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,

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‘

It’s a new year, 2012. Miss W is not at school every day, but she will be visiting on Wednesdays and Thursdays to help with blogging, both individual student blogs and classroom blogs which your homegroup teachers will be creating.

When in the computer lab on these two days you will be working and sitting  in small teams. Your team will have some students who had blogs last year and they will be available to help those students who are new to blogging. At the end of each lesson, your team will need to tell your teacher how many points from 1-5 you think you earned as a team.

In the comments below, write about:

• what you think a 5 point team will have done in the lesson or
• what you want to put on your blog this year or
• what skills you have to help your team or
• what could be included on your classroom blog

CONGRATULATIONS,

YOU HAVE WON $5000

FOR A 7 DAY XMAS/SUMMER HOLIDAY!

You have $5000 to spend on a holiday somewhere in the world.

You might want to go somewhere in Tasmania, Queensland, or Victoria! Some of you might want to visit family or friends. Others might want to go to a resort or drive around in a campervan.

Use the internet to find the cost and other information about your transport, for example, airfares, tickets on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry or car hire, accommodation, location etc.

YOUR TASK: (3 Word Docs to prepare.)

1. PREPARE AN ITINERARY: What you do each day.
2. PREPARE A BUDGET: List all details and costs like return airfares, accommodation, vehicle hire, entertainment and daily budget for meals/spending etc.
3. PREPARE A TRAVEL DIARY: Write and illustrate a travel diary of your trip.

These internet sites will help you:

Airfares….Jetstar, Flight Centre, Virgin Australia, Qantas, Tiger Airlines. (remember to shop for cheapest flights.)

Accommodation…..Go to your resort direct or search using your location, for example, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Launceston.

These sites offer deals; www.wotif.com , www.quickbeds.com , www.takeabreak.com.au .

If you want to stay in a resort or have a package deal combining airfares, accommodation, try Flight Centre or Harvey Norman Travel.

Vehicle Hire…. Hertz, Eurocar, Budget and many others.

GOOD LUCK AND ENJOY YOUR HOLIDAY!

Last week you got to look at some of Edublogs Award winning blogs. Well, this week the nominations are in and our very own Miss Wyatt has been nominated for the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award!

Mr Davo Devil, not to be left out, has been nominated for ‘Best New Blog’.

You can look at the other nominations by going to The Edublogs Awards blog and checking out each of the categories and the 2011 nominees.

If you want to vote for one of the nominations, you need to use a computer or phone that isn’t in our computer labs or classrooms. The IP address is the same for all the school computers and, if you all vote from school, Edublogs will think the same person is voting hundreds of times and the votes won’t be counted!

You may be able to use a relatives computer, or maybe your parents could vote from their work computer.

The ‘Best Student Blog’ nominations are well worth a look, as are the ones for ‘Best Class Blog’.

Browse through ‘Best Educational Use of A Social Network’ as well, you might get some ideas!

Remember to vote for Miss Wyatt and Mr Davo Devil (aka Miss W.)!

http://edublogawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/edublogs-nominated-bestclassblog.png

Lots of people have worked hard on their blogs this year and have developed some wonderfully interesting ‘web spaces’ about all sorts of things.

Edublogs gives awards every year for the best blog in various categories. They rely on people’s nominations to make the decision.

Miss W. has nominated her ‘best blogs‘ in a post on her blog ‘Miss W. and her Smartboard’. Take a look and see what you think of the blogs Miss W. has nominated.

The Edublogs Awards Blog has a list of award winners from previous years.

Take a look at some of these blogs and write a post about three of the best ones you come across. Explain why you think they are the ‘best blogs’.

Hi there. Most people love to participate in sporting and or recreational activities in the outdoors at various times of the year. Winter in Australia always means Aussie Rules, soccer, hockey, netball etc in Tassie. Over summer it is cricket, camping, car and motor bike racing,fishing and surfing. What activities and or sports do you like or participate in over the winter and summer?

Surfing, surf life saving and kayak racing are my favourite sports. Follow these links out to find out about what goes on.

Create a post telling what you enjoy with a link to your favourite sport and or recreation. Make sure to save it in one of your categories!

Mr Clark

Image: ‘Surfing Burleigh Heads_1031‘

In the Dictionary all words are organised under in alphabetical order. In your wardrobe at home clothes are placed in particular draws and hanging areas…in other words ‘organised’. At school your work is organised into specific books for each subject. On your IPOD music is stored in categories for ease of retrieval.

This is what we call ‘categorising’ which effectively enables us to more quickly find and retrieve things we are looking for. This is even more important as we collect ever more material and store it! Well organised ‘bloggers’ also categorise all their posts.

Some students have already found this mechanism for placing their posts etc into categories.Have a quick check on some of your friends blogs who have already created categories to see how effective  using categories is can be.

1. SO! THIS IS HOW YOU CAN DO IT FOR NEW POSTS.

When you write a post your final action is to hit the blue coloured  ‘Publish’ button on the right hand side of your Dashboard so it is saved on your blog. If you LOOK carefully just under that blue button you will  a section named ‘Categories’.  You will see various suggestions for ‘categories like; Home, Friends, School, Sport, Music and others. You can also make up other names for post categories that suit your posts. So when you write your next post, and  BEFORE you ‘Publish ‘it, click on the required category and the post will be saved under that heading. SIMPLE!

2. NOW, WHAT ABOUT EXISTING UNCATEGORISED POSTS YOU ASK!

Again, this is quite easy. All you need to do is go to your Dashboard and bring up ALL POSTS. Then select the post you want to’ categorise’ by clicking the ‘QUICK EDIT’ button. Then you can click on the categor/ies you require and finally hit the ‘UPDATE’ button.  Now, go through your posts and place them in categories you choose……

WEll DONE TO EVERYONE for completing this task today!

Mr Clark.