Passion-driven blogging … challenges!

For the last three weeks our class and Mr Hausman’s class from Pittburgh, Pennsylvania have been sharing their passions with the world via a personal blog. I have been SO impressed with the posts … you guys really are very passionate!

Just yesterday we had a new group of students join our blogging project – in total there will be another 60 students from the USA joining the project. That’s huge, isn’t it?!

We would love to welcome the students of Ms Case from Bristol, New Hamshire. We already have a bunch of blogging challenges for you to complete if you’re keen. Here they are:

BLOGGING CHALLENGES:

Challenge One can be found here.

Challenge Two:

Write a blog post that focuses on ONE of the frustrations you have with your passion (or whatever the focus of your blog is) … explain what this frustration is, how it arises, who is involved and how you overcome it. For example, if you’re passionate about creative writing, perhaps your biggest frustration is writer’s block.

Peer-assess ONE other blog post using the criteria we developed last lesson: content, media, engagement, mechanics.

Length: 250 words – include media (links, images, video).

Challenge Three: (optional, special post on Halloween)

Love it or hate it? Show us your passion – for or against Halloween.

We want you to write a blog post about your thoughts on Halloween … maybe you want to do some research on why we celebrate Halloween, you might want to write an opinion piece about why you love or hate Halloween or maybe you want to tell us about how you celebrate it with your friends and family, what are you dressing up as?

Length: approx. 250 words

Challenge Four:

Alright passionate peeps … you’re almost blog masters now. But there’s a few things you still need to perfect. These form the basis of the latest blog challenges.

Bloggers don’t work independently. They work as part of a community. A community that reads and writes together. Discussions via comments are passionate and sometimes heated.

We need to work on our community. Your task requires you to read a post from 5-6 different blogs (those of your blogging colleagues – you will see them all in the folder to your right —->)
You are THEN required to select FOUR of these posts to comment on. Use the letter writing format for your comments, and stick to the blog comment rules added as a reply to this post. Your comments need to ADD to the content of the blog post – don’t just give it empty praise for being an enjoyable read. Ask a question of the writer to encourage conversation.

Post the URL for the blogs you’ve commented on in one note to this group.

Challenge Five:

Select ONE blog from another student from the ‘Passion Blogs’ folder – preferrably someone from another country – that you enjoy reading.

You are to write a ‘guest blog post’ for this blog. To do this you will need to RESEARCH an area of interest relevant to the blogger’s passion. Using this research, write a 500 word post for your chosen blog. Be sure to include media to support your post. All images, videos etc must be atributed to the creator. Your blog post should reflect the passion focus of the blog you’re guest posting on.

When you’ve written the post, send the draft to this edmodo group with the URL of the blog you’re writing for.

If your blog is chosen, you need to proof-read the post then add it to your blog with the title ‘Guest post by …’