Connecting Through Blogging

We are a part of the Student Blogging Challenge. It is a wonderful 10 week series of blogging challenges to practice and promote reading and writing, digital citizenship, geography, and fun! 

Week four is about getting caught up on posts or free choice. As a free choice idea,  I encouraged students to explore their Flag Counter gadget that shows visitors and create a post about a visiting country. 

Students were excited to look at the flags of the visitors from the first three weeks and find countries on the map. Sheila (pen name) came up to me with her laptop and showed me her Flag Counter. There were only two visitors. Both were from the United States. 

 

I immediately turned to my Professional/Personal Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter. A PLN is a group of people who enjoy helping and sharing with one another via social media. As an educator,  if I need ideas, some inspiration, or some Flag counters, my PLN is the ticket. I encourage all educators to begin building and contributing to a PLN on Twitter. Being connected benefits my students and my teaching practice!

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

How did I connect with my PLN?

I tweeted out the message below. I included three educators who are big supporters of educational blogging, @langwitches, @kathleen_morris, and @gcouros. I knew they could help us get visitors!

What happened next?

 1) Langwitches retweeted (RT) the message to her followers. Notice she included members of her PLN who support blogging.

2)   Kathleen_Morris retweeted (RT) the message to her followers. Notice she included two hashtags. Hashtags helped connect the message to groups following a hashtag or topic. 

3. gcouros retweeted (RT) the message and added a message encouraging other educators to not only visit the blog but to comment. 

Results: Visitor flags from all over the world! 

Bonus: Visitor comments from all over the world!

Not only did we get Flag Counter dots, but we received comments! Lots of comments! The enthusiasm for reading and writing, for geography, for collaboration was immediate!

As any good blogger knows, commenting back to your readers builds readership and community. However, there were so many comments, "Sheila" could not keep up. So, the class paired up and worked as a team to comment back! They called it Sheila's Commenting Marathon! 

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

  Here are some comments and replies. If you want to read them all, here is a link: Sheila's Special Stories. 

Thank you to Mr. Couros, Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Tolisano for promoting student blogging and teachers! Thank you to the teachers and parents who support learning through blogging. 

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What do you think about the value of a PLN? 

How did you contribute to the marathon?

What do you like about connecting via blogging?

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Global Project: Same Day in March

As is so often the case, I found a wonderful global project via Twitter! 

The global project is called Same Day in March! 

This collaborative project is a fabulous way to learn about weather, geography, technology, and culture. Thanks to Mrs. Ladd and Ms. Stefopoulou for creating and facilitating this project! Follow the project on Twitter using the hashtag #sdim18.

Today was day 1, but you can join at any time during the month of March. To kick off the project, we went outside with some weather tools. 

Photo by Mrs. Yollis

We used thermometers for measuring the air temperature and set up a rain gauge to measure the forecasted rain on Friday. 

Photo by Mrs. Yollis  

Learning how to read the thermometer was one of the first lessons we learned. 

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

 From the NOAA National Weather Service, we learned that it will definitely be raining tomorrow! Good thing we have our rain gauge out to see how many inches of rain we receive. 

Don't forget your umbrella tomorrow! 

Photo by Mr. Seliskar 

UPDATE:

Although rain was predicted throughout the day, we only received .3 of an inch from 8:00 until 2:00. 

We used Google Earth to "visit" the communities that are in the project. As we zoomed out, we tried to classify each community. Is it an urban community, a suburban community, or a rural community? Some students took a screenshot and uploaded the information to Seesaw and added it to our "Same Day in March" folder. 

We also placed sticky notes on the locations. What do you notice about the classes that joined from the United States?

Are there any classes in the project that live in a place that is new to you? Because of their location, will their weather be similar to ours?

What are the names of some clouds we might see? What do they look like?  

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An Online Community!

We are part of the Edublog Student Blogging Challenge. 

This week the focus is on the idea of community. One of the things we love about our class blog is that it is a fabulous way to build an online community!

There are many benefits to our online community. By having a class blog, we get to practice and promote our reading and writing skills. In addition, it gives us an online place to strengthen our digital citizenship skills and build quality digital footprints. Most of all, the class blog provides a wonderful space for students, families, and global friends to learn about one another.  :-)

Here is an excellent example of our online community. One connection leads to another. Watch the connections build in the comment section!  

