.:110|GS:.

Here are some activities I’d like you to work on today:

1) Upload your PSA or Rap to your blog.

Create a post for this. Please explain what your assignment was as well as what your group’s focus was (eg. Healthy Eating, Physical Activity).

2) Embed your group’s PREZI from your Geography Seminar.

Briefly explain what your assignment was as well as the focus of your group’s presentation. Explain how your group presented the information to the class as well as any activities you had the class do.

3) Blended Learning

Gr. 7 – SCIENCE – Unit 4, Activity 4 – SHAPES – do the Interactive Learning Activities only

Gr. 8 – SCIENCE – Unit 4, Activity 4 – Simple Machines and Mechanical Advantage – do the Interactive Learning Activities only

4) Math Review – Nelson Math

Go to the NELSON MATH WEBSITE and complete the quizzes for Chapter 6. This will help you study for Friday’s test.

Please work on the following activities today during your time using computers. You’ll be working on Blended Learning Activities in Math and Geography as well as working on a blog post.

1) Blended Learning

Gr. 7 – MATH – Unit 1 Activity 1 – all activities

Gr. 7 – GEOGRAPHY – Unit 3, Activities 2, 3, 5 – Complete all Interactive Learning Activities

Gr. 8 – MATH – Unit 1 Activity 1 – Complete the following: Assignment, Interactive Learning Activity (both),  Assignment

Gr. 8 – GEOGRAPHY – Unit 3, Activities 1, 2, 4 – Complete all Interactive Learning Activities

2) Blog

Finish Last Week’s Google Earth assignment and post the paragraph (instructions are on last week’s post).

Today, you’re going to use Google Earth and Where in the World?, a geography puzzle constructed by The Atlantic. The puzzle is based on Google Earth satellite imagery.

There are two puzzles in the series. The easier, though still difficult, of the two is this one that presents an image and three answer choices.

Record your score as a comment to this post.

Once you’ve found the answers, do a little research about one of the places in the puzzle and post it on your blog.

If you have time, try this one that does not offer multiple answer choices but does offer some very obscure clues.

Credit:Google Earth Blog

The Year in 60 Seconds is a video from Reuters featuring images and some sound bites of the year’s biggest global news stories. I found this video on The English Blog. As Jeffrey Hill mentioned on his post, the video makes you wonder if anything good happened in 2011.

Your Task:

Creat your own “Year in Review” video using FlixTime.

Try to find a variety of images / video clips of important and major from Canada and around the world.

Post the video on your blog with a brief description of why you chose the images you did.

Then, write a paragraph responding to this question and post it on your blog:

What was the most world changing event of 2011?

FlixTime, a competitor to Animoto, is a free web-based video creation service. It has made some improvements recently to its service. Probably the most significant of these enhancements is a new option for adding a voiceover to your videos.

You’ll need to register for a free account before beginning. I would suggest using your blog name to signup (eg. name110gs). You can use your own email address if you have one. If you don’t use the Gmail address that I created when I signed you up for your blog.

To add a voiceover all you have to do is select the “add voice” option after uploading and arranging the images in your video. FlixTime will then ask for permission to access your computer’s microphone. Once you’ve granted FlixTime permission to access your microphone you can begin recording.

The other new options in FlixTime are new sound controls, image highlighting, image captioning, and speed controls.

The new sound controls allow you to strip the sound from videos you upload to the FlixTime editor.

Image highlighting allows you to place a “spotlight” on images in your videos.

Image captioning has changed give you the option to place captions on an image or on separate slides. The new speed control option allows you to control the speed of transitions between images.

FlixTime also gives you access to a huge collection of royalty-free images from Fotolia.

FlixTime videos can be uploaded to YouTube, embedded on your blog, or downloaded to your computer.

Congratulations to three of you who are nominated for Best Student Blog in the 2011 Edublogs Awards.

AlexandraV

Simone

Lauren

Check out all of the nominations HERE.Click on STUDENT to see all of the other nominations for the award.

If it doesn’t load at school, I’ll copy and paste all of the nominees in all of the categories.

Congratulations to Lauren, Simone and Alexandra for being nominated! And congratulations to all of you for doing such amazing work on your blogs.

Please begin this activity AFTER you’ve completed Challenge 10 and Challenge 10b.

Part of your Writing and Media marks for first term will be what you’ve been writing on your blogs and on the ELearning site. Very soon, I will be choosing ONE post from your blog and assessing it. I am also going to let you choose THREE posts which you’d like me to assess as well.

Please look at the rubric which I’ve posted at the top of this page. I will be using this to assess your blogs up to this point.

Leave a comment on this post with the three post links to the posts you’d like me to look at. You MUST leave a link to EACH post you’d like me to assess. Simply copy and paste the address to each individual post in your comment. You do not need to embed the link for a comment. (Remember, the link to each individual post can be found by right clicking on the title of your post and selecting “Copy Link Location.”

Image Source: alisdair

Before beginning the final part of Challenge 10, make sure you have completed Activity 1 and Activity 2. Read the previous post for my instructions.

After you have completed Activities 1 & 2, complete Activity 3, your NOMINATIONS of Student Blogs.

1. Read about the guidelines and which categories you are going to be nominating blogs for awards at the Edublogs Awards site.
2. Choose as many of the categories as you wish to nominate a blog. You can’t nominate someone from this class, unfortunately. The next two steps are EXTREMELY important:
3. Write a post with your nominations on your blog. For each blog you nominate, link to that blog in your post.  At the end of your post, embed a link to the Edublogs Award Site.
4. Use the form at the bottom of the Nominations Page to send Ms. Wyatt a link to your nominations.

Image Source:Edublogs Awards

You’ve nearly completed this year’s Blogging Challenge! CHALLENGE 10 is ready for you to complete.

Please complete the following Reflections / Activities for Challenge 10:

Do Activity 1 and 2 as different posts. Remember to include a link back to the Challenge Post so Ms. Wyatt will know you’ve completed Activity 1 and 2.

ACTIVITY 1

You can copy and paste these reflection questions directly into your post. You may choose to answer each one individually (use a different colour for your response) or write a post with several paragraphs addressing these questions.

Reflecting on The Challenges:

• Did you visit the actual challenge on the blog each week or did your teacher have a post on your class blog?
• Which challenges were the most useful?
• Which challenges were the most interesting?
• What would be some other topics you would like included in future challenges?
• Are more tutorial type challenges needed? eg how to make a link in your post
• Were the ‘Visit these’ posts useful?
• 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?
• Were there enough chances to visit blogs from overseas and make links with other students/classes?
• Classes that registered – were there enough activities specific to classes?
• Did you make global connections?
• Anything else you would like to mention about the challenge in particular

ACTIVITY 2 – Auditing your Blog

This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of September 2011.

• How many posts did you write?
• How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge?
• How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers or overseas students?
• Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
• Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
• Did you change blog themes at all and why?
• How many widgets do you have? Do you think this is too many or not enough?
• How many overseas students do you have on your blogroll?

Read about the guidelines and which categories you are going to be nominating blogs for awards at the Edublogs Awards site.

  Image Source:woodleywonderworks from flickr.com

Here’s a great overview of what Prezi can do that I found. It was created by Adam Somlai-Fischer.