{"id":84,"date":"2008-02-16T01:09:07","date_gmt":"2008-02-16T09:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theedublogger.edublogs.org\/2008\/02\/16\/meet-the-minilegends-check-out-how-they-customise-their-own-blogs\/"},"modified":"2009-02-13T03:13:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T11:13:43","slug":"meet-the-minilegends-check-out-how-they-customise-their-own-blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/meet-the-minilegends-check-out-how-they-customise-their-own-blogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the miniLegends &#8212; Check Out How They Customise Their Own Blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"alupton1.jpg\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/alupton1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/alupton1.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of Al Upton\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>Al Upton, an educator based in South Australia, is extremely fortunate to work with the <strong>talented miniLegends, a class of Year 3 students, aged 8 and 9<\/strong>.  Last year I was incredibly fortunate to be able to work closely with the miniLegends during the <a href=\"http:\/\/aquaculturepda.edublogs.org\/31-day-blog-project\/\">31 Days to Build A Better Blog<\/a> &#8212; which involved <a href=\"http:\/\/aquaculturepda.wikispaces.com\/blogs1\">completing daily tasks to improve our blogs<\/a> &#8212; with an added incentive of Chocolate for the Most Improved blogger and Best Commenter.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"minliegends07.jpg\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/minliegends07.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/minliegends07.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of last year's miniLegends\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>What amazed me about the miniLegends was they were the <strong>same age as my youngest son &#8212; so I know how hard it can be getting this age to write<\/strong>.  And yet during the 31 Day Project the miniLegends:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wrote posts on their own blogs<\/li>\n<li>Visited and read posts on all of the other 13 participating blogs<\/li>\n<li>Wrote comments on  all of the other 13 participating blogs &#8212; some of their comments were written better than some of the adult comments<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alupton.edublogs.org\/\">Al and the miniLegends<\/a> are inspirational; and won the Chocolate prizes for most improved bloggers and best commenters because of their hard work.  I really wish my sons&#8217; teachers realised how much their students gain from blogging and did this with my children.<\/p>\n<h3>Mentor a miniLegend<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"minilegends08.jpg\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/minilegends08.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/minilegends08.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of this year's class of miniLegends\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>This year Al is working again with another group of incredible miniLegends and has invited the educational blogging community <a href=\"http:\/\/alupton.edublogs.org\/minis-blogs\/\">to mentor a mini<\/a>.   The idea is for the <strong>mentor  to drop by their blogs from time to time throughout the year <\/strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">and leave a positive comment<\/span>.<\/strong> <\/span>He would really like mentors for all students from<strong><span style=\"color: #003300;\"> <span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>as many different countries as possible<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve already chosen a miniLegend which I&#8217;ve added to my Google Reader.  I&#8217;m always happy to help out Al and his students plus the added benefit is I get to watch, closely, <strong>how Al uses blogs with his students through the year and see the students&#8217; gains. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To mentor a miniLegend for yourself &#8212; check them out on <a href=\"http:\/\/alupton.edublogs.org\/minis-blogs\/\">this page<\/a> &#8212; click on <strong>a student&#8217;s photo to check out their personal blog. <\/strong>Make sure you leave a comment at the bottom of the <a href=\"http:\/\/alupton.edublogs.org\/minis-blogs\/\">miniLegends mentoring program page<\/a> to let Al know that you want to mentor a student.<\/p>\n<h3>How The miniLegends Set Up Their Own Blogs<\/h3>\n<p>What I didn&#8217;t mention in my<a title=\"Permanent Link to Tips On Blogging With Students\" rel=\"bookmark\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/2008\/02\/13\/tips-on-blogging-with-students\/\"> Tips On Blogging With Students<\/a> post is that Al wrote his <a title=\"Class blogs - management, moderation and protection\" href=\"http:\/\/alupton.edublogs.org\/class-blogs-management-moderation-and-protection\/\">Class blogs &#8211; management, moderation and protection<\/a> post in response to my email asking him to share his student blogging tips &#8212; and I&#8217;m so pleased for him that his post has been linked to by well known educational bloggers (which makes up for the fact I felt<a title=\"alspost.jpg\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/alspost.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/files\/2008\/02\/alspost.jpg\" alt=\"Image from Al's post\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a> REALLY bad that he stayed up till 4 am writing it).<\/p>\n<p>Al has followed up his <a title=\"Class blogs - management, moderation and protection\" href=\"http:\/\/alupton.edublogs.org\/class-blogs-management-moderation-and-protection\/\">Class blogs &#8211; management, moderation and protection<\/a> post with a really detailed post that walks the <a href=\"http:\/\/alupton.edublogs.org\/class-blogs-personalise-your-blog-a-sequence-of-settings\/\">miniLegends through the process of setting up and personalising their own blogs<\/a>.  This post shows the students in simple steps how to Update their profile, write a post, upload images to their posts, upload a blog avatar, upload a user avatar, change their blog&#8217;s look and feel, tells them which widgets to add, set up their blogroll and activate the required plugins.<\/p>\n<h3>FINAL THOUGHT<\/h3>\n<p>Hope you join with me to mentor a miniLegend.<\/p>\n<p>We love hearing and sharing what you are doing with your students &#8212; please <strong>tell us about your work and share your tips<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider <a title=\"Subscribe to my feed\" rel=\"alternate\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/TheEdublogger\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.feedburner.com\/fb\/images\/pub\/feed-icon32x32.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><a title=\"Subscribe to my feed\" rel=\"alternate\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/TheEdublogger\">Subscribing For Free!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Al Upton, an educator based in South Australia, is extremely fortunate to work with the talented miniLegends, a class of Year 3 students, aged 8 and 9. Last year I was incredibly fortunate to be able to work closely with the miniLegends during the 31 Days to Build A Better Blog &#8212; which involved completing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42073,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[236327],"tags":[57672,10632,42865],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-using-blogs-with-students","tag-31-day-project","tag-minilegends","tag-student-blogging"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theedublogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}