If you are interested, I found two different new blogs this weekend from reading people’s igoogle posts.
The first is called fidgit. It is actually a sister site to dvice. It is all about gaming and if you are a gamer, you may want to take a look at it.
The second is called Green Dreams and it is the story of people farming organically in Eastern Africa. It is a very impressive looking blog by people who are trying to do something different and new that has never been tried in that part of the world.
It looks like over the past month we have had a slowly emerging blogging community developing between our two classrooms.
Having a blog is like having your own publishing house, but we need to remember that it is a two way street. People will be more likely to read your stuff and take part on your blog if you do the same for them. Think of all the ways your blog can support and show a community.
- You can add a blogroll to link to interesting writers.
-You can add a clustr map to show people where your readers come from.
-You can add a hit counter to show the number of people who visit your blog.
-By reading other people’s blogs and leaving them comments, more people will visit your own blog if your own writing is well done and interesting.
Think and write. This is a great place to learn with and from other people.
If you notice the blogroll on the right side of this blog has grown. In fact, it’s almost doubled. That is because we now include our thinwalls partners from St. Elisabeth’s school in Van Nuys California in one list. You are separated by several thousand kilometres, but you are one class.
You will also notice that the Thinwalled Studen Bloggers sidebar now lists the latest ten posts published, no matter if you are in Van Nuys or Snow Lake.
I found this online. What do you think? Is this true? More importantly, what can you do about it? How can you handle all of the information you run into it? Leave me a comment with your thoughts.
Copyright laws tell us that we must respect the rights of people who create things: art, music, novels, movies, sculptures, etc. These are the laws that make sure that these people can continue to make money by creating their art.
Copyright laws are different from country to country. For example, Canada and the US currently have very different copyright laws. But all places have these laws for the same reason: to make sure that creativity and innovation continues.
Take a look at this page. On it you will find a comic book called Copyright - comic book that explains in general what copyright is. You’ll also find here a booklet called Learn From the Past - Create the Future which talks more specifically about how copyright works. You need to carefully read these two files. As you are reading, think about fair use - what is it? What can you legally use for your own use? What can’t you use? Why do we have copyright laws? What would be the consequences of not having these laws?
Another option is with Creative Commons. This is a form of copyright that lets you share more openly what you have made, allowing others to use it and build on it. When you look at the Creative Commons website, think about how it is different from regular copyright.
Here is a video on Creative Commons for you to take a look at:
It’s a time to think about who you are and where you want to go.
It’s a time to start clean and fresh.
It’s a time to think about how you want to spend the next ten months and how this time will help you learn about the world you will spend the rest of your life in.
About two weeks until school starts and I’m back at school getting ready. I’ve spent the last two days setting up desks, organizing tables and cleaning computers among a hundred other little jobs that need doing, including dealing with this blog from last year. Old stuff needs to be deleted and cleaned out and new stuff needs to be ready for when the year begins.
Comments are important. In fact, a good comment is as important as a good post. Comments let people know they have an audience, they let people know someone is actually reading their stuff. Second, comments should make people think about what they have written.
The student comment challenge begins today, May 1st and run until the 31st of May. Started by Kim Cofino in Bangkok Thailand, the challenge is to make connections with new people in different parts of the globe.
Besides us, the classes that are taking part in the challenge are:
The challenge to you is to make new connections over the month. To find new people to work with and talk with. Over the month, I want you to keep a spreadsheet with your comments on them. Doing this on a google sheet will in the end allow us to share them. In the first column put the date, put the URL in the second and finally paste the comment into the third column.
By the end of May, lets see what this all looks like.
It was interesting to read last week’s responses, thinking of both similarities and differences between the two classes.
This week’s two questions revolve around you as teenagers.
Question 1 = What is the most important thing that a parent can do for a teenager?
What do you think makes a great parent? What do you think parents need to do for their children to help them become successful adults?
Question 2 = What do the students want to know?
What are the big questions that you have? What kinds of things do you want to know about? What kinds of things do you feel that you are not learning? These things can be in school or out of school. But we leave the question for you: what do YOU want to know?
