Our 6th graders have worked together to investigate and research what the are some of the elements, characteristics and features of quality blogs. We already knew that engaging writing and interesting topics are what readers come back to a blog for... but there's something about how blogs function and the way users interact with them that helps make for a more successful reading experience.
It looks like all three of our sections found some similarities between the successful blogs they reviewed. What did they find? See for yourself in the links posted below! 6th Grade Section 1 Green 6th Grade Section 2 Blue
6th Grade Section 3 Red
Congratulations of starting your brand new blog! In no time we'll be posting amazing content, sharing our ideas and connecting with others from around the globe. To get us started, we'll need some basic working knowledge of the Blogger platform. To help you along, we've created a set of Worksheets that should clue you into the features and options that Blogger has to offer. We've even created a set of video tutorials to better help you find the main areas of your blog that you can modify and customize to better reach your intended audience.
Your task is to finish the Intro to Blogger Worksheet Packet by filling in all the boxes with information about the highlighted features. Be sure to ask your self:
What is the function or purpose of this feature?
How will this feature help my readers have a better user experience?
Don't forget to view the task-specific rubric for this assignment so you know what your goal is for this task.
Blogs allow us to share our ideas, perspectives and the things we love with the world! Each of us is unique and our blogs should reflect what makes us who we are. Chances are, there are others out there in the world who share your interests and would benefit from your knowledge and participation in the global conversation. Blogging helps us to grow by strengthening our collaboration and communication skills through the connections we make with others.
Your blog is an opportunity to share your take on the world, however, as we've learned in class there's certain information that's not appropriate to share online, especially in a space when anyone in the world can see it. When posting to our blog or giving feedback on someone's comments we should remember the messages we learned from the videos we discussed in class.
Your job is to determine what information is interesting and appropriate to share with your global audience. Before we begin blogging, we'll focus on following a set of blogging guidelines developed by our blogging partners at YIS in Yokohama, Japan. These guidelines will ensure that we don't end up like the students in the videos linked above.
To help us generate ideas for what topics we'll be posting on, we will be creating idea maps using Google Draw. These idea maps should be well organized and easy to understand as we'll be posting them to our blog in the near future!
To complete your brainstorm for your mission:
Continue to finish the mind map we started in class to demonstrate you thoughts on what your blog will be about. You can include ideas on what your hobbies are, what sports and activities you participating in, what you like learning about and what you're experiencing in your classes. Be sure to make your idea map match the rubric by drawing out clear, well-organized and detailed idea branches. You should use a variety of formatting and grouping techniques to ensure that the map is easy to read and understand. The more detail you provide on your ideas, the better. Organizing your ideas in a theme related to your blogging ideas is a great idea too! To earn a 7-8 on the rubric, make sure:
You have created a complex and detailed map.
Your map is exceptionally well organized.
Your map utilizes a variety of formatting tools to make it clear and easy to understand.
If you're looking for some inspiration, check out these amazing examples at work:
Tiana (Here use of color and balance makes her information easy to read and understand.) Chris (Do you notice he's beginning to create a theme that matches his interests?) Claire (Her idea map is very balanced and makes a good use of color and organization.) Mahea (Her idea map is very complex and detailed! She has a technique with color too!)
If you need help understanding how to use the tools in Google Draw, you can watch this youtube video I made a while back called: Concept Mapping with Google Draw
Aloha 6th Graders and Welcome to your first design challenge of the year!
In
this unit we'll be harnessing the power of the internet by building blogs
that will help us to connect with others around the world, build a
positive online presence and reflect on all the things we're learning and
experiencing in this first year of Middle School. As we talked about in
class, our steps will be guided by the the Design Cycle as we begin to start an Inquiry into the power of blogs and how to make our blogs more powerful!
The
limits and reaches of our communities are expanding everyday as the
advances of global communication evolve at breathtaking speed. What was
impossible for thousands of years has only recently been turned upside
down, allowing you the opportunity to put your thoughts, ideas and
perspectives out for the world to see... With today's technology, you
can publish almost anything, practically anywhere, at anytime: day or
night... for free.
Your thoughts, your perspectives, your ideas... shaping the world we live in!
OK!
Now,
to get started, we'll be looking at existing blogs from our community
and beyond to help us get a sense of what marks a quality blog. You'll
be asking yourself:
What elements or characteristics of the blogs you liked stood out to you?
What got your attention?
What visual features did you enjoy?
How were you able to interact with and move through the better blogs?
What kinds of information and how was delivered in a way that got you to stop and read it?
Once you've seen a few blogs... what features do you think every blog should have?
Here are a few sample blogs to get started with:
NeverSeconds (a very famous blog written by a 9 year old Scottish school girl about her schools food options)
The White House Blog (Our governments blog that let's us know how they're leading our country)
Ukulele Underground (a local blog that helps people learn how to master the Ukulele)
MacRumors (a blog dedicated to sharing all the latest Mac related news and speculation with us)
Ars Technica (a very well run and respectable video gaming news blog site)
Troy43 (the official website and blog of Troy Polamalu - Pittsburg Steelers All-Star Safety)
MAKE (a great blog featuring tons of DIY projects, how-tos, and inspiration from geeks and makers)
The Tasty Island (a honolulu based food blog that goes behind the scenes of some of our favorites)
Ono Kine Grindz (A blog of onolicious eats from Hawai’i and around the world!)
