Best Blogs for October

Well I didn’t want to give it to more than one student and I didn’t want to give it to two students of the same gender but good blogging is good blogging and I had no choice but to award the October prize to Min Ji Lee and Isabella Wang for their blogging efforts this month.
The link above about good blogging includes this information:

Students need to read blogs! I cannot overstate this fact enough. If
you really want blogging to be transformative and you want it to
sustain itself as a powerful piece of the classroom environment, it
starts with reading blogs and learning about the philosophy of this
genre: critical reading, connecting and synthesizing ideas,
communicating publicly, creating, contributing, community linking and
building, and moving cyclically.

Without this step, students are more likely to see it merely as an
online equivalent to a journal (an expensive notebook) or even worse,
word processing. Teachers are more likely to hear students say “how
long”, “what should I write”, and “what do I now” if this portion is
missing. By laying the foundation, students transform their thinking,
students see this as more than an academic exercise.

So blogging is not just about putting cute widgets of meowing cats on your blog even though that is a fun way to draw attention to your site.
The prize for the best bloggers is a lunch in the middle school cafeteria next week and a free ice cream from Mrs Power. Congratulations girls and keep up the great work 5KP!

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United Nations Day has come and gone

We had a terrific day at school yesterday,seeing so many of the students dressed up in their native clothing was fantastic. I must say I have a bit of a soft spot for the Korean clothing,the Hanbok, they are just so colourful and beautiful and each one is so different. Check out Min Ji’s blog to see more lovely traditional Korean clothing.
…What a great looking bunch!

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How to get around blocked sites

A post or two ago my husband, 7th grade humanities teacher Simon Power, blogged about the Great firewall of China and made mention of the many sites giving advice on how to get around it…..there is witopia which you pay a yearly fee for but also a free one called Hotspot shield. I am using Hotspot and it works really well!!! The down side as shanghaiist comment, is that there are advertisements but I haven’t found it too bad……..I am still on a high thinking that youtube is up and running!!!!!!