This morning in the Rising Stars booth at BETT 2015 I saw Julia Skinner give a nice presentation on the 100 Word Challenge. The 100 Word Challenge is a blog that provides two good services to teachers and students. First, the 100 Word Challenge offers writing prompts that students respond to on their classroom blogs. Second, 100 Word Challenge provides publicity for students’ blog posts.

It is rather easy to get started on the 100 Word Challenge. To participate you simply visit the blog for the weekly writing prompt. Give the prompt to your students and have them write 100 word posts on your classroom blog (if you have never created a classroom blog, check out my guide to blogging). After your students have written their posts you should submit to 100 Word Challenge the URLs of your students’ posts. Submitting the posts to 100 Word Challenge your students will be sharing with an audience that they might not have reached if they only posted on your classroom blog. For complete directions for teachers visit the How to Enter page on 100 Word Challenge.

Applications for Education
100 Word Challenge addresses two problems that I often hear teachers talk about regarding blogging. First, 100 Word Challenge provides an answer to the problem of “what should I write about.” Second, 100 Word Challenge can help your students find an audience and comments for their blog posts. Students’ interest in blogging wanes when they don’t think that anyone outside of their normal circles is reading their posts. By sharing with a wider audience through 100 Word Challenge your students may see more views and comments on their posts.