Emily's Blog (the 2010 winning student blog of the annual EduBlogs student competition)
Remember, you should start off by reviewing at least
2-3 of the blogs listed above. Make sure you explain what is good about each blog and why each item is good. You should record at least 2 meaningful comments about each blog (including their characteristics or features that positively impact the viewer). We will use this sheet to determine the criteria for an excellent blog.
You have and included more than 2 comments for each blog you review.
All of your comments are detailed and meaningful. You clearly explain what is good about each blog and why it’s good (i.e. how it impacts the visitor.)
You're welcome to review other blogs you
might enjoy, just make sure that they're appropriate for school. You
need to make sure that you copy and paste the full URL (the address on
top) of the blog into the Blog Research Sheet.
If
you think there's a particularly great blog out there that your
classmates would like to review, share it with us in the comment section
below. (Be sure to tell us the name and give us the full URL!)
Have you ever been outside and experienced your hair blowing around or seen the leaves and branches on a tree rustling back and forth? Of course you have! The wind is natural and common element of our daily lives. You'd be amazed at just how many things are influenced and affected by the wind... and how eerie and uncomfortable it can be when the wind stops.
Wind is a natural resource that is infinitely renewable and has been used for centuries! As part of our next unit, we'll be learning about the wind, especially how we have and can harness it's power to produce work in our lives.
Wind Farm in Kahuku on Oahu.
Let's start by watching a short video that will teach us a few general things about wind power.
Congratulations 6th Grade Designers! By now each of you has carefully and with much creativity created a number of digital vector-based badges designed to help motivate your classmates and certify them in skill and tool use! I'm am amazed at the designs you've come up with and can't wait to share them with the world!
We'll need to do three things as part of this process...
Once you have a badge design to share, we'll need to prep our Google Draw Canvas by resizing the extra space so it just covers the space around the edges of our badge. Then we'll use the Google Draw "Edit" menu to choose "Publish to the Web." We'll choose the SMALL size for now, click the publish button and then copy the link provided to us.
Next we'll load up the BADGE SUBMISSION FORM to submit our design. There are a number of questions that will help collect information about your badge including its title, what category it fits in, and how someone would earn it. Finally, you will paste in a link to your image that you had copied before from Google Drive.
For detailed steps, check out the following Youtube video.
Earning Badges
Once your badge has been submitted and reviewed, it will be posted to our Class Badge Database Google Site. Here you'll be able to browse through all the current badges, see what the requirements are and find out each badge's Unique Badge Code.
You can quickly and easily find a badge by using the Badge Category and Badge Level drop down filters that will help separate the badges out. Did you do any blogging this year? Check the category drop down for "Blogging" and see if you qualify for any of the badges. Once you know which badge you would like to earn or feel a classmate deserves, it's time to copy the badge code and head click on the Badge Certification Review Form.
Be sure to provide the information about who is being nominated and what the associated unique badge code is. Finally, you'll be asked to also share what makes you feel that you have earned the badge requested. You'll need to either provide a working link to evidence I can see or you'll use the provided space to write out a short narrative explaining your position.
Once you've submitted your form, Mr. Connors will look over your evidence and message you directly back with a link to your badge or some suggestions on what still needs to be done.
Sharing our Badges with the World!
Mr. Connors will send you some hypertext code you can use to insert the badge into your "Badges Page" on your blog. Be sure to add additional rows to your badge table by writing the code snippet seen here and placing it into the HTML version of your page.
That's all folks!
Good luck with your creation, submission and posting of your earned badges! Let's see who's going to become the First Epic Badge Master and Collect Them All!
Can you see it off in the distance? It's right there! Our blogs are almost finished...
At this point of the unit we would normally be planning the steps and actions we would take to build and create our product or solution. We would start determining what resources, equipment and tools we would need, how much time each of the steps might take and what support or knowledge we would need to acquire or call upon.
In this unit, we've already begun
the process of creating our blogs. In fact, each of you already has a
functional working blog that you've been posting to over the
last few weeks. So instead of planning to build a blog... we're going to plan on how to finish our blog...
Some of the functional and aesthetic aspects of our blogs are in place.
There are a number of the elements that need to be added or tweaked
before our blog is finally ready for prime time. Which elements? Well
according to our functional sketches and blog template mock-ups... we
still need to ensure we have a...
functional Menu,
a complete Author Bio Page,
an appropriate unique URL,
a Background that matches our theme
appropriate and functional Gadgets,
a clean and organized Layout,
and an optional Banner
any of the Features mentioned in your Specification!
As we've talked about in class, we should plan on finishing
these items are part of our create phase by following the guidance we've
received by looking over our Design Criteria, the Functional Blog Sketches and our Template Mock-ups.
As
our time grows shorter this semester, it will be up to you to
determine when the best time for you to work on these items will be. I have come up with an Action Plan Worksheet
to help you plan and budget your time appropriately by coming up with
some task action steps, complete with space for you to plan when you'll
work on these items and to check off when you have completed them. It should already be in your folder! Be sure to work on this in and out of class!
Additionally I've put together a set of tutorial resources videos to
better help you begin creating and fixing each of these items after
using your Action Plan Worksheet to determine what your priorities are
and when you'll get to them. To access these resources, please view the
linked videos below:
Our 6th graders have worked together to investigate and research what the are some of the elements, characteristics and features of quality blogs. We already knew that engaging writing and interesting topics are what readers come back to a blog for... but there's something about how blogs function and the way users interact with them that helps make for a more successful reading experience.
