Ludus Blogs

Another excellent blog has been added to the collection here on Ludus. Mrs Tabuteau and the girls in the debating club and the writing group have started a blog to document the things they are learning about. You can find more at http://blogs.ludus.me/mastersapprentices where you will be able to read about their recent visits to the taping of Q&A at the ABC Studios, as well as their visits to the State Library to meet real authors, hear them talk about their work, and learn more about what professional writers do to create their art.

Year 6 are all set up on their blogs now and using them as ePortfolios to write about their experiences, share interesting things they find and to collect their writing in one public place. If you get a chance, head over to their main page at http://blogs.ludus.me/year6snippets and browse the blog list.  They LOVE getting comments so, if you get a moment, please take the time to leave them some feedback.

Oh dear! If you’ve been looking for Ludus lately you’ll notice we’ve been missing in action. Yes, we were completely offline for five days! The problem was with the company that provides the link from our blog server to the Internet… Apparently they were asked to close down an unused connection we no longer needed, and the accidentally cut the wrong cable. This took us completely offline, so if you’ve been trying to reach us without success, that’s why.

Anyway, we should be back to normal now, so get blogging again!

Ludus continues to add new blogs from our school community as a way of sharing with others.

The new Year 6 classes now have a main blog page for 2012. The Year 6 teachers will be adding posts to the page regularly about life in the Year 6 classrooms. The latest post has a great overview of the recent trip to Canberra.  Check it out at http://blogs.ludus.me/year6snippets

Our music and language students are about to head overseas on a tour of China and they have started a blog to keep all of their family and friends updated with the news about their travels. Stay tuned for lots of updates over the next few weeks. All the latest from China will be at http://blogs.ludus.me/chinamusictour

Our Year 11 Visual Design students are also using blogs as a way of keeping journals over the next year. They will be collecting interesting design examples as well as sharing the progress of their own work over the course of 2012. Be amazed by some great ideas at http://blogs.ludus.me/croydondesign

And remember, if you would like to explore the use of blogs for your classes just speak to Chris B and ask about getting something set up.

All the new blogs for year 6 students are now setup and operational… you can start using them whenever you’re ready.  There will be some class time over the next couple of week to get your started and teach you the basics, but feel free to just dive in and have a go.  It’s really not too hard.  If you Google something like [getting started with wordpress] you will find tons of resources and videos to show you what you need.

If you want to dive in and just post a few things to see how it works, that’s great.  We will need to set up some categories soon though so you can start to organise your work a bit more.  Till then, enjoy and have fun with your blog.

Just a reminder…  Don’t post ANY personal information about yourself… we will talk more about this later and discuss what’s appropriate and what isn’t but until then, NO PHOTOS of yourself, NO FULL NAMES, NO MENTIONS OF YOUR SCHOOL, and NO PERSONAL INFORMATION.  It’s not that you can’t say things on your blog at all, but we need to learn about how much you can say online. Talk soon!

Yes it’s time for a whole new batch of blogs for 2012. The new year 6 students will soon be starting up their blogs to use as digital portfolios of their progress through their final yearof junior school. And the Year 11 Design class also set up blogs recently as a way of keeping a digital portfolio/journal of their progress through the course.

Blogs are a great way to keep a record of your learning, think and reflect about things that matter to you, or just to use as a place to gather interesting snippets in one place.

However you use your blog, make the most of it! If you’d like a blog of your own just see Mr Betcher and he can get you started.

This blog server was set up for many reasons, but one of them was to support the teacher and students taking part in the AGQTP blogging project during 2011. if you dig in to the site using the links on the right you’ll find that there has been a rather massive amount on writing and sharing taking place over the past 9 months.

As the year begins to wind down we are currently wrapping up the project for the year, evaluating what we did right, what could have been improved, and thinking about what we learned from it all. As part of this, the teachers have written reflections, the students have completed surveys, reports have been written, and we even made a video to sum it all up…  you’ll see that soon.

