It’s been 31 Days of hard work, slogging away, often feeling like there was no way that we could make it over the steep mountains, but we have! 31Days to Build a Better Blog are over!
WOW what a fantastic journey, we have learnt so much, our blogs are better and more importantly we have formed a community that has worked together that found knowledge gain from the 31 Day Project was greater than working as individuals, because each individual sees a different perspective of the task – giving participants greater โfood for thought!โ
For many of us, the famous sweet twist of Chocolate to the 31 Day Project – 1 kg to the blogger who gains the most and $25 voucher to the reader who is the best commenter on a participants blog – was incentive to participate. As Christine commented in an email “While chocolate was a really fun way to kick this off, it has become so much more, the chocolate seems immaterial.”
Our most valuable gain during the 31 Day Project was our community which supported each other support during this intense time. For this reason we have decided to form a blogging support community at Ning (Betterblog.ning.com). This group is open and we invite you to join. We’ll be discussing blogging best practices and going through periodic weekly challenges designed to help us continue to develop our blogs.
Yes, the chocolate has become immaterial but Frances and I still have to honor our commitment to award the chocolate (a promise is a promise and we owe it to the sponsors of the Chocolate Challenge – The Chocolate Box and James Farmer from Edublogs). Thanks to our sponsors for donating these prizes! Both the winner of “best blogger” and “best commenter” was decided by the challenge participants.
Winners Are
And the winners of both the “best blogger” and “best commenter” are ……..Al Upton and The MiniLegends. Let me first clarify that it was never intended to award both prizes to the same individual/group however when I explain our reasons for choosing the MiniLegends I hope you will understand!
Here are the reasons why the MiniLegends were chosen as the Winners:
- The miniLegends are 8-9 years old – the same age as my youngest son. These kids are just starting their journey in life (reading and writing is a CHALLENGE still).
- For most of us the chocolate is immaterial but for the MiniLegends chocolate is not immaterial. The prize will encourage kids in this class to keep doing what they are doing and inspire other classes in their school to get involved. And WOW if this encourages more kids and teachers from schools all around the World to engaging their students in blogging how wonderful would that be!
The reader who is the best commenter on a participants blog
- It is hard it is for this age to write at 8-9 years old and yet the MiniLegends visited our blogs, read some of our posts (LOL even adults struggle reading my posts) and actually commented on our post
- Further more some of the miniLegends wrote incredible comments
All the blogging participants are about “Helping others and making a difference!” . Our greatest opportunity to make a difference is to award the prizes to the MiniLegends!
Thank You to My Readers
I also want to thank all of the readers who took the time in the past month to email me or comment on my posts. There are days when wonder why I keep doing what I do, and the comments and nice emails letting me know I’ve made a difference keeps me going. So thank you, my readers.
If I had to choose a reader that supported me the most on the tasks during this challenge (if you remove the blogging participants) it would be Gary Barber (Man With No Blog). Gary has been fantastic, for willingly and without being asked, mentoring, guiding and commenting on blogs on participants based in Western Australia. So have decided that I will personally organise something to thank him for his amazing support.
The End of the 31 Day Project?
The 31 Day Project may have ended, but this is NOT THE END for us!
The group that formed to meet this challenge has become very tight, and we are in the process of setting up a network for our community. WATCH this space – more about that later!
Final Thanks
As Michelle says “I do want to thank all of the 31 Day project participants. They’ve been a wonderful group of people to go with on this journey and I know that I couldn’t have even remotely completed this process without their support and ongoing motivation.”
So thanks to: Alex Miller, Al Upton and the MiniLegends, Cammy Bean, Christine Martell, Eklavya, Frances McLean, Kate Foy, Kate Quinn, Laura Whitehead, Michelle Martin , Paul Webster, Sue Hickton, Tim Davies – I could not have done it without YOU ALL!
27 thoughts on “And The Winners Are…..The MiniLegends!”
Congratulations Mini-Legends! You are legends.
Spread the word about blogging to everyone, and keep writing. You won’t ever, ever regret it.
Send us a picture of you enjoying the chocolate. That would be great!
Kate Foy
Congrats to the minilegends and everyone else, what a great month!
James
My congratulations to Mini legends. I hope these little kids will keep doing the good work. I agree that there could not be any better choice than them. Further my thanks to all fellow participants who made their contribution in making this blogging challenge a memorable one. I am looking forward to more of such group tasks.
Eklavya
glad to hear that the project was such a success! Congratulations to the Mini Legends!
Darren
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From the moment Laura handed the challenge over to me and I looked at the others taking part I thought there can only ever be one winner… or should I say one group of winners!
Well done mini-legends!!
I’ve been really impressed by all of your blogs – oh how I wished I could have blogged at school. Keep up your blogs
Thanks also Sue, Michele, Tim, Laura, Alex and all the others that have given me encouragement on this journey.
I hope we can keep in touch, read and commnet on each others blogging
Paul
Paul Webster
[…] days to a better blog’ challenge. The worthy winners were the mini-legends from Australia (see Sue’s post). I was personally particularly impressed by the dedication of both the class and their teacher in […]
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Thankyou for voting for us Sue.
You rock.
Alex
hi sue
thankyou for all of your genarosity andfor your vote for the winner
all the miniLegends aprisate your vote ๐
julian
Thankyou very very much Sue for choosing us to win the chocolate
compotion. We really thank you for it.
From Sarah!!!
sarah
Hi sue
Thanks for voting the MiniLegends.
I like chocolate.
jasper
Hi!
I am very happy we won the chcoclate.
myxuan
thanks sue tick.jpg
kelly
hi Sue
thanks for voting for us we are relly happy and did not think we would win most of us thought you would win from tennille
tennille
Hi Sue Waters
I just wanted to say Thank you for voting for us! I think we are really giong to enjoy the chocolate, Because someone in my class of the miniLegends this girl called Jess loves chocolate. Cheers Maddie ๐
Madeline
you are very very kind for leting us to win!!!!!!
Cheers Dilajla!!!!
Dilajla
hi sue thank for voting for us.
Allen
Hi Sue
Congratulations on completing the 31 day challenge, and also on your blog generally – I wandered over via the link from Judy’s blog and am so pleased I did … I often follow your comments in the edna groups too – thank you so much for how much you contribute to relative newcomers (and new Learnscopers) like me!
Melinda
Melinda Phillips
Sue, Al, and the minilegends rock ๐
heyjude
I was certainly a great month, very busy but wonderful unexpected spin offs from being a part of this. If it wasn’t for you Sue I would not
even have known about it. Now I am part of this great community of bloggers and our minilegends.
You are a great friend Sue who keeps me on my toes and has brought me into this great new world.
Thanks
๐
Frances
fmclean
congrats to the minilegends!
Kate
[…] the Minilegends might think they are the Winners of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog! But they’re not! (Great Sue, you just made a class of 8 and 9 year olds cry because after a […]
Mobile Technology in TAFE » Blog Archive » Has The 31 Days To Build A Better Blog Really Ended? I Think NOT!
Kudos to everyone for participating — and especially to the miniLegends! Congratulations!
..and Sue — you’ve got so much energy in this arena — thanks for being so inspiring and down-to-earth….
Cammy Bean
[…] Read entire post at Mobile Technology in TAFE […]
The chocolate blog » Blog Archive » And The Winners Areโฆ..The MiniLegends!
[…] class of 9 year olds in Australia with the support of their fabulous teacher Al Upton who won the Chocolate Challenge. Do take a look at the MiniLegends site, they’ve used VoiceThread recently which I mentioned […]
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