Introduction
In this recorded session Sue Wyatt (@tasteach) gave us a fascinating look at the Global Student Blogging Challenge soon to get underway for its first run of 2012.
The Session
Sue started with a little of the history of the Challenge which has been happening for several years and has grown phenomenally since its inception.
Sue then shared and talked about a variety of pages from the Challenge. She told us about how the Challenge works for students and teachers. This included a look at some of the activities and answering our questions as we looked at the pages.
There was much interest in the mentoring aspect of the Challenge. Sue asks for volunteer mentors each of whom is asked to visit and comment on a number of student blogs.
If you are interested in the Challenge and are an educator, future educator or perhaps a retired educator then please consider volunteering as a mentor. With over 1,000 students in the last Challenge and more likely for March 2012 Sue needs 30-40 mentors. As Sue said in her presentation you don’t need to be an expert blogger – the role is more about visiting, commenting and sometimes making suggestions on what students might write about. Checkout the Mentor Registration Page and be a part of the Challenge!
There are already students and classes registering for the March 2012 Challenge so if you are a teacher with class or student blogs and you want to participate it’s time to think about registering right now!
Conclusion
A great session – the Global Student Blogging Challenge is such an exciting event. Each year I try to plan for involving at least some of my students and/or colleagues. so far this hasn’t happened. Partly this is because of the complexity (for me anyway) of initiating blogging with my totally online regional literacy students who often struggle with computer literacy as well. However this year we have a project which will enable us to try out a model for getting students started with blogs by using them as a simple e-portfolio. So although the March Challenge will not be possible I still have hopes for September!
Next Webinar
Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday February 16that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday February 17th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic.
I have taken part in the Student Blogging Challenge twice both as a mentor and a class teacher. My students have benefited a lot from the participation in the challenge. They are more confident in using English, have learnt a lot about of their peers’ life in other parts of the world.
Students are to go through 10 challengies, but they can do as many activities as they can. My students were lucky to have a great mentor – Helen Digby, a teacher from Australia. She still visits my students’ blogs and writes comments on their posts.
As a teacher, I got lots of ideas for my lessons from the blogs I was following. And Sue was always there to help me when I started blogging with my students.
I highly appreciate Sue Wyatt’s efforts into making this event a success.
Thank you so much for your comment Tatyana!
It is great to get a comment here that affirms the positive benefits from the Challenge.
I agree with you totally about Sue’s fantastic input into the Challenge. I think that she, the Edublogs team and the mentors do a terrific job in making the whole event so successful and particularly in motivating so many people to participate and gain from the global interaction.
Jo