2007 Blog Stats

I thought it was interesting that Tony posted his blog stats for 2007. So I thought I would post mine as well. As you can see, I haven't had quite the readership that Tony has. My guess is that it is because I write for myself more that I write for my audience. I reflected on this in 2006 here. Interestingly it is one of the top read posts on my site. I do have 186 subscribers to the site as measured by Feedburner, which I find amazing. Here are my stats.



I can see where I could probably make my blog a lot better. Tony called out these bloggers to post their stats. I wonder if they will.

Clive Shepard

Brent Shlenker

Mark Oehlert

George Siemens

Harold Jarche

Wendy Wickham

Jay Cross

Clark Quinn

Stephen Downes ~ Both OLDaily and Half an Hour

Andrew McAfee

Luis Suarez

Jane Knight

Karl Kapp

Jack Vinson

Nancy White

Bill Ives

Tom Kulhmann

Ray Sims

Unfinished Business in Blogger

So check this out, I thought I had a couple of unfinished posts in Blogger in draft form that I needed to finish up and either delete or publish. Often I want to spend a little time blogging about an idea so I jot down the concept, but get interrupted by any number of things that .... hold on....

kidding.

A couple? Thirty to be exact over the past two years. Unbelievable. It always takes more time to write the you think it will (at least for me.) I am always thinking that I should do a podcast here as well, because I can talk, it's getting me to shut up that's the trick.

Anyway, the ideas in these posts range from why is Tom Friedman's back so popular, I couldn't even finish it, to Zoho is a great tool to create curriculum maps, to building interactivity in a course can be fun with web2.0 tools.

Tweaking out the Blog

So I've spent a little time tweaking out the blog site of the post month or so... It has been good for me to get into the Blogger software and play around and learn a little bit about it. I ran into some problems with the site re-publishing content that I just wanted to change the labels, but it didn't seem to do that consistently.

I actually think the Blogger team did a pretty good job of enabling bloggers to create their own environment with their blog and I think this is what people want to do. There have been many people leave Blogger to go to more sophisticated solutions, but I am kind of glad I stuck around to see it change.

Using a blog to Learn

I think that having a blog is a great learning tool. It really helps you pull together your thoughts and ideas on a particular topic. Once your blog has an audience, you then start to learn from your audience. I personally get very little feedback on this blog, but yet it has really helped me understand a lot about engaging in a conversation that is distributed over the Internet.

If you are interested in improving your knowledge and understanding on any topic, start a blog and start writing about that topic. Where to start? Try Blogger.

The other great benefit is being able to go back and look at your ideas and thoughts at that time. I just went back through and cleaned up some of my posts from the last three years. It was great to see all the topics and ideas that I was interested in during that time.

Apology for Blog Maintenance

Sorry about the old posts. I am trying to do a little house cleaning. Just Ignore.

Web Analytics for Beginners

Web analytics for beginners - Ten of the top ways web analytics can improve your website’s business (in making data-driven decisions)

Clint just posted this list of ten ways web analytics can improve your website's business.
My less distinguished summary:

1. significantly educate your visitors


2. distinguish between first timers and returners


3. use exit page reports to find trouble spots


4. use entrance data to improve relevance


5. maximize data on marketing ROI - conversation rates from different referral strategies


6. increase usability


7. increase targeted messages thus relevance


8. use testing to look at how to improve (He has a much more academic description)


9. use Flash for more detailed usability information


10. use services to collect user data to help improve site.
    
    

Really need to read is version for details but really good information for a way to improve a site.

Visitors to my blog in 2007

Here is map of the visitors to my blog in all of 2007. I am guessing that I need to consider the language barrier that is keeping a large part of the world away. However, I don't think there is a Canadian translator available. I thought this was pretty interesting and must reflect the international interest in elearning.

Two Views of Marriott Blog from Long Time Bloggers

When Robert Scoble of PodTech, formerly of Microsoft posted about Bill Marriott's blog post praising education, I had to take note. It seems to me that Jay Cross of the learning world posted about Bill Marriott as well. Jay's initial reaction to the blog.

Your blog is not authentic. For shame. The comments to your firstposting are ludicrous. It’s odd that your comments are writiten infully formed, grammatically correct sentences. And they all appear tocome from Americans. And that they throw only soft punches.

The timing of comment submissions more or less prove they are fake.You first posting is dated 12:01 am, January 16. Comments are dated:

16/01/2007 6:31:14 AM

16/01/2007 7:30:50 AM

16/01/2007 8:21:00 AM

16/01/2007 9:53:15 AM

16/01/2007 10:25:51 AM

16/01/2007 10:32:09 AM

16/01/2007 10:36:45 AM

16/01/2007 10:50:21 AM

16/01/2007 10:52:20 AM

16/01/2007 11:00:02 AM

16/01/2007 11:37:38 AM

16/01/2007 12:06:04 PM

16/01/2007 12:29:08 PM

16/01/2007 12:42:43 PM

16/01/2007 12:59:47 PM

No, Bill, the world doesn’t work this way. As Steve Jobs has famously said, “Life is random.”

You can fool all of the people some of the time. You can fool someof the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the peopleall of the time. Was your first comment really made by someone named Abraham Lincoln?

Scoble's Comments

You might have heard about Marriott. The hotel chain. It all happened because a kid went to college and gotenough confidence to try something new, Bill Marriott wrote on his blog.

Every day I’m thankful that my dad went to college at a communitycollege in New York (on the GI Bill), later got a PhD from Rutgers, andgot moved to Silicon Valley to work at Ampex. Everytime I pass theAmpex sign I thank them cause without that I wouldn’t have been in themiddle of the tech industry.

Marriott’s blog is really good, by the way, and I thank James Governor for bringing this post to my attention. The other post that James brought to our attention made a tear come to my eye.

A great corporate blog points the light toward other people. Subscribed!

The great thing about the internet, many views but You decide.

Thanks for the Notice

Back in December, the Online Education Database site listed their staff's Top 100 Education Blogs. I realise that I am slow to recognize that it was even there, but I do want to stop and say thanks to those who thought it was worthy of their list.

I was listed in their e-learning category.

E-Learning

Technology-assisted learning and online learning are topics discussed in these blogs.

3. Clive on Learning
4. Connectivism
5. Digital Chalkie
6. Internet Time Blog
7. elearnspace
8. E-Learning Queen
9. Learning and Technology
10. Moving at the Speed of Creativity
11. Stephen's Web
12. The Knowledge Tree
13. XplanaZine

Hello, My Blog is Back

It appears that my blog has returned from the dead.  Yeah.

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October is National Book Month

October is National Book Month

I would like to suggest that you read...

Amazon.com: Marsupial Sue Presents "The Runaway Pancake": Book and CD: Books: John Lithgow,Jack E. Davis

Amazon.com: Servant Leader: Books: Ken Blanchard

Amazon.com: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't: Books: Jim Collins

Why these? I've re-read (or listened to) them many, many, many, times each.

[Book Club]

Downes Takes a Leave

Stephen Downes just announced that he will not be publishing his newsletter. I will miss it. Good luck Stephen and thanks.

technorati tags: elearning, newsletter, StephenDownes

Blogs in Education

I guess I make the assumption that if you are reading this blog then you already know what a blog is and how it might be used or useful in an educational setting. This might not be the case. A blog is a simple publishing tool that allows information to be easily posted to a web page. The tool allows content to be easily created and tagged. If used consistently the tool can allow someone to create a series or flow of information posts about a topic that they are learning about or interested in or have some comment on. This is powerful for both the "blogger" or author of the content and for those who are interested in reading the information over the web. There are many examples of educational blogs on the web. One good place to start when considering K12-related educational blogs is edublogs. The site allows for the free creation of blogs in educational settings.

The "value" proposition for the educational blog is really at many levels. Probably the most profound is the value gained by the individual creating the blog. This allows the content creator to think, reflect, and articulate their thoughts around a given topic or concept.

The next level of value is sharing information over the web. Having knowledgeable people post their thoughts, reflections, and insights allow those looking for information to dig much deeper then "packaged" content or "mass media" provide. These blogs also provide much greater context for peers or affinity groups that have similar interests.

Another level, and the last I'll mention here, is the ability to search an aggregation of like-minded blogs. Consider the power of searching blog posts of 100 second grade teachers how have describe technology integration or classroom management. This becomes the "wisdom of the crowd" and while some ideas will be good and some will be bad, they will all be authentic.

However, to be able to access this type of information, we need to have 100 second grade teachers blog about their classroom activities.

So start blogging!

technorati tags: blog, education

Blogging in the Classroom or From It

I did a quick working session on using EduBlogs at my kids classroom this evening. It was a really good session. They were very positive around the idea of a classroom blog and worked through the software. While the Edublogs site is nice, it still has some bugs and problems. I need to get back in there and find out how to remove the default blogroll links and how to set the timezone. These are to problems that I couldn't solve quickly.

Once the teachers get their sites up and running, I will provide some links. I really hope the teachers from my kids class will at least provide some basic communication through the blog. It would be exciting for me to learn a little more about what's happening in the classroom from time to time via this easy communication tool.


classroom+blogs

New Look

I decided to try a new look with the blog. I hope that I can improve the readability of the site. It still needs work, but I think I like. Let me new what you think.

blog

Blogger Testing

This is a test to see if I can post to my Blog from Writely.

Keepin up the Blog

I've been doing a lot of reading and researching on some interesting topics. If I can I will try to come backt the blog and post some summaries of the information. I haven't been able to read or write for some time now and I am about to head out on a 5-day bike ride (disconnected from the world), so I won't be posting information starting tomorrow until the end of next week. I might be able to post a few tonight.

blogging

Blogger for Word doesn’t seem to work every time. I currently have Word open and I don’t have access to the Blogger tool menu. I had this problem yesterday and so I uninstalled and reinstalled…. I had it for awhile, now it’s gone. I guess I’ll keep trying. If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

blogging