Brooke

In science my class was learning about the environment. We made a prezi on this topic. We were asked to make a blueprint for environmentally friendly houses in Russia. This is the prezi my group created.

We were aked to make a prezi about a global issue in our world. I chose to do my prezi on poverty. I chose this issue because poverty has been around for centuries yet it has not ended. This is my prezi on poverty and world hunger.

In class we are studying heat in the environment for Science. We were asked to make a glogster about a key term in our Science textboks. I chose to make a glog on The Particle Theory. The particle theory of matter is a theory that explains the behaviour of solids, liquids and gases. On my glog I talked about how matter can change, changes of state and states of matter.

Here is a link to view my glog at  Brooke’s Glog on the particle theory.

For Challenge 10 activity 2, this is an audit of my blog since the beginning of September 2011.

• How many posts did you write?
• This year I am a new blogger and I wrote 31 posts so far.
• How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge?
• 26 posts were set by the challenges, 4 were school based and 1 post was my own interests.
• How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers or overseas students?
• I recieved 27 comments from classmates, teachers and overseas bloggers.
• Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
• My about me page recieved the most comments. I think this happened because people want to know more about you.
• Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
• I enjoyed writing the about me post the most because it lets people know more about yourself.
• Did you change blog themes at all and why?
• I changed my blog theme at first because I didn’t really like the theme that I had at first.
• How many widgets do you have? Do you think this is too many or not enough?
• I have close to 5 widgets, I don’t think this is too much. I think I am going to get more.
• How many overseas students do you have on your blogroll?
• I don’t have any overseas bloggers on my blogroll yet because I only did my classmates so far.

For Challenge 10 we were sadly told that this is the last challenge for 2011.  The good news is that we will start the challenges in March 2012. We were asked to evaluate on these things.

• Did you visit the actual challenge on the blog each week or did your teacher have a post on your class blog?
• I visited the actual challenge each week and our teacher had a post on our class blog, it had a link to the challenges. 
• Which challenges were the most useful?
• I found that challenge 5 and challenge 6 were very useful because for challenge 5 it was a challenge for improving our posts which is very important if you want to become a better writer. For challenge 6 it was a post about a global issue and that was helpful because you learned alot about different issues worldwide. 
• Which challenges were the most interesting?
• I thought that challenge 9 and challenge 7  were interesting because for challenge 7 it was about your creativity and lots of people were talented in different ways. In challenge 9 it was what was your favourite thing and lots of people like lots of different things which was interesting.
• What would be some other topics you would like included in future challenges?
• I would like it if another topic we would write about is our favourite animal. I think it would be interesting to see everyones favourite animals.
• Are more tutorial type challenges needed? eg how to make a link in your post.
• I think that a little more tutorial challenges are needed because I had to go to experienced bloggers some times for help with something.
• Were the ‘Visit these’ posts useful?
• I found that the visit these posts were useful because you got some ideas flowing and it helped you if you were stuck on a post idea.
• Were the challenges where you had to embed ie polls, cartoons, wallwisher etc interesting or could you not embed due to being a free Edublogs blog or a blogging platform that didn’t allow embedding?
• I think that the challenges where you had to embed were easy and interesting.
• Were there enough chances to visit blogs from overseas and make links with other students/classes?
• I think that there was enough time to visit overseas blogs and make links to thier blogs and other students.
• Classes that registered – were there enough activities specific to classes?
• Yes there were enough activities specific to classes because I enjoyed the other activities too.
• Did you make global connections?
• I don’t think I made global connections but I am going to try to on the next challenges in March.
• Anything else you would like to mention about the challenge in particular?
• No I think you have covered it all.

For Challenge 9 we were asked to write three paragraphs about our favourite thing. We were asked to include pictures and links to the pictures using Creative Commons. I chose to write about my favourite sport, ringette.

WHO INVENTED RINGETTE

Ringette is a Canadian game invented by Sam Jacks in 1963 in North Bay, Ontario. Ringette is a game played in the winter, this sport was devoloped for females because Sam Jacks saw that not too many females were active in the winter. Ringette combines the speed of hockey and the strategy of basketball into the beautiful sport of ringette.

PURPOSE OF THE GAME

The purpose of the game is to have a rubber ring on your stick and shoot it into the net.

WHAT YOU NEED TO PLAY RINGETTE

To play ringette you need the right equipment, ice rink and players.

EQUIPMENT

To be able to go on the ice you need a gurdle, shin pads, neck guard, chest protector, pants, elbow pads, jersy, helmet, skates, gloves and a stick. Another piece of the equipment is a mouth guard which is optional. The stick has no blade on the end and has a speacial tip so the wood won’t wreck the ice. The mask on the helmet is also different from a hockey one, the mask on the ringette helmet has triangles instead of squares so the stick doesn’t go through the mask.

