PDF The Teacher Challenge is made up of free 30 day professional development challenges where participants are stepped through weekly tasks that increase their skills while working together as part of a global community.
The Challenge is open to anyone who wants to increase their skills – blogs will be used for reflecting your progress while learning and connecting with each other. We’ve observed success of any use of online technology is strongly related to the teacher’s abilities. The greater we support and increase a teacher’s skills, the better they are able to support their students use of web 2.0 technologies.
However blogs don’t need to be hosted by Edublogs to participate!*
Participants can complete as many of the tasks as they like and in any order.
The Teacher Challenge is coordinated by Sue Wyatt, Anne Mirtschin, Sue Waters, Ronnie Burt and Kathleen Morris.
Each 30 days we’ll offer a new type of challenge such as:
- 30 days to kick start your Blogging
- 30 days to get your students blogging
- 30 days to a whole new PLN
- 30 days to use the best of the web’s free resources
- 30 days to ensuring privacy and student safety on the web
- 30 days to increased parent involvement
It’s all about you choosing when you want to learn, while being supported by a community that will assist you with the process!
How can I be involved?
Participating in a Teacher challenge is as simple as:
- Choose any of the following challenges you would like to complete:
- Get started working through the activities! Remember you can always organise your friends to join you!
- Leave a comment on a post for the Challenge you are working through to let us know you are doing the activity and feel free to ask us for support
- And don’t forget! There’s no pressure — you can join and leave any of the challenges at any time.
How do I receive the latest news from the Teacher Challenge Blog?
There are two ways to get the latest posts, which include the challenge activities, automatically delivered to you.
- Email notification
- Subscribe in a Reader
Email Notification
The first and the easiest is to sign up for email notification.
If you look in the right sidebar you will see a box that says ‘Enter your email address’.
Simply enter your email address, a pop-up box will appear and you just need to enter the anti-spam word and then click on “Complete Subscription Request.”
You’ll receive an email asking you to activate your subscription, click on the link to activate your email notification.
Now you’ll receive an email notifying you when new posts or information are added to this blog.
Subscribe in a Reader
The better way if you want to follow a number of different sites is to subscribe in a Reader rather than be updated by email.
Most blogs and news sites now use RSS to notify readers of new content. Sites that do provide updates using RSS will have one or more of the icons you see on the right.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s simply a way for new information to come to you whenever it’s put online. You don’t need to worry about what it means–just learn how to use it.
If you already use a Reader (like Google Reader, Bloglines or NetVibes) either:
- Copy and paste the URL of Teacher Challenge blog into your Reader
- Or in the right side menu, click on the link for Subscribe by Feed Reader.
Or, if you aren’t using a Feed Reader I suggest you try Google Reader.
And don’t forget we love comments
Leaving a comment is as simple as this…
1. Click on the heading of the post you wish to comment on or the “comment” link at the top or at the bottom of the post.
2. Scroll down until you can see the “Leave a Comment” section
3. You will be asked for your name (you can use a nickname) and email address (this is not published)
4. You will also need to write the “spam word”
5. Click “submit comment”
Stay tuned for more information about these exciting new (and free!) challenges.
sounds wonderful however I will not have internet access until later in January. I’m checking to see whether I can start later
regards
trish
Trish,
You can start the challenges at any time. We will be putting up about three activities per week in blog posts and at the end of each week they will be added to a page for those people who start the challenges at a different time.
Great -looking forward to learning more about blogging
I would love to join the challenge. I started a blog as part of an ongoing staff development last year, and I would like to learn how to make it more interesting and be able to have my students to post comments, etc. Thanks for offering this type of professional development.
What a wonderful way to start the new year! My class has just activated their blogs so this is perfect timing for us. Looking forward to the challenges.
Love this initiative!
Will make sure to spread the word in our network.
All the best for 2011!
Christine Renaud
Community manager
Virtual Museum of Canada | Teachers Center
http://www.twitter.com/vmc_teachers
http://www.facebook.com/vmc.teachers
Would like to give it a try………… started one a few months ago, and haven’t been back. hmmmmm………… will have to try and remember sign in details.
