There is a lot to learn in this challenge so it will be running for a two week (fortnight) period. The next challenge will be posted on 2 April. It is also a chance for classes that have been on Spring break or holidays to do some catching up.

Admin for this challenge

1. Thanks to all those students, teachers and mentors who have been checking the student list for students mentioned more than once. If you haven’t checked yet, please make sure you are only listed once.
2. Also we still have some mentors not able to leave comments especially on those blogs from blogger or blogspot. Make sure you have Name/URL as an option when leaving comments.
3. Some students (who already have a mentor) will soon be deleted from the lists if they have not been participating in the challenge activities.
4. I have visited hundreds of blogs recently. I have left a comment, or flipped the post to our magazine or have mentioned your post in the next blogging challenge post. Have you found one of your posts mentioned yet?
5. We now have a few more students who have been asked to be mentors. They will be leaving comments and giving hints just like the adult mentors.

Teachers: Here is a lot of information regarding images, creative commons and copyright which you can use with your students or to refresh yourself about what is acceptable or not on public blogs.  The Edublogger also has a post on free image sources. Above the challenge blog header is a tools page containing a symbaloo with many tools to use on your blog – many relate to images.

Students and teachers please read this before doing the activities

This week’s activities are going to be fun but first there are some things you need to know so please read carefully.

I have been visiting many blogs over the last few weeks. Some students new to blogging have been writing some great posts while others who have been blogging for a bit longer have started adding videos and images to their posts.

Yes, this week we deal with using images, music and sounds in your posts.

But can’t I use any image, music or sound that is on the internet?

No, you must use creative commons or in some cases the fair use rule.

But where can I find these images, music and sounds? Can’t I use anything when I google an image?

No, your blog is public so you must use creative commons images, sounds, music and videos.

Sue Waters over at the teacher challenge has written a fantastic post about images, copyright and creative commons. I would suggest you all head over there to read the post. She explains about creative commons and the licences, attribution, how to find images for your blog and how to upload images to your blog. Most of this would be appropriate whether you are using Edublogs, blogger or any other blogging platform. This might be very wordy for some students, but Sue uses lots of images and how to do sections in her posts.

Other places to find information on creative commons

• Head to the creative commons website.
• Check out the CC wiki to find out what is happening in your country. What are the different licenses used?
• Teachers check out the education section of creative commons.
• Youtube allows creative commons for videos.
• Teachers: A fantastic guide to copyright, fair use and creative commons has been written by Ronnie Burt and I would suggest you read this to understand more about using images, music and video on your blogs. Also includes what might happen if you use an image etc incorrectly.
• Larry Ferlazzo also has a great “Best List for images” that you might want to check out as well.

Images and music for my powerpoint or slideshow:

Do you have compfight plugin for your blogging platform? Follow the instructions from Sue Waters’ post.

You will need to work out how to get the attribution to put on your posts. Check Sue Waters’  post to get more help and more places for images. This post from Edublogs explains how to add media in all its forms to your blog posts or pages. If using blogger, check out the posts from this blog.

Images

• Morguefile
• Open ClipArt
• Pics4learning
• Photosforclass including a review by CommonSense Education and how to cite

Make sure you check out the links under creative commons in the sidebar of the challenge blog.

Music and sound effects

Jamendo, CCMixter, post with 14 websites for music, post with 20+ websites for music, post with 55+ sites with sound effects

Now for the activities for this fortnight

Activity 1. Do some more research on the topic of attribution and licenses and perhaps create your own class video about using images, music and videos in class.

This video is the reaction of students in Mrs Yollis’ class when she mislabelled their artwork. How would you have felt?

Activity 2. Find an image or piece of music. Add it to your post (with attribution) and write a poem relating to the image or music. Invite your readers to write their own poems. Here is Fernando’s example, Samantha is confused

Activity 3. Similar to activity 2. Find an interesting landscape image (include attribution).  Write the beginning of a story relating to your image. Remember to include a conflict of some sort between your characters. Invite your readers to finish the story. How many different endings can you get? Which ending do you prefer? You might need to visit some other bloggers and invite them to finish your story. Remember to leave the URL of your post for them to click on.

Activity 4. Write a sentence using just images – no words OR find 5 images that create a story – again no words only the attribution for each image.

Activity 5. Create a slideshow, photo gallery or poster about your interests to add to your about me page or as a separate post. Your final slide should include attribution for each image.

Activity 6. Create your own images and add to a post of your choice. In your post add a link to the website or tool you used to create your image.

Other options for creating your own images include:

1. Comic Generators like MakeBeliefsComix.com,  ToonDoo
2. Photo Editors like Befunky, fd’s Flickr Tools
3. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle

Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts! Leave a comment on this post, if you or your class can recommend some other image sites to add to this list.

Activity 7.  Zoom out from an image

We first tried this activity in the challenge in September 2010. Choose a picture, and have your readers zoom out, so to speak, by leaving comments.  Check out the example from Huzzah who finished their story. If doing this activity, include the word ‘zoom’ in your title so I can find it easily. Remember to give attribution. Most important here is to read previous comments, so you can add to the story.

