And like all new things, we will be a bit wobbly for a while.

You’ll notice student blogs are popping up in our blogroll to the right. These are exciting times for Division 4! In the next week, students will give their blogs a name and a tagline, add a Clustrmap, and write their first posts. Some may even start their own blogrolls.

Right now all the blogs have the same theme, but this will change. Once students have grown some serious feathers, they will be ready to fly! (Yes, I know chickens can’t fly–but bloggers can!)

Come back soon to see how we have grown.

Huzzahnians, if you check your first post, you will probably see the date was October 7th, 2008, six months ago…

Can you believe you’ve been blogging for 6 months? Wow! Give yourself a pat on the back. Maintaining your blog, reading, commenting, and writing take effort. You have evidence of your growth and success right in front of you. How does it feel? What have you noticed?

In a comment on this post, please share what you see as you successes in the last six months, and maybe some of the challenges, too. What has changed about you as a result of blogging? We’d also like to hear about your plans…what are you going to do to improve as a blogger? What advice do you have to others to stick with it when the going gets tough?

I can tell that you are proud of your blogging, as you should be. Congratulations on all you have achieved!

Image: Make a Wish by Theresa Thompson

Time to celebrate, there’s a new blog on the block.

Miss Wyatt, Mr Bogush, Mrs. Kulikowski, several other teachers and I are working collaboratively to keep the conversations started in 2008 going through 2009. Remember your suggestions for a new blog title and theme? Well, take a look at http://studentfriends.edublogs.org/ Bringing Us Together. I especially like the tag: International student writers: friends since 2008. If you read the second post you’ll see that part of the inspiration came from a comment left by Max.

Each class will take responsibility for the blog for a two week period (or a fortnight). I’ve already written the first post, but I’d like you as students to step forward with other blogging challenges and ideas. I’d also like you to look at the About page and see what you would like to add or change I think it needs a few links, don’t you?

Image: Fireworks ! by Eric Bégin

We have connected.

Having started conversations via commenting with people in other countries as well as in our own, we really want to get our student blogs launched. The Student Blogging Challenge started by Tasmanian teacher Miss Wyatt has given us inspiration and ideas to get us going. We have a bit more learning to do (this is especially true of me as a teacher) before we can plug in completely.

The energy source.

Probably the biggest incentive for bloggers is their audience. When we take a look at this blog each day, the first thing we do is look at our ClustrMap. Watching the dots pop up as people visit us is a such a thrill. Then seeing the names of other communities and flags of other countries roll past on Feedjit gives us another boost. But comments–WoW! Comments really charge us up.

What’s holding us back?

There is the wonderful distraction of Tribune Bay Outdoor Education Center where we will be camping for three days next week. We have been getting prepared, which takes time, of course. But we’ll have stories to tell about our adventures when we return, and we will blog them, of course.

If you comment and we don’t respond, check back after October 1st.

So be patient with us: our student blogs are coming soon.

In the mean time Division 16…

Take a look at the participants list here, and continue READING and commenting. Remember to save your comments in a Word document.

And get some good sleep before camp!

Image by ChrisB in Sea under a Creative Commons license