 POSITIONS

The positions in ringette are the same as the positions in hockey. There are two defense, two forwards, one center and one goalie.

HOW TO PLAY

When the game starts, a player from the visiting team starts with the ring in the face off circle. That player has five seconds to pass the ring out of the circle to another player on your team, no one else is allowed in the circle during the five seconds. After a stoppage in the game the ring always starts in a circle, which is called a Free Pass. Some stoppages in the game are penalties, violations and goals.

A player can’t carry the ring over the blue line, it HAS to be passed over each blue line to another player on your team. Unlike hockey, in ringette there is no offside, so players can go ahead of the ring in order to receive a pass.

A common stoppage is when the ring is in a zone, there can only be three players from each team in the zone. The zone is from the ‘goal line’ to the free play line.

This is to signal that a penalty is going to be called at the next stoppage in play.

For Challenge 8 activity 7, we were asked to play the game ‘Count out three’. First you had to got to the Student blogging challenge and go to the student’s list, then we had to pick someone from the list that is count one. After that we had to go to their blogroll and click on a blog, that is count two. Then when we get to their blog go to their blogroll and click on another blog, that is count three. Then on that blog we had to leave a comment. After the game we had to write a post about the things we saw on each blog.

The first blog I went to was Liam’s blog on his blog I noticed that he didn’t write posts very often but the posts that he had were really good and detailed. I read his ‘About me’ post, it talked about how he has a twin brother, a cat, a mom and a dad. He also said he played the guitar and the flute. He plays the guitar at concerts and his brother inspired him to play the flute.

The next blog I went to was Jose’s blog on his blog he talked alot about different books and he gave his opinion on books like the Harry Potter series and The Kid In The Red Jacket. I also noticed that he has alot of ’talking’ animals on his sidebar. The last thing I noticed was that Jose lives in China but he goes to an american school, Shanghai American School.

The next blog I went to was Claire’s blogClaire  is one of Joses’ classmates. On her blog I read about The Migration Trail of Claire that was a timeline she made of  herself. Some things she mentioned was that she was born in Singapore and moved to Shanghai where she attends Shanghai American School. An interesting thing I saw on her blog was that she had something on her sidebar called House Sports, I wasn’t sure what she meant by that so I asked in the comment I left her.

That was my game of Count out three.

For Challenge 8 activity 6 we were asked to write a post about the overseas blogs that we have visited and commented on and why we chose that particular blog.

I have visited blogs from Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, United States and Ausrtalia. I chose these blogs because they are all from different countries and that way I can increase the number of flags I have from different countries on my flag counter. I also chose some of these bloggers posts because we share the same interests. I chose to visit Keisha’s blog because she likes animals, and I like animals too. She is also from Australia, I also chose her because I want to know more about Australia because I want to visit there someday.

I also chose to visit Gabrielle’s blog because she likes running and playing soccer, and I do as well.

These are some reasons why I chose overseas blogs.

For Challenge 8 activity 3, we were asked how you can increase the number of comments on your blog? We were asked to try and show ten ways to get more comments and visitors.

-The first way I thought of to get more comments and visitors was by leaving questions on other peoples’ blogs with your web address so they can visit your blog and leave a comment.

-Another way to get more visitors is by writing an interesting post and having people come and read it.

-You could also write extra posts that other people are interested in.

-Mention other bloggers in your posts.

-Try your best to get mentioned for a post you wrote.

-Add images to your posts, it will be more appealing to the human eye.

-Write new posts often so people will come and visit your blog and see something new.

These are some ways to increase the number of comments you get.

For Challenge 8 activity 1, we were asked to write a post about our families, we were asked to include our families’ interests and where we have gone as a family. We were also asked to include grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

One big interest my family has is sports. My family is almost always on  the road, driving my sister and I to our sports. The sports that I like are ringette, basketball, volleyball and soccer. I play travel ringette so we are always at the arena during the winter. My sister really likes basketball and is on her high school team, this year she is trying out for the travel basketball team. When my family is home we like to bake, cook and play with our dog and cat.

One place that I remember going as a family is we went to Marine Land when we were visiting Niagra Falls. We had a really fun time when we were there. We were in Niagra for one weekend so we went to Marine Land one day and visited the Falls the other day. When we were visiting the Falls we got on a boat put our raincoats on and went very close to the falls.

One other big family trip was when we went to Disney World with my family, aunt, uncle, cousins and my grandparents. We had gotten the surprise that we were going to go fly to Disney World at Christmas and we could hardly wait.  It was the second week in February and our plane just landed. We went to the hotel and unpacked then we lounged around the pool and swam, we spent the rest of the day checking out the hotel and having fun. The rest of the week we went to the different parks and before we knew it we had to leave and go home.

Those were my family fun trips and interests.