Getting organizedWelcome to the organizational post for the 13th Student Blogging Challenge.
The first challenges will be published on September 14, 2014.
Registration forms for classes and students have already been published. These were each on a separate post with a Google form asking for certain information. Once you have registered as a class or student, you will be able to visit the participant pages which will be found in the header area of this blog as well as below here.
Class registration – Teachers only to fill in this form with their homeclass blog
Class participantsStudent registration – Students with their own individual blog which might be part of a course you are taking
Student participationWe will be having a badge again that can be added to your blog.
Read this post by the Edublogs team about how to add the badge to your sidebar. Depending upon the blogging platform you use, the text box or image widget might have a different name.
Can visitors leave comments and read posts on your blog?
You might think they can but try this. Go to your blog but don’t login. Most of your visitors wont be logging in. Can they read your posts? Now try to leave a comment on a post. Can you leave a comment? If you cant read a post or comment without logging in, then neither can your visitors. Check with your teacher about the settings you might need to change.
This post from last September challenge shows how to change privacy settings on edublogs, kidblog and blogger platforms.
Are you on the student list only once? Are you on the correct list?
Each challenge we don’t always have enough mentors to cover all students registered, so please check that you’re only on the list once. The list is found in the header area on the challenge blog. This is where you go to visit other student or class blogs. If you are on there more than once or in the wrong age group, leave me a comment on that page giving me first name, age, URL and what is wrong and I will make corrections on the spreadsheet.
How are you going to know when the challenge is published each week?
One way of being notified straight away is to subscribe to the challenge blog. Just fill in the subscribe by email widget at the top of the sidebar. An email will be sent to you as soon as I hit the publish button for a new post.
Is there a link to your class blog on your sidebar?
It is helpful for your visitors especially other teachers and your mentor, to have a link to your class blog on the sidebar of your blog. If using Edublogs, you might have a class blogs or class directory widget you can add to your sidebar. This will show your class blog and any other students blogs connected to the class blog.
Teachers using Edublogs,
here is the post on how to set up class blogs. Using another blogging platform, then check out the Get Help section on the sidebar of the challenge blog. This is where I have links to user guides, videos etc for a variety of blogging platforms. If you know of some more links I could add there please let me know in a comment on this post.
Any chance of some teachers from your school being mentors for the challenge?
Maybe some teachers who might be interested in blogging wouldn’t mind being a mentor in this challenge. Mentors when registering, I will need your name and a way to contact you to send reminders such as an email address. The results from this form will not be published, but you will also be asked to write a short bio in the comment area of
the registration post.
Finally, do we have a class which would like to run the challenge for one week?
This year I am hoping some classes will run one of the challenge weeks. If your class would like to run the challenge for one week, please leave a comment mentioning the theme you would like to set challenges for eg global issues, history, my country, nature, and the date for it to be published. The journalism students from Cactus Canyon, Arizona ran one of the challenge weeks during the March challenges.
Check it out here for an example of what can be done.
Get your blog organized, have at least one interesting post written before the challenge starts, so any visitors will be able to leave a comment.
You have just over 2 weeks till the first challenge is published.
