Most students usually start blogging in school classes, but true blogs are usually about one topic only eg. scrapbooking, quilting, NASCAR, cricket and so on. But within that topic you will have certain categories you write about. For example in cricket, you might have equipment, famous batters, famous bowlers, wicketkeepers, World Series, Local cricket, State cricket.

Week #2 Challenge, September 2012:

Write about your passions

Maybe it is LEGO, Moshi Monsters, MMORPG games, book reviews, minecraft, embroidery, travelling, crafts, art, architecture, poetry, farming, astronomy ……  The list is boundless.

You might want to start writing a series of posts about your passion. Remember your readers may know absolutely nothing about what you love, so start by explaining things well. Send them to other websites to get more information (called hyperlinking, which is one of the improve your blog activities  for this week)

But a blog post or page is written in your words, so don’t copy and paste from other websites – always use your own words first and then send your visitors to other places on the internet to find out more.

Write a post, create a movie, find websites, create a slideshow, create a comic – there are infinite ways to present your passion.

If you know of a great tool to use, leave a comment below with a link to the tool URL in your comment.

Don’t know what to write about:

Visit these websites – look around them and write a post about some part that intrigued you.

• Mrs Norton suggests looking at South Australian Child and Youth Health Network
• Jess suggests looking at CyberQuoll – starts with a lot of noise
• Check out the Digizen game
• PBS have a webonauts game – need flash and starts with noise so headphones might be good
• Learn about dental hygiene with these games
• What can you learn on the nourish interactive site?
• An ABC story about virtual exercise – what do you think?

Challenge #1– September 2012

 WEEK #4 CHALLENGE

Improving your blog

Instead of me writing about copyright and creative commons, finding images and including attribution, I am giving you a link to a post written by Sue Waters from Edublogs as part of the teacher challenge blog. Before including any images in your posts, please read this very carefully. It is a very long post, but worth reading especially for students with their own blogs and for teachers to use when teaching about images in blogs and creative commons.

Recently I have also written a couple of posts about using pics4learning, flickrccand google advanced search to find images. These are not as detailed as the post by Sue Waters.

Here is a link to the post I wrote in the March set of challenges. It includes two movies you might wish to use about creative commons and copyright andsuggestions for posts relating to using images.

Again this week, you have freedom of choice

• post about a topic of your own choice
• your passions, your favourites
• start a series of posts
• write your own story and have your visitors help guide the next part of the story
• an activity mentioned in a previous challenge that you didn’t have time to complete.

But if you are stuck for ideas

Check out these history, geography and languages activities I found on the web. You might like to write a post about which sites you visited.

• Teachers – take your classes on some virtual field trips with Scholastic, create a virtual mummy, gold fever in California,
• Check out a National Park in America, different deserts in USA,
• Look at the 7 wonders of the ancient world, webcams in Antarctica,
• Be a virtual tourist – choose your continent and visit through photographs and words.
• Explore an Egyptian pyramid, visit Old Sturbridge village, San Francisco Bridge virtual tour, tour colonial Williamsburg,
• Check out these museums: NMAAHC, Smithsonian for kids, HolocaustMemorial Museum online exhibits, Canadian War museum, lots ofmuseums and collections to check out, National Museum of Australia,Australian Museum collection, Australian War Memorial,
• Look at these familiar toys – which have you or your parents played with?
• Thinkquest activity: The Homefront in World War II,
• Become a history detective with PBS
• Lots of historical activities from BBC UK – includes ancient history as well as the main world wars.
• Over 100 history games sorted by tags

Play these online games: Remember don’t click on any ads as they often have spyware and viruses

• Captain of the Jamestown Colony
• Become part of the underground railway
• Do you have what it takes to be a viking?
• What happened at the first Thanksgiving?
• Are you a good mapmaker?
• Can you solve the history mystery?
• Journey with Lewis and Clark as they travel west
• Voyage to a new colony
• Work your way through the human ages
• Practise your  knowledge of the world
• Capital cities, states and regions – just click on the map
• Geography games with Nat Geo Kids
• Word search, jigsaw and other geography games sorted by continent
• National Geographic map puzzles
• Geography jigsaw puzzles from How Stuff Works
• Games and puzzles from Ramo Games
• Using latitude and longitude from Kids Geo, ABCya, Wartgames
• Learn languages by wordsearch, hangman and crosswords
• Makeuseof suggests 7 language games