’s email address too.
•  In Subject box, put my about page.
• In the body of the email, mention what you are sending your teacher. Also include a sentence asking for a blog to be created or telling your ICT teacher that you already have a blog. eg
  • Hi Miss W, I am sending you my about page. Could you please create me a blog to start using next week? Thank you.
• In icons, find the paperclip and click, choose your file to attach by clicking on browse, (go to folder and find your document), click attach, then close.
• On your email, you should now see an attachment underlined, click send.

Activity 6: Change our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page

Look at these class blogs ‘About’ pages. What do you think would need to be included in our ‘About’ page for ‘Kids in the Mid’ to represent us in 2011?

• LMS Eagles – grade 6 social studies
• Mr Miller - grade 6 class
• Mr Carson – Canada
• Mr Carmichael - Canada
• Miss T  - New Zealand

Activity 7 :  ‘Students check here’

In the pages linked at the top of the header, click on ‘Students check here’.  Find your class and name; are there any activities Mr C or Miss W  could mark off already? Leave a comment on that page.

Still got time left this week? Check out the links under challenges on the left sidebar.

• Visit the student blogging challenge from March this year and visit some students who took part.
• Leave a comment at the Blogger’s Cafe.
• Visit Mr ‘Davo’ Devil’s blog and create an avatar using paint or something similar. Attach to an email and send to Miss W.
• Visit the blogs of some of your friends in other classes. Leave them a comment on a post you found interesting.

Leave a comment at the end of this post telling us three things we should include in our ‘About’ page for Kids in the Mid. Or leave a comment about what needs to be added at Mr Davo Devil’s blog.