Introducing teacher challenges – open professional development!

button-1bv4wz6This coming Monday, January the 10th, the Edublogs team and educators from around the world will be coming together with the first ever Teacher Challenge. The first topic will be ’30 days to kick start your blogging’.

Much like the twice yearly Student Blogging Challenges, these open and free professional development opportunities will allow educators to experience enriching challenges, activities, and discussions. The focus is on using blogging tools to build a learning community which works together to encourage learning.

This series will be targeted at educators who haven’t blogged before or who are looking to improving their blogging skills.  Each task will include real examples being used by other educators — so you can learn from their experience!

In an effort to provide a personal and useful learning experience for all, we will have differentiated levels of tasks for beginning and advanced bloggers – and participants will be able to choose which activities to complete as the challenge progresses. Participants can use any blogging platform of their choice (it isn’t restricted to Edublogs users) and you don’t even need a blog to start with!

Leave a comment on the Are you interested….? post if you would like to join as a participant or the Mentors – sign up page if you would like to help us by being a mentor.

Tasks will include:

  • Setting up a blog –optimizing your theme, appearance, and widgets
  • Adjusting your blog settings
  • Writing effective posts
  • Introduction to working with pages and writing your ‘About page’
  • Intro to blogging etiquette
  • Creating/uploading comment avatar and interacting with others
  • Enhancing posts using images
  • Enhancing posts by embedding media
  • Working with widgets
  • Building your readership
  • Creating blogrolls
  • Working with tags and categories
  • Setting up your RSS and email subscription

Future Challenge Topics:

  • 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

Final Thoughts:

Being the first challenge, we’re most certainly up to suggestions and comments to make this the best learning experience possible for all.

What other topics would you like to see in future challenges?

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