Join The Student Blogging Challenge Now – Starts Mid September!

It is now time to join in on the bi-annual student blogging challenge!

This challenge is all about having fun, improving blogging and reflective writing skills, and building readership and connections with a global audience.

Last year, the two challenges included thousands of students from over 15 countries around the world!

What is  the Student Blogging Challenge?

• The Student Blogging Challenge runs twice yearly.  A new Challenge starts March and September, each year.
  
• It is made up of a series of 10 weekly tasks all designed to improve blogging and commenting skills while connecting students with a global audience.
  
• Starts mid-September – but registration is happening now
• The Challenge is open to both class blogs and to individual student bloggers from all over the world and of all ages – blogs doesn’t need to be hosted by Edublogs to participate!
• Participants can complete as many of the tasks as they like and in any order
• The Student Blogging Challenge is coordinated by Sue Wyatt,  Sue Waters and Ronnie Burt.

Past challenges have included adding comics and widgets, writing creative posts, discussing travelling, comment etiquette, and more.

How do I start?

We’ve now opened registration for students and teachers who would like to participate in the challenge which starts in mid September.

Here’s the links you need to visit to register:

• Teachers – register your class blogs here
• Students – register your individual blogs here

Who’s registered so far?

You can check who has registered so far here:

• Teachers – heres’ where you’ll find all the class blogs listed
• Students – here’s where you’ll find all the individual student bloggers

How do I get the latest news from the Student Blogging Challenge?

All weekly tasks and upcoming events will be published on Challenge Yourself to Blog (the Student Blogging Challenge blog).

We recomend you either subscribe to:

1. The Challenge Yourself to Blog RSS feed using a feed reader like Google Reader – here’s how to set up Google Reader
2. The Challenge Yourself to Blog email – just add your email address to the form below

Enter your email address:

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Do you have any ideas for challenge tasks?

This is the fifth challenge Sue Wyatt have organized.  She would love  ideas for cool challenge activities.

Please help with ideas for challenge activities by sharing your ideas here!

And for extra incentive to share your ideas — we’ve decided to give away ten Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to the 10 best challenge ideas!

Can you help us?

Every challenge, Sue Wyatt tries to visit each individual student blog at least 3 times over the period of the challenge.

This is becoming harder to visit all the student blogs — due to the numbers of students participating!

We are looking for volunteers who are willing to leave least one, preferably two, comments on student blogs such as:

1. A few clues about how to set up their blogs would be great for the newer students who have only had their blogs less than a week or so .
2. Alternatively choose a post they have written or look at their about page to leave a comment for them.

We would like to do is allocate about 20-30 student blogs to each volunteer.

This is excellent for teachers and preservice teachers (student teachers) who are:

• Wanting to increase their understanding of how blogs can be used with students.
• Unable to participate with their students in our current Challenge but who want to learn more about the Student Blogging Challenge.

Also excellent for students who have participated in previous Student Blogging Challenges and who would love to support other student bloggers!

And off course, we appreciate how busy everyone is so we’ve decided to give away twenty free Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to our twenty best helpers!

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to become a Student Blogging Helper!  Can you also tell which age group of students you would like to work with!

And here’s your badges

We thought some of you might like to add badges to your blogs to let your readers know you’re participating in the Student Blogging Challenge.

So here they are!

For Better Bloggers

For Better Commenters

For Student Blogger Helper

Adding your badge(s) to your blog is as easy as:

1.  Download this Student Challenge Zip file – contains the HTML code for all badges with links back to the Student Blogging Challenge blog
2.  Unzip the downloaded file to a folder on your hard drive.
3.  Open up badgecode.txt (contained inside the zip file)
4.  Copy the HTML code for the required badge(s)

5.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your Dashboard
6.  Drag and drop a Text Widget from the Available Widgets or Inactive Widgets areas on the left into the Sidebar area on the right
7.  Now just paste your HTML code into the text widget, then click Save and Close

Setting up your class-blog

You may be just getting started with your class blog or are looking for ways to make improvements.

The following 9 steps will help ensure that your blog is ready to go for the challenge:

1. Set up your class blog
2. Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Teaching Commenting Skills and Etiquette – Guest post byKathleen McGeady
4. Help Parents Connect With Your Class Blog
5. Add Students To Your Class Blog So They Can Write Posts
6. Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
7. Setting Up Student blogs
8. Add your student blogs to your blogroll
9. Add Your Student Blogs To A Folder In Google Reader

FINAL THOUGHTS

The thousands of students that have participated in the past have found it a great way to improve their blogging and commenting skills and love the global interaction among the community that it builds.

For more information on the student blogging challenge, visit the Challenge F.A.Q. here.

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to become a Student Blogging Helper!
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