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?

Global School Play Day #GSPD

Yesterday, my class participated in Global School Play Day! 

Thank you to the Bedley Brothers and Twitter for introducing me to this project!  The power of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) triumphs again!

I was heavily influence to participate in #GSPD after listening to this eye opening presentation: 

The Decline of Play TED Talk from psychologist Peter Gray. 

☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼

On Monday, I emailed parents, shared "The Decline of Play" video, and asked for games to be brought in for our #GSPD event.

On Wednesday, we had a few curricular blocks, but we were able to have two solid play sessions. 

The sessions were sensational!

☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼

Although I did not play, I contributed a classic play item, the box. 

:-)

Students contributed games and toys. 

Fuzzy friends join the class for the day! 





First, we talked about the rules. 
There would only be ☝, the Golden Rule.

Let the play begin!

Rubik's Cube 

Al fresco jumbo jacks. 

No one had ever played!

Paper folding and pyramid building! 

Who doesn't love a box? 

Guess Who? 

Hilarious Head Bands! 

Jenga! 

Sorting, categorizing, and creating games 

using cards! 

Tantalizing Tangrams! 

Monopoly Empire was a hit! 

Not sure the name of this game, but it looks like you need to slide the starred disk through the small slot and into the goal to win. 

Building is always a favorite. 

Check out that fancy floor! How many ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands were used to create this mansion? 

Snappy, our crocodile friend from Darwin, Australia, learned to play the game of Life! 

What is your opinion of Global School Play Day?

Would you recommend it?

Leave a comment explaining the benefits of play.

Convince me!

Terrific Twitter Time

Today we had a terrific time on Twitter!

The entire adventure started with a weather tweet from one of Mrs. Yollis' blogging friends in Northwestern Ontario, Canada.

Here is that tweet: 




That got me thinking about our weather. So, I got out the thermometer and took a reading. What was the outdoor temperature in Fahrenheit (F)? Celsius (C)?

On a whim, I tweeted out a question to my PLN. (A PLN is a Personal Learning Network. These are my friends and colleagues on Twitter. We enjoy learning and sharing together.)


Here is my tweet:

Notice my tweet ends with Pls RT. That means I asked my PLN to retweet, or send my tweet out to their followers on Twitter. My hope was to spread our tweet out to as many people as possible so we might get a few responses about the weather in different locations. 

Southern California has mild winters. I wanted my students to see that weather varies quite a bit depending on location.

I can't thank my PLN enough for the learning opportunities they provided my students. Have a look!

Here is one from Nebraska!

It was so cold in Nebraska, the students stayed indoors for recess!

Here is the weather report in Reefton, New Zealand.

(Celsius)

Here is the weather report in Reefton, New Zealand.

(Fahrenheit)

Reefton, New Zealand

School is out for summer!

At the end of the day, Mrs. Jessen sent us a photo of her daughters vaporizing boiling water. 

 Here is a Vine from Mrs. Rose. (A Vine is a short, repeating movie file.) It was so cold in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, that they could vaporize boiling water too!

 

What did you learn from this experience? 

What were some of the location that we looked up in our atlases?

What are some follow up questions that you'd like to ask?