I was checking my Google reader for the blogs I subscribe to and found a link to this games site.

Check out the games for a certain grade group.  For example you might look at the grade 6  games.

Play at least three different games from different subject areas.

Do you agree with the star rating they have provided?

Which game did you enjoy the most and why?

Leave your answer in a comment.

Try this jigsaw created by Miss W.

I was on a website called youplay and found a link to the Australian team for the Olympics.

Next year, the Olympics are being held in London and BK is in training for the 400m hurdles.

I wonder if you can get his time down to around 40 or so seconds.

To play the game, visit the site here. If you want your score to go on the leaderboard, you will need to leave a valid email address.

My best score is still over one minute. Leave a comment here about your best score.

Image: ‘221:365 Olympic snacks‘

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.

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.

Try embedding a jigsaw. Make sure you check size of width and height to see if you can change them. Also remember to copy the code, come to your post dashboard, write your post including title, tags, categories then change to HTML tab.

Paste the code in and immediately hit the publish button.

You’ll notice we have a new widget in our blog sidebar – it links to a great game that helps with eradicating hunger around the world.

When you go to Free Rice, sign up using your blog username and a suitable password you can remember. When you have been notified of your membership, log in and join the group sormid67. This is being run by Miss W or tasteach.

I wonder how many grains of rice we could earn as a middle school during the second half of the year?

To find out more about eradicating hunger and how you can help, visit these websites:

World Food Program – check out the student resources

Women4women – check out the video and the choices women have to make regarding food

Do you know of any other games we could be using that are about problems around the world?

Leave a comment here when you have joined and tell us how many grains of rice you earned on your first day.

PS You might need parental permission if under 13.

World Maths Day and World Spelling Day are over at 10pm Friday evening Australian daylight saving  time.

Did you take part in either of these events at home?

I know many of you did at school. Miss W had a full computer lab most recess and lunch times this week so students could build up their scores in the events.

Which event did you prefer – maths or spelling and why?

I wonder how many different countries we played against?

In the computer lab I am going to put up a map of the world and a white board marker. Please find and mark in at least three countries you played against.

Here are some statistics I have just had sent to me in an email.

Leave a comment about your thoughts on World Maths Day and World Spelling Day.

Attribution: Thanks to the Ripple Effect blog for the images.

I noticed many of the students at school, especially the boys were into gaming. After I asked which games in particular, they mentioned ‘Runescape.’

“Would I be interested in this, do you think?” I asked.

“Yes, have a go, Miss Wyatt.”

So here I am, a beginner  in the world of Runescape.  As you can see from my skill levels, I am good at:

• firelighting
• wood chopping
• fishing
• mining
• smithing
• prayer
• cooking
• attack

Guys, what do I need to do to get my levels up in the other areas?

I have completed the beginner tasks in Lumbridge and Draynor. If ever you meet tasteach, please give her some help.

I was reading Miss Nichol’s blog and found this excellent geo greeting site where she sent a message to her students. Check out our blog name using this website.

I wonder if you can find every letter of the alphabet on a Google map?  Are there any letters within Australia, as most of those on the site are from USA or Europe?

Leave a comment telling me where in Australia you found certain letters.