Over the past couple of weeks someone (OK…maybe me) taught them how to install embedded widgets on their blogs sidebars. What I found interesting is that I taught one girl in one class how to do it….two weeks later every kid in 5th grade has the most outrageous sidebar widgets on their blogs. Things that had nothing to do with education, their learning, or 5th grade…..the purpose of the blogs.

Now there are two ways to handle this situation. 1) You can stand up as a teacher and say, “OK, that’s it, no more chirping birds, or iPods playing songs, or games that make noises on your blog.” Or you could say 2) “Let’s have a discussion about web design.”

Now I’m not sure if Ms. Bulsza was expecting my approach, but the last thing I want to do is tell kids that they can’t make their blog….their blog. However, it is an opportunity to have a conversation about website design, as this blog/website belongs to them.

So here’s the lesson I did in about an hour today.

1) I want you to go to your favorite website. Once there I want you just sit and look at the page and think about what makes this site, this page your favorite. Look at it like art work. What catches your eye? Why do you come back here time and time again.

2) Ask for volunteers to come up, plug their laptops into the projector and show the website they choose. Then have then talk about why this is their favorite website, and open it up to the class as well.

Here’s where we ended up today.

Youtube: What we liked about YouTube was that the best videos were right there for you to click on. They were little thumbnail images and you could easily see the title, how many people had watched them, and you knew where to click, as we talked about that blue is the color of links on the web.

Club Penguin: We likes that it was simple, that you could easily tell that it was a site you had to join do to the “membership” button at the top. We liked that it had moving images on the home page. We really didn’t know what it was about, but the Disney over Club Penguin told us it was probably OK for kids. We also talks about colors and that most everything we design, from clothes, to websites, to art has at most three main colors. Club Penguin has Blue, White and Orange as their main colors on the site.

RuneScape: We liked that you could translate the site quickly. We liked that there were bullet points that told you what you could expect, what this site was about. We liked that there was a video right in the middle of the page that you could play and learn more about the site.

Facebook: We liked that it was simple. You either log in or you create an account…that’s it. The two colors that Facebook uses, Blue and White, are all over the site, so you always know when you are on Facebook.

(Yes…all these sites are unblocked at my school…for just this reason…we can use them to learn.)

3) We then went to a news site. I choose the BBC to talk about how a news site looks. We agian talked about the site.

We liked that the BBC was “easy on the eyes” the colors were nice. We liked that the clock was on your time zone, we liked that you could easily tell when you were reading Top Stories and when you were reading Sports.

4) While on the BBC we talked about “above the fold” a term used in the newspaper era (only about 5 kids in the class had ever read a newspaper) that had made it’s way online. We talked about scrolling and how you do the best you can to get the most important content above the fold so viewers to your site don’t have to scroll to get to the content.

5) After this I gave them 5 minutes to go to their blogs and just have a look. Pretend you’ve never seen this site before, we know that people will spend on average 7 seconds on a site before decided to keep reading or leave the site. “What does your site say in 7 seconds?”

6) Ask for volunteers to bring their laptops up, plug them into the projector, and talk about their site. What do they like, what would they change after today. Then open it up to the kids and allow them to ask questions and give feedback about their blog.

7) Get involved! After looking at 4 or 5 student blogs, we put Ms. Bulsza’s blog on the screen and had the kids talk about it. They liked the layout, liked that the content was above the fold, but felt the header image didn’t represent the class, that the blog talked all about the classroom but the header image didn’t fit.

Next up….my blog. I pulled The Thinking Stick up on the screen and let the kids give me feedback. They liked the newspaper layout, they liked the image in the middle of the screen, but they didn’t like the baseball bat or the fact that the site “Thinking Stick” wasn’t really about education.

“I expected to be reading about baseball” one student said…and they were right…..my image and even the name of this blog does not represent the content found here.

Now that we’ve talked about blogs, and web design we gave the students 15 minutes to look and fix their blogs.

We never talked about sidebar widgets, we never talked about what you could or couldn’t have. What we did talk about was what makes a good website? We empowered the students to understand that a well designed website matters. It matters to your audience.

So that’s it….that and the fact I told the students in the next couple days I’ll be checking their blogs and giving them feedback on their blog designs. It’s not homework, it’s not required, but from the amount of students that wanted to stay in during recess to work on their blog design…I think they’ll be wanting to do some design work on their own.

