You’d think I’d know better after the 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and Comment Challenge but NO! Why? Because I know how much everyone benefits from these Challenges.
So when Miss Wyatt told me she had adapted the concept of these challenges to organised Blogging Competition specifically for student and class blogs I knew I had to MAKE TIME to be involved.
About The Student Blogging Competition
The Student Blogging Competition runs for 10 weeks and commenced 22 September. Miss Wyatt is posting weekly tasks on her blog. So far we have students participating from Australia, Canada, Thailand, India, New Zealand, Portugal, United Kingdom and United States.
I’ve been helping by organising student details to aid students ability to connect with each other and leaving comment on student blogs to encourage them.
Understandably it’s been busy but I’ve solved by cloning myself — shame that clones don’t always look like the original (check out the photos of my clones here!)
Getting Involved
There is still time to join the Competition If you are a student or a teacher with a class blog — just drop past Miss Wyatt’s blog and register your details! PLEASE NOTE: Any students who are on holidays can start when they get back to school!
We’d also love some helpers! The more assistance we receive the better we can support and encourage the students. What ever help you can provide would be GREAT.
Here are areas where we would love help:
- Can you check the Competition info page – how does it sound? Have we missed anything?
- Here are this participants list – is there any improvements we could make?
- If you are a teacher whose students are doing the challenge – Can you encourage your students to visit the participants list and get them to visit student blogs from different schools?
- If you are a student – please visit the participants list, make sure the link to your blog is there and when clicked it takes you to your blog.
- Educators – please take the time to visit some student blogs and leave comments for encouragement. You can keep an eye on the posts at this URL or you can subscribe to the feed.
Why Get Involved?
If you’re an educator wondering how to use blogs with students this is an excellent opportunity for you:
- Kick start blogging with your students
- Observe how different educators are using blogs with students
- Increase your own skills
I’ve gained a lot this week interacting with the students such as:
- Worked hard trying to solve riddles – this one’s still stumping me!
- Passed a Noun quiz made by the student using MyStudiyo – almost failed 😦
- Realised students are more imaginative than me. I struggled answering simple questions like If I was an animal, which animal would I be?, What 3 things would you bring if marooned on an isolated island? But surprise, surprise didn’t struggle with White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate 🙂
- Stressed whether the baby doll would be okay and if the science teacher would survive daycare.
- Who I am when they did a review of my blog’s “About page’ versus Miss Wyatt’s ‘About page’ – I’m eccentric, charming in a relaxed way and people worry when I sneeze.
It’s really exciting to see the students enjoying the pleasures of blogging to such an extent they are writing posts outside of school hours – check out C.J’s routine! Many of the students have similar routines.
My only wish? Would Paul Bogush please end the suspense and tell us the answer to the riddle!
FINAL THOUGHTS
Hope you take the time to check out the student blogging competition and gain from it as much as we are!
Please feel free to share your own riddles, tricky questions and activities that the students may enjoy by either writing your own post (and link to this post) or leaving a comment. Likewise students – please feel free to do the same and see if you can stump the other students and educators.
In the words of Sarah “The greatest feeling is when you make a difference for the better” — so join us to inspire others.
Thanks to Miss Wyatt for organising this competition!
Sue Waters 
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