Would love to join and learn about blogging
thsnks
FP
Hi sue, Anne, Sue & Ronnie,
Would I be able to have the tchr blog challenge patch in blogger? just wondering if I should continue with http://plungingindeep.blogspot.com/
or http://nintijane.edublogs.org/ which is the free account.
My youth class blog is the main one I would use in class but not necessarily for my own teaching development that is more associated with tchr network PLN. I decided to use the free pro account for that one, but I could get my dept to pay for that and use the freeby on the ninti pulka one??? What is your advice?
Jane
I have put the patch to the teachers challenge on my blog,
http://2ycroydon.edublogs.org/
by grabbing the html code in the new post (sample), and highlighted to link to challenge to embed in widget. But that didn’t work. How do you hyperlink your widgets?
Thanks,
Jane
A great idea for those who started using blogs in their classroms. Hope to learn from the experienced bloggers.
I signed up to help with commenting on student blogs. So I how will we be contacted to know how and which blogs will be responding to? Thanks.
G’day Reba,
If you check back on the post on the student blogging challenge, I will leave a reply to you when I have allocated some students to you. Then you check out the student page at the student blogging challenge to find who you will be commenting on. There will be links to their blogs and some information about them on that page.
I intend to begin blogging with students in my high school English classes. I have not attempting blogging in about 4 years because when I had previously, students seemed to really strain their discussions, to the point where it was very repetitive and I felt that they were simply posting anything, just to get credit for posting, as opposed to creating thoughtful posts. Any advice as to how to get students to unite thought and the buzzes and whistles of using technology to learn as opposed to entertainment? Thanks!
Dear Miss W,
I am new to blogging. I am used to simple things I have been doing at our distance school. Now that I am a commenter in the students’ March Challenge, I feel inspired greatly. I would like my students to blog too. The problem is, they are students with special needs. In fact, they are quite capable of learning, but they sometimes do things slower than others. I think it might be better for them to start next school year. Still, I don’t want to miss the opportinity of a Teacher Challenge, as I would like to learn more about blogging.
Another thing I don’t quite understand is which blogs students will use in the challenge. I got registered on ‘Edublogs’ last year, but as it is a free account, I cannot do much there. I started a blog on ‘Kidblogs’ not long ago, but we have not done much yet. I like the way you organise challenges and I would rather follow your way.
I do not like it when I am not sure about things, but now I am not certain about what to do.
I am sorry to bother you, I know that you are so very busy with all those challenges. But I need your advice. I would appreciate your help.
Thanks in advance.
G’day Tatyana,
It doesn’t matter which platform of blogs the students use. In the March student blogging challenge, we have some students using Edublogs, Blogger, Kidblog, Weebly and Posterous. Choose one you feel comfortable with, then I suggest run with a class blog this year and when you join the challenge again in September, maybe the students will have earned their own blogs by then.
With the activities in the March student blogging challenge, you don’t have to do them all. They are just suggested activities and you can complete one or all of them. You can also take as long as you want to complete them. Hope this has helped.
Hello
Just joining. I hope to learn and enjoy! Michele
Hi,
I am starting this months’s learning challenge -it looks fascinating so far. I will be learning lots, I can see.
Hello! The Participate Now link doesn’t work, is this challenge over or
Hi Shana, thanks for letting us know the link wasn’t working. We had that link for a mailing list but have now decided the best approach is for any one who does want to participate to leave a comment on a post for whatever challenge you are working for. It doesn’t matter which challenge you work through, or if it is an older one or a newer one. We’re continuing to support our participants doing whatever activities they are working. So we’re looking forward to helping you while you work through the challenges!
It is a great idea to get newies practising different e-tools!
Michele Veness
I will be going back into the classroom next fall after Literacy Coaching for five years. I’d love to involve my seventh graders in blogging. Will the challenge still exist in September?
thanks,
Sarah
Great, this sounds like a fabulous way for me to stick to it and hopefully promote my blog a bit. I’ve gotten started but I’m always feeling like I’m writing to the wind, not many people seem to read it and no one comments. Hopefully, this will help me get things off the ground a bit!
Chicagoedtech.blogspot.com
I had set up a blog at one time but can’t remember if it was through edublogs or another blogger. Can you help me find mine? It would be called “Grace and Plenty” or “Library Lingo.” It is either with my personal email or my work email . Thank you for any help you can give me.