Related posts:

1. A blog post, a tweet, a connection
2. Today’s student blog postings
3. Starting the school year off with a blog!

Let’s start in Mr. Jessee’s room where I wanted to share a great Google Earth project that the third grade team has been working on for the past month or so. I talked about this in an earlier post so won’t go into all the back ground here. But you can visit Mr. Jessee’s class blog and download Google Earth tours. This time the students created video tours using Google Earth and take you to landforms around the world. Of course the trip starts off from school and then you’re swept away learning about landforms and some pretty cool facts. As usual, if you download and listen to the Google Earth files, we’d appreciate a comment on the blog. Let us know what you learned or if you have a landform to share, please push our thinking.

In Ms. Tulli’s 3rd Grade class they’ve been deep into some science research learning how to analyze data. Ms. Tulli wanted to capture what the students were learning so grabbed a flip camera and simply asked:

What have you learned about graphs and analyzing data?

Pretty cool! If you get a moment to watch the video they’d love a comment on their class blog as well.

And finally to round it all off is our whole 5th grade team and their amazing adventure into blogging for learning and as e-portfolios with their students. They are all continuing to build their own skills as well as finding ways to incorporate blogging into just what they do. As teachers start to wrap their heads around it and as students get better and faster at blogging, they are becoming just a part of what is done in 5th grade. I walked into Mr. Armitage’s room yesterday and before I had a chance to say hi to the class Collin approaches me and says:

“I’m getting a lot of views on my blog”

“Really? Why do you think that is?”

“Because I’ve been blogging a lot?”

“Cool! About school?”

“No, about my trip to Beijing over break!”

So…here’s a 5th grader who on his break could have taken his thoughts, his feelings, and just kept them to himself. Instead he decided to share what he learned about the Great Wall of China with the world. I encourage you to stop by Collin’s Blog and read about his adventures on the Great Wall.

This is EXACTLY why we need to be connecting students to these types of learning opportunities. This is “free” writing time. This is time that this student took to write, not in class, not taking class time, but taking time from his day to learn, to write, to communicate, to share. When we at schools decide to not fight the technology but enable and teach students how to use it to promote thinking and learning we get amazing things happening like this.

Now let’s think of this as an e-portfolio and pretend that Collin is in 11th grade. He’ll have these memories, these words to look back upon. He’ll be able to say, “I wrote that? That sounds so much like a 5th grader!” which we all do when we look back. There is learning here, and we’re not even talking about when in 8th grade and he studies China in history class and the perspective and link-ability he’ll have from what he’s currently thinking, to what he experienced on this trip.

These are the things that get me excited! These are all ways that students can create information from what they know and add it to the world of knowledge that we know as the Internet. This is why I go to school everyday!

Related posts:

1. World Landform Tour via Google Earth
2. Google Earth and Audio Books
3. I’m still amazed

1. What can happen when we allow students to be “out there”.
2. What happens when our teachers become networked and can bring that network to their students.
3. That through connections educational possibilities are endless!

This couldn’t have come at a better time with Clint H leaving a comment on my last post about a conversation he had with his IT Director:

He has some very persuasive arguments for his ‘walled garden’ approach (including “nobody ever reads public blogs anyway so what’s the difference?”)

Really….nobody reads public blogs anymore……..please read on!

So here’s how the story of connections played out last night.

1. I do a lesson in one of our 5th grade classrooms where we have a great discussion around what it means to blog, what good blogging looks like, and the difference between leaving a comment and a compliment. We also learn how to add an image to our post and how to add a link. Following the teachers lead based on this blog post, the students homework is to write a reflective blog post about the science experiment they did and what they learned. I leave the room with this challenge:

I will read all your blog posts tonight and the best ones I’ll send out for the world to read.

Of course they no nothing of the 4700+ Twitter followers I have or the 400+ Facebook friends. Nor should they care…what is important here is that their teacher is connected into a wider community to help foster a global audience.

2. Late last night I visited the classes netvibes page and started going through the student’s blog posts leaving comments on everyone of them. I was proud to see that most everyone’s blogging had improved from before our lesson and some students had really taken the time to sit down and write out their thoughts.

One such student was Haley who wrote out the experiment that the students had done in class. A great little bit of procedural writing (writing connection). I decided that this was one of the top 5 posts in the class and sent a link to her blog post out on Twitter and to my Facebook Friends asking them to please visit the blog if for no other reason to put a mark on her map that there really are people out there who will read you if you have good writing (Hey, I’m not above a little fake audience to start a conversation with kids that will lead to deeper writing and understanding!).

