Ok, as we get ready to head into our long Easter break we need to think about tidying up our blogs. By now each student who has been given a blog should have completed the following:

• Recent posts where the spelling and punctuation have been checked thouroughly by yourself and possibly another student
• A Clustr Map to keep track of visitors
• An About Me page which conforms to our strict safety rules
• A post about a favourite song
• A comment on someone else’s blog which also conforms to our commenting rules
• A header and background which are free to use, preferably your own photos

This week we will all have the usual 40 minute session during our literacy rotations, but you can always do extra at home and during recess and lunch should you wish. Once we’ve tidied up we’ll be ready for our next task. If you aren’t sure about anything you can ask me or one of the more experienced bloggers.  🙂

I’m so pleased with how everyone is trying to stick to the safe blogging rules and trying to comment appropriately on each others’ blogs. In fact, I think we’re doing so well that we need another challenge, so I’ve set a new task, well, two tasks actually. First, you need to create an “About Me” page. Use the Edublogs Help Guides on Pages to find out how to do it. The Guides are located on the top left of your dashboard and have a little life-belt image. Think carefully about the type of information you reveal – be very general and leave out personal information and specific details. For the second part you have to think of a song that has meaning for you. Write about why the song is important, what it means to you, how it makes you feel, what memory it brings back.

Finally, the new blogs are up and the students are really starting to find their feet. What has impressed me most is the care they have taken with their choices of headers and backgrounds. Prior to starting the blogs we all did a lot of work on copyright and internet safety and it’s clear that this has paid off with students creating and using their own images. The students are also thinking about the information they reveal about themselves and have tried their utmost to leave specific times, places and dates from their posts.

One of the great incentives for having a blog is that it forces us as writers to try and produce an error free product each time. While this isn’t always achieved it’s great to see students checking and revisiting their work in order to show themselves in the best light possible. One or two of us are still checking our writing following the initial excitement of simply getting some posts published and they will be polished up this week.

A special mention to Monika who has really taken to blogging in an impressive way.

Over the next few weeks the first group will develop their skills until they are ready to tutor the next set of budding bloggers. I hope we may even have the whole class online before the end of the first term.

Now the blogs have been created it’s about time we started moving things along. This week sees the first blogging task to be set for the new group of students bloggers. Hopefully, by the end of this week, it would be great to see all the blogs have a set theme, header, background and greeting. Also, an initial post to welcome people to your blog would be a great idea, or, if you feel ready, a post on a topic you feel is worth sharing with the world. Don’t forget, all posts and images need to adhere to our strict code of conduct. The writing has to be clear and accurate and the images must either be your own or licensed for re-use. Good luck and have fun!