Category: SBC2021

An Emoji Story

Something that we are focusing on with Humanities 8 right now is the Story Mountain. The Story Mountain is something that allows all story tellers to tell an engaging and effective story. There must be a beginning, a middle, and an end! Just like a blog post actually.

For todays challenge, grade 8’s will be practicing their storytelling skills. This is a creative task, so I thought I’d try it myself! For my story I decided to use the Story Spine. The story spine is something that Pixar uses to tell their stories.

6 Rules of Great Story Telling

Source

In the story spine I have chosen, there are 6 prompts. I won’t be making up this story completely from scratch though. I’m going to use Byrdseed.com and it’s random emoji generator. Wish me luck!

👭 🐥💃🐩🎸🚉

Once upon a time…👭

There were two girls, Chloe and Zoe. They met in kindergarten and were absolutely inseparable. They went to school together, ate together, played together and did art together. They were SO similar. They also shared a passion for two things: music and animals, especially Emily’s pet chicken.

Every day.. 🐥

They would feed the little chick and make sure it had enough water. They named her Suzie. As Chloe and Zoe grew, so did the little chick. As they got older, they started to find different passions, but always stayed by each others sides. Chloe also loved playing guitar for the little chick. As the chick listened to the guitar chords, it was the only thing that made it feel safe.

One day… 💃

Zoe took a dance class. Not just any dance class, she took a tango class. She absolutely LOVED it. She wore her red dress and began dancing every day. Chloe loved to watch Zoe dance. Not only did she love it, but she was really good at it too. Years past, and one day Zoe registered in a competition and won the whole thing! Of course Chloe was there by her side, but as Zoe shined in her glory, Chloe got left behind in the crowd of fans.

because of that.. 🐩

Chloe left the theatre. She was feeling forgotten and knew that Zoe was going to make it big. She went home to her poodle Scruffy and sat alone. A few days passed, and there was no word from Zoe.

because of that.. 🎸

Chloe got very upset. She was sitting at home when all of the sudden she heard a knock on the door. It was Zoe and in her hands was a guitar case. She had an idea. She knew that Chloe loved guitar, and she loved dancing, but she did not want to do anything anymore without Chloe. She showed Chloe some sheet music of what she was dancing too, Chloe played it right away! As Chloe played, Zoe danced.

Until Finally… 🚉

Chloe and Zoe decided to become a dynamic duo! Chloe continued to practice her classical Spanish guitar skills and Zoe would dance to her guitar! They knew they made it big when they bought tickets to the big city! They hopped on the train, Zoe with her dancing shoes, and Chloe with her guitar. They continued to travel around the country performing for all sorts of audiences, finally winning the World Tango Championships!

THE END! 

The emoji generator was pretty fun! That is also the most random story I have ever written, and I may not have chosen those emojis, but it was interesting to see where my mind went!

I tried not to keep each part too short or too long, but I made sure to include a bit of a conflict in the story. The best stories always have to have some sort of struggle. Thank goodness Chloe and Zoe end up together again  !

 

 

Give it a try for yourself!

Music and Me

For this challenge for #SBC2021 – students will be creating posts about MUSIC! Luckily, this just happens to be one of my favourite topics. I think it’s important that music is included in the Student Blogging Challenge and made the top 10 list because it is protected by Copyright laws – just as we learned with images last week.

Continue reading →

Home is Where the Heart Is

I know it is a cheesy saying, but for whatever reason, for me “Home is where the heart is” has always rang true. For the Student Blogging Challenge today, we were asked to have some Fun with Photos! But not just any photos. When getting into Blogging, it’s important to remember Copyright Rules – so that was the underlying message of the task this week. The fun part though comes with the task – to create or take a photo and write a post about it!

The project we are currently working on is about worldview, so I figured I would use this opportunity to discuss one aspect of my worldview. Worldview is:

Worldview (noun): a collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or group; the lens through which the world is viewed by an individual or group; the overall perspective from which the world is interpreted

Source

There are 7 aspects of Worldview: society, knowledge, economics, time, geography, beliefs and values. These 7 aspects are kind of the glasses that we see the world through. One lens that I feel really represents who I am as a person is geography – and that’s where my picture comes in!

Ocean View

For the Fun with Photos activity, I decided to create an ocean view of Deep Cove, which is where I grew up. These are the steps I took to create it:

  • I found an actual photo on Google when I searched up Deep Cove on my iPad
  • I imported the photo into Sketches Pro and added a layer to my sketch
  • I traced the image with a black pen, and then made the photo layer invisible
  • I chose colours next to fill the aspects of the photo. The colours I chose I feel represent who I am. I appreciate earth tones, love sunrises and sunsets, and feel most myself by the ocean
  • I added orca fins to the photo as well. There are not always orcas in the Cove, my love for orcas has made me love the ocean, so I had to include them!

Overall, this image represents an important part of my worldview. Because I grew up by the ocean and the mountains, I have a huge appreciation for the outdoors. My interest in the mystery and power of orcas has pushed me to also study traditional ways of knowing of  Coast Salish, which is a topic that I value greatly.

When I studied at university, I became fascinated by my home so I went into history – specifically First Nations studies and Canadian History. Although all the aspects of worldview make me who I am, I could almost say that the geography aspect of my worldview has shaped me into the person I am today.

P.S. – Student blogging challenge is going well! Last week students created their official Commenting Guidelines Posts! Check out Noah the “Cheese Man” who tell it to us straight! Hannah‘s wannabe Food Blog gives us instructions and an awesome poster as well! Or as Ben Y tell us – “Be Like Tutter“.

Student Blogging Challenge 2021

Another year, another Student Blogging Challenge! Of course, things look a little different this year, so we’re doing things a little different in PLP. In the past, students have participated in the SBC weekly. This year, PLP students are doing two challenges a week, and using the Top 10 Challenges to guide us!

It’s pretty incredible actually because we have 50 grade 8’s! Every single one of them has made a blog, and is sharing their journey to becoming BLOG BOSSES! Huge shout out to the Student Blogging Challenge for guiding us.

Thank you Creative Commons!

Last week students updated their About Me Pages. They took all sorts of different forms. Some kept it short and sweet like Ariane, while others like Fraser gave us lots of insight into his passions and interests! I enjoyed reading Dana‘s About Me list as well!

This week we are practicing Embedding Content into our blogs. We’re using tips from the Blogging Bootcamp to help us out.

The first thing learners will practice is embedding YouTube videos. Videos throughout blogs can split up your text and grab your readers’ attention! Check out this video below!

(easy peasy)

So that is a YouTube Video, what if I have the video that I want to upload. Let’s try that! If the video is your own, you can always link to like this!

If it’s your own video, you can always upload it like this too! Video Test! PLP 9

Links and videos aside, many students use images to amp up their blogs. It’s important to remember though when uploading images, that you cannot just upload any image that you want! It’s important to remember Copyright Rules. Let’s check out this important page by Kathleen Morris. You can upload images and place them throughout your text to split it up! Obviously all the image examples I will use will be of my amazing little cat.

Tillicum

Although photos can enhance posts, they do take up a lot of space. Be sure to manage the alignment and size of the image. I also prefer to allow the image to be wrapped in text to guide your reader down the page.

With a few simple clicks, I can make sure that my image is aligned to the left or the right.

Sometimes you also have to play around the size of an image. Edublog says “Remember it is best to resize your image to 150-300 pixels wide if you want to left or right align the image.” (Edublogs)

 

Something else I wanted to try in this post of content embedding was a slideshow. Slideshows are a bit more difficult because I had to enable a Plugin on my specific blog. I chose “Metaslider”. When I go to create a post now, at the top of my post creation site, I see “Add Slideshow”. Let’s try it!

By toggling on Metaslider, I can create a short slideshow in the Plugin. When I go to add it now, there it is waiting for me!

  • Tillicum on the Table

Alright team, thanks for reading my post about embedding content, as well as a little introduction into what we will be doing over the next few weeks! I’ll be continuing to keep up with this edition of the Student Blogging Challenge and using this space to become a blog boss.

Who knows.. maybe I’ll become a professional blogger after the SBC 2021! Here goes nothing!

P.S. Can anyone guess why I have a category called dog food?