Check out these zoom pictures: Becky, Jacqueline, Abbey

Activity 8.  Go back to previous posts

If you have used images in any previous posts you have written, then you are ethically obliged to give the correct attribution or take the image out of the post if it does not have the right creative commons license.  Samudra  wrote a great post about using wikipedia commons.

Activity 9.  Create a jigsaw from your image. Mrs Schmidt’s class has done this using Jigsaw Planet . Here is her explanation

Last week (2014) my students made some jigsaw puzzles about famous places in our area.  First each student created one Power Point Slide showing a photo and some facts about a location in our area.  They saved the slide as a JPEG and then uploaded it to Jigsaw Planet.  Once the puzzle was created, they published a link to it on their Kidblog. Click on Niamh’s puzzle link.

Activity 10. Write a post about different websites to find creative commons images. Are there any widgets you can add to your blog to make this easier?

Still got time left this fortnight (two weeks):

1. Visit other student and class blogs – leave some quality comments
2. Teachers – have you started visiting blogs listed on the class list of blogs? Maybe pair up your students with those on the other class blogs.
3. Reply to comments on your own blog
4. Start using tags and categories with each post you write to make it easier for people to find posts on certain topics. Make sure you have the tags and categories widgets in your sidebar.
5. Have at least five other student blogs linked on your sidebar – students from other classes and schools – not your own. We will need this for a game we play in a couple of weeks.

Try to have a few different headings like

My Blogging Friends

Other Class Blogs

Having lots of  links to student blogs from other countries will help spread the game.

Here are the instructions for adding links to your sidebars.

Edublogs, Blogger, Kidblog – not sure if this widget goes on the class page or each student page

Still got time to visit more posts that couldn’t be flipped to the magazine

Chloe (Australia), Madison (Australia), Katelyn (Australia), Skye (USA), Lily (Australia), Jessica (Australia), Jennifer (USA), Mikayla (USA), Mia (USA), Jose (USA), Trinitty (USA), Noor (USA), Anneliese (Australia), Beck (USA), Andrew (USA), Jared (USA), , Dom (USA), Dulce (USA), Nelly (USA), Deondray (USA), Sarah (USA), Iqra (USA), Kennedy (USA), Autumn (USA), Lisbeth (USA), Bryanna (USA), Emily (USA), Sabrina (USA), Madison (USA), Keith (USA), Gavin (USA), Georgia (Australia), Madison (USA), Cicely (USA), Haley (USA), Kim (USA), Abby (USA), Lily (Australia), Justin (USA), Casey (USA), Brooklynn (USA), Marina (USA), Mohamed (USA), Lexie (USA), Ralphy (USA), Mahmoud (USA), Kenaysha (USA), Yahshua (USA), Makaela (USA), Sarah (USA), another Sarah (USA), Raya (USA), Mari (USA), Charlotte (Australia), Taelor (USA), Leah (USA), AJ (USA), Erandi (USA), Kira (USA), Marshall (USA), Fern (USA), Angela (USA), Chris (USA), Ava (USA),

These students have been leaving comments on blogs: Jena, Chloe,

Tawnie, Giselle,  created a great post about commenting

Angela has used images to help show how to comment on her blog

FluffyWhiskers , Emily, created a powtoon about commenting

Raynen, Mikaylah, Charlize, created a video

George (Excellent post on comments recommended by a teacher)

Riley asked me to publicise this story about alpacas, Brady writes posts about superheroes, would you prefer this or that by Tayne, Austin tells us about a setter, Jessica loves glittery, Everett loves writing about household items,

Have you checked out the continent song by Mrs Amri’s class?

Mrs Smith’s class have an alphabet soup with lots of links to student posts.

Mrs Lehane’s class tell you about themselves and Melbourne

Did any of Mrs Wong’s students visit your class blog and leave a comment?

 

 Most important learning from this fortnight’s challenge is:

Use creative commons images, not just any image on the net. Always include attribution of where you found the image. Compfight plugin does this for you.

PS If you have done the blogging challenge before, you will find these activities are nearly the same each time. If you have ideas for different activities please leave a comment on this post.

Flipboard magazine

I will only be adding posts to the flipboard magazine that:

• are written in paragraphs
• have been proofread
• include an image, sound or video with attribution

So make sure you have taken note of this week’s learning about creative commons.

Miss W visiting your blogs

From this week onwards, I will only be visiting blogs where students or classes have left the URL to the post in a comment with an explanation. If your teacher is moderating your posts, you will need to wait until it has been published before giving me your URL. Check out the difference between a blog URL and a post URL.

Blog URL: http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org

Post URL : http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/2015/10/10/raise-your-voice/

UPDATE  UPDATE   UPDATE

The next challenge will be about global issues and on March 25 there is an easy activity you could take part in called Earth Hour. Visit their website and add their badge to your sidebar if you are going to write a post relating to their theme or activity. I suggest using the 160×600 if adding to sidebar. If adding as a logo or banner in a post use the 728×90 version.

Earth Hour began in Australia ten years ago so we are having a special celebration. Check it out here. They also have special posters you can use on your blog.

Teachers: Earth Hour curriculum kit based on Aussie curriculum but could be adapted for other countries.

Students: Activities for kids to do at home and school relating to Earth Hour.