Back from camp and finally getting over the room moves of the past few weeks, it has been time to catch up with the Passion Project blogs. Today was lab time for the first two groups of classes and a good chance to look in at a few students. As usual there were the odd surprise or two including a couple that suggested the students involved had a real appreciation of blogging and what their blog could do.
One of the students Beth asked if she could have a quiz like the redoubtable Zara had on her blog. Not quite knowing what she was asking I got her to open up Zara’s site and there on a separate page was a link to Zara’s Chatterbean Quiz. Now this was the first time that I had come across Chatterbean so I resolved to check it out from home just to see whether it was suited to our purposes. After a quick look around the site, it looks pretty harmless apart from the ads, and the suggestive nature of some of the resident quizzes. On this score I have to admit that some of the magazine quizzes that you can get are more questionable so I think that I can see my way clear to allowing other students to access the site.
We had also been noticing a lot of Comment traffic coming from the AllStars bloggers from Sydney. This was most heartening as the comments being made by our Sydney friends were very thoughtfully structured. I was again taken slightly aback to find that Emily from BPS and Nadine from the AllStars had gone beyond simply reading each others blogs but were now actively visiting and commenting on each other’s posts completely of their own volition. They had even been hooked into the 8 things meme. Neat….
Back on the slightly more concerning front though it was a little disturbing to find a number of bloggers have been including images of logos in their post. Even though they had gone to the trouble of crediting the page where the image was taken we will definitely have to have another little talk about what is copyright and what is freely available. Again the ease of the internet makes it very tricky to keep an absolutely tight reign on free spirits.
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Hello John,
Thank you so very much for your wonderful and timely comments on the commenting between our classes. We have spent the last two weeks looking at commenting and how we could make our comments better, more constructive and useful to the recipient. The class and I were really proud to read your comments about their comments( 😕 ) – this was so very positive and re-affirming of the work they had put into improving what they contributed to your class’ blogs 🙂
For me, it was a “magic teaching moment” to see the pride and appreciation of my class when they heard your feedback. Connecting tecnologically is so important, they wouldn’t have had these experiences otherwise – it would have been just me saying “Well done” and that would have been the end of it.
Thanks again!
Hi Everyone!
Thanks for mentioning me!
Emily and i have turned out to be good friends and i am happy to have met her.
I am simply overjoyed by the idea that there are online quizzes we can put on our blogs?
I will hopefully have a look at Zara’s quiz and see the website to check it out myself!
I am happy to always be commenting on your class’s blogs and to make friends with them.
Stay in touch!
Bye! 🙂
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Hi! 🙂
What’s happening at school?
I can’t wait to read more!!
Bye! 😉 🙄