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!‘

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

G’day students at Kids in the Mid. Thanks very much for promoting my blog while I am travelling around Canada/USA with Miss W.

We have already visited some classes. Check out the posts they wrote about us with Ms Thordarson, Mrs Hembree and Mrs Smith .

Since we visited all those classes, they have been asking lots of questions especially about Australia here on my blog. I was wondering, if any of you had time, if you could research the questions and leave some answers for the students.

If you have any questions about Canada or USA then add your questions on those pages.

Also one student from Mrs Hembree’s school has only just started his blog – perhaps you could visit him especially if you like star wars.

Breaking News Breaking News Breaking News

Miss W bought another little Tasmanian Devil that she is going to give away to the student at her school who participates the most in leaving comments, asking questions and answering questions on my blog. In the lead so far is Chloe aka Clem.

Sorell Council is conducting an important survey of young people to assist in future planning of services, programs, events and facilities.

Wherever you live in the Sorell Municipality: Dodges Ferry, Primrose Sands, Forcett, Sorell, Midway Point etc, here is your chance to have a direct influence on what happens for teenagers in your area.

Maybe you feel a regular local bus service is needed, or a better skating facility.Maybe your local environment needs help or better access to services and more recreational programs are needed.

Follow this link  and invest a few minutes of your time to have a say in your area’s future.

THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO HAVE A SAY! . There are some great prizes to be won. The Survey closes on September 2.

Image: ‘Question mark made of puzzle pieces‘

Miss W. showed her literacy class a great website for creating your own stories. If you want to join Storybird, then see Miss W who will add you to the middle school account.

Here is the book Miss W. created.

Sleeptime countdown on Storybird

What genre of book would you create? What would be the basic storyline?

This week is science week in Australia and Mrs P. ( one of our science teachers)  has asked me to add a link here to an activity she thinks you would all like to do.

The multitasking test is a scientific research project. It takes 25 minutes to complete and you are requested to only do it once. You cannot save partway and you cannot start again.

When you click on the link below, you will have to fill in some information including an email address and your first name. Also remember to click the box at the bottom before you hit submit. They will then send you an email with a link for you to start the test.

Go here to sign up for the activity.  It is all about multitasking.

Of course, it is a well known fact that females can do more than one thing at a time but is that true.

If you are a person who multitasks often, are you actually learning more or not?

Image: ‘Cyberlife‘

Have a go at this task by the end of the week and leave a comment on this post about how well you did.

During January, I found another teacher in Tasmania who was learning to blog. Her students now have a class blog and they want our help.

I am sure you all love eating ‘Smarties’ but go to their blog and help fill in their survey.

Hint: You will need a 50g box of Smarties to help them.

Image: ‘Hungry anyone‘

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.

Thanks very much to those teachers and students who gave suggestions for what I could be named. I have checked through them and made my decision. Please vote for the name you prefer on this poll below.