This photo about The Real Four Corners started a chain of comments! 

The above photo lead to this geography post: Family Blogging Month :: The 50 States and some graphing about which states family members had visited. 

Here is Allie's graph. (Click to enlarge.)  

The Family Blogging Month :: The 50 States blog post lead to this chain of interesting comments in the comment section!

Allie's mom left a comment: 

Allie and Chaolin replied: 

Allie's mom replied back to the girls: 

Elie's mom joined in with a comment for Allie's mom:

Elie's dad wrote to his wife, Elie's mom:

Allie's mom replied back to Elie's mom

What a wonderful exchange! We love our online community!

What do you like about our online community?

What other communities do you belong to? How did you get involved and what do you enjoy about the community? 

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Liberty Launches! #GlobalPal Project

Meet Liberty!

This special bird is one of our classroom mascots. A mascot is a person or thing that represents a group or organization.  Liberty is a bald eagle which is the national bird of America.

Liberty is on a grand Twitter  adventure to visit three of our international blogging buddies! The classes involved are Mr. Webb's students, Room 3 @ Auroa Primary School, in New Zealand, Mrs. Monaghan in England, and Miss Crowther and her  Kilmore Primary School students in Australia.  

Each blogging buddy will be sending their mascot on a journey as well. Each class will be documenting the mascot's excursions and home visits. Photos and details will be shared on Twitter using the hashtag #GlobalPal. What a fun adventure for us all!

Tomorrow, Liberty starts his #GlobalPal flight that will take him from Los Angeles, over the Pacific Ocean, on his trek to Australia! He will stay in the state of Victoria. 

U. S. A. to Australia QUESTIONS! 

Q 1: What ocean will Liberty cross? 

Q 2: What important line of latitude will Liberty cross?

Q 3: What hemispheres did Liberty reside? 

Q 4: What hemispheres will Liberty enter?

Q 5: How many states in the United States?

Q 6: How is Australia divided up?

Q 7: How many miles will he travel? How many kilometers?  

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After some weeks there, Liberty will head to England.

Australia to England QUESTIONS! 

Q 1: What ocean and sea will Liberty cross? 

Q 2: What important line of latitude will Liberty cross again?

Q 3: What important line of longitude will Liberty cross? 

Q 4: What hemispheres will Liberty enter?

Q 5: What do you know about England?

Q 6: How is Australia divided up?  

Q 7: How many miles will he travel? How many kilometers?  

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After a few weeks in England, Liberty will start the last leg of the journey, a jaunt over to New Zealand. 

England to New Zealand QUESTIONS! 

Q 1: What ocean and sea will Liberty cross again? 

Q 2: What important line of latitude will Liberty cross for a third time?

Q 3: What important line of longitude will Liberty cross again? 

Q4: What hemispheres will Liberty enter?

Q 5: What do you know about New Zealand?

Q 6: How is New Zealand divided up? 

Q 7: How many miles will he travel? How many kilometers?  

Before Liberty left, he enjoyed some time with Mrs. Yollis and her students. Liberty loved learning about multiplication! Liberty learned that when you create rows and columns in multiplication, it is called an array. Liberty, grab a tile with your talon and help us build an array. 

This array is two rows of four.
2 x 4 = 8 tiles  







This array is four rows of two.
4 x 2 = 8 tiles  






Liberty thoroughly enjoy reading some of the revised narratives. 
Liberty loved the great show not tell writing. 

In the afternoon, Liberty learned how to code on the website code.org.

He observed the class, perched on the plump pumpkins that were measured at the Halloween party last week. 

Liberty thoroughly enjoyed watching the students play outside during recess. The air temperature measured 84 ˚ F (29˚C), and he pondered what the weather was like in Victoria, Australia. 

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

It is fall in the northern hemisphere. However, we have very mild winters here in southern California. In addition,  Los Angeles is 35˚ N and 118˚ W. while the coordinates of Kilmore, Victoria, Australia, are 37˚ S and 145˚ E. How will the differences in latitude affect Liberty? 

Again, we will chart his journey using the 

Twitter hashtag: 

#GlobalPal

Share your answers to the red, blue, or orange questions in comment section!

Which mascot will visit us first? Stay tuned to find out!

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