The server will continue to operate and the student blogs will not be deleted. Feel free to keep using them.

A number of you have expressed an interest  in being able to have your own picture (or a picture of your own choice) show up next to your name in the comments on your blogs. By default, the avatar (that’s the proper name for those little pictures that represent you) were little cartoonish characters made of shapes.

You asked for, and now you have it!  You can now include custom avatars to your blog account. Yes, you can upload a picture of yourself, or a picture of anything, by going to your Dashboard and looking in the Users > Your Profile page.  Scroll down a little and you’ll see where you can upload a custom picture to replace the standard avatar.  Just upload, then save, and your avatar will replace the old one.

Enjoy!  And if you think of other features you’d like on your blogs, just ask and we can see what’s possible.

It’s worth mentioning that any member of the school community is welcome to have a blog here. We run the latest version of WordPress (pretty much the gold standard in blogging software!) and you have lots of plugins, widgets and themes to choose from (over 170 of them!)  Whether you’re after a fun blog or something a little more professional looking, we can probably give you just what you want.

Blogs are excellent tools for reflection, journalling, writing and they make great digital portfolios. They will stay with you the entire time you’re at school, and you can even take them with you when you leave.  So if you’re a student, teacher or admin, and you’d like to have your own blog just let us know and we can set one up for you.  Teachers can have a single class blog, or even a blog set up for each of your students.

This site, blogs.ludus.me, is the home page of the school blog server. It’s kind of a “master page” or entry point to many of our school blogs for classes, teachers, students, library, etc.

To make it a little simpler to find your way around, take a look at the menu list on the right of this page called “To The Blogs”. There, you’ll find a list of links to some of the blogs that live deeper down inside this site. Click a link to get to a blog, and take a read. On some of the sites (such as the Year 6 page) you’ll find more links to all of the student blogs. As time goes on you’ll find more and more posts written here and we hope you take some time to read, engage and even leave us a few comments.

PS: Some of the Evandale blogs are not hosted here on Ludus, but on the externally hosted Posterous service. It’s been a great way to get those classes blogging, and no doubt some of them will move over to Ludus at some point in the future.

Our on line digital footprint is something that will be increasingly important. Both potentially detrimental and positive, only dependant on how we manage it.

To give ourselves the most reasonable and supportive chance to keep it positive we should maintain our own domain name. This way we have the most control over the nature of our virtual persona.

Given the pool of domain names that match regular names is limited, they will increasingly become a desirable commodity. Even now the more desirable names are changing hands for multi millions of dollars. The trend will soon enough filter down to personal named domains. The auction for “jennifersmith.com” is sure to be a desirable and expensive proposition.

How soon then will we be naming our children based on  the domain names we own rather than to remember past relatives and family traditions?

How soon before inheriting the family domain names becomes something to fight over at the reading of the will?

Fantasy proposition? Maybe not so much as you might think?

When you log into your blog you may see a banner at the top of your dashboard page that asks you to enter an “Akismet Key”. Don’t panic… Akismet is a service that helps eliminate spam comments on your blog. It’s a good thing to have.

Follow the link to enter you key and type in the following code… 560f5b5f8101. Don’t forget to save the page once you enter it!

We are about to embark on an exciting new adventure into the blogging world with Year 6 and their teachers.

I think the new theme is bright coloutful and very appealing.

We are looking forward to sharing with the world all the interesting things that happen during the school year of 2011.

Welcome to Ludus Blogs, the blogging tool for all members of our school community. The word “Ludus” is a Latin word that means school or game. Because we like to think that blogging is a great way to learn and have fun at the same time, Ludus seemed like a good name for this place.

If you’re a member of our school community, feel free to sign up for a free blog. Customise it with widgets and themes, then get writing! And remember, blogging is a two way activity… read other blogs, leave comments, engage in conversation. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you get the conversation going!