3. It just so happens that Allanah K (who I had the pleasure of meeting last year) was on Twitter last night and reads my tweet about the students writing. Intrigued by Haley’s blog post Allanah takes the idea to school with her today in New Zealand and asks the students if they would like to try Haley’s experiment. By the time I get to school today Allanah and her class have finished their experiment and have blogged about it on their class blog….of course giving full credit to Haley.

Where to go from here:
Of course at this point my mind is racing. This experiment has to do with teaching variables and just think of all the variables we can now ask as we collect data.

• What if we share our data with the class in New Zealand?
• I wonder if longitude and latitude is a variable we need to consider (Social Studies)
• I wonder if we’ll get the same results? (Science)
• How can we best represent our data for someone else to read? (Math, Science)
• Why is writing clear instructions important? (Writing)

Of course there are hundreds of possibilities now that can happen now that these two classes are connected. With a time difference of only 5 hours a Skype call even with students talking about their data and experiments to each other…or more blog posts with more explanations.

Yes this all came about because I am connected…but it’s not about me….it’s about the connections. Miss B is a friend of mine on Facebook and seeing me post the students blogs there….copied and pasted the addresses and sent them out to her Facebook friends. She too is a connected teacher, but up until this point had never thought of using her network of friends and other educators in this way.

There is great power when we put students out there and allow them to share their thinking. These students have had a blog for two weeks now and this is their first major connection as a class. As we continue to learn about blogging, as our writing improves and more importantly our thinking improves, I know we’ll see more connections like this….it’s just to powerful of a learning platform not to.

So to the IT Directors out there that say “It’s to scary.”, “We can’t do it.”, “What’s the point?” I give you this.

That making deep connections only happen when you put yourself out there….sure we can play it safe…but playing it safe has never lead to deeper understanding!

Related posts:

1. Blog Reflection
2. Today’s student blog postings
3. Starting the school year off with a blog!

The Technical Part:
Behind the scene these two sites are located on school linux servers. Both sites are running WordpressMU.

Inside ISB:
We create the teacher accounts/blogs as they ask for them. This way we know who is blogging and can support them as they get started.

Blogs @ ISB:
We uploaded all the students using the Dagon Design Import Users Plugin. Once all the students are in the system Dennis, Kim and I can then walk classrooms of students through the process in about 45 minutes (30 minutes for older grades). We sign students up on a teacher/team request base. So yes, our pre-k students have an account….are they blogging yet….nope, but if and when they are ready we’ll be ready!

The Educational Part:
There is a lot of credit to go around on how we got to this place so know the following story is not just me…but a team of educational focused people who have a common vision on why blogging is important for students.

It’s not the blogging we feel is important of course, it’s the power that publishing to a wider audience that in 2010 will surpass 2 Billion Internet connected people. Not only is there engagement power in publishing to this audience but also authentic power as students realize they are writing for someone larger than their teacher. That an assignment is not just an assignment but an idea to be shared with others.

Over half of the 5th graders who I have helped to set blogs up with over the last two weeks have a Facebook page. No our 5th graders are not 13 but that hasn’t stopped them from creating the accounts and being in that space. If we are going to teach students to be safe in this new digital socially connected world than we need to have systems and programs in place that allow us to teach them to be safe. We can not teach Internet safety behind a filter as scary as it is….we need to put them out there. Heck they’re already out there, but now we’re choosing to put them out there on our terms, on our system, where we can teach them to be safe.

Two huge things happened over the last year to bring us to this place where we’re creating blogs on a daily basis. First and foremost was the hiring of Chrissy Hellyer as a 5th grade teacher last year. Last year Chrissy came to our school and without missing a beat showed the whole elementary what it meant and the power that lies in having your students connected. This year the whole 5th grade team is committed to giving blogging a try. Each teacher and every student has a blog (Netvibes link for all of 5th grade). With Chrissy leading the way creating a digital literacy unit the grade is off and running. If you are blogging this year with your students for the first time I STRONGLY encourage you to keep up with Chrissy’s blog and her class blog as well to see how she uses it to communicate with students, parents and in setting a good blogging example.

The second tipping point came in the Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy Certificate Progarm via SUNY @ Buffalo. This program which started in January with 30+ teachers K-12 taking part, has made a shift in our schools as it has forced teachers to use a wiki, create a blog, and go deep in understanding this new information world we live in. With Kim, Dennis, Chad and myself teaching the courses teachers know that they have the support to try something new in their classrooms as their teachers in the course are also paid to help them.

The next step of course is getting parents involved and supporting this new open education we are promoting. The 5th grade team took the lead on this last week by introducing the parents to their student’s blog during back to school night. During the night parents found their child’s blog and learned how to leave a comment. The pictures in this post are of parