Students Blogging Competition

stubc08

Visit us at our Class Blog: Web.Cad.6abc

     Lately my red dots have been suddenly growing although I’m not writting for a while in my personal blog. I came to knew it by my student Filipa: “- Hey teacher, red dots are spreading all over your clustr map!”

     Of course, students participating in Student Blogging Competition are looking for our Class Blog and, instead of cliking on the Url I gave them the first time I visited them, they just click on my avatar!

     Second week is about to begin, so it’s still time to join;  if you wish you can register here; there is plenty of students coming in along the next weeks, so don’t hesitate or fear to be late. There are 7 countries participating, around 500 students from Australia, Canada, Thailand, India, Indonesia, New Zeland, Portugal and USA.

     The competition has been launched the 22th September, by S. Wyatt in her class blog Technology in our Classroom, it will extend up to the end of November, along ten weeks of activities and great conversations. Different languages are no more a barrier to communicate as students are using the translation google site as well as several blog widgets. 

     So far students have started to introduce themselves, to post riddles and challenges and to ask irresistible questions. Comments are pouring in and new friendly ties are connecting young people all over the world.

     As a Portuguese teacher engaged for the first time in such an  adventurous competition with my three 6th grade classes, I would like to express here my gratitude for the great work and generous support of both S. Wyatt and Sue Waters.

     Just two weeks ago I had registered for the massive on line course about Connectivism, although I already knew I wouldn’t be able to follow it simultaneously with our competition. But now I realize that, in some way, I’m doing a sort of “practical stage” on connectivism: the experience of this last week is all about making connections, identifying nodes, not controlling information, relying on others to keep our information safe, outsourcing our data and data processing, recognizing new patterns and learning to swim in a deluge of posts, comments, translations and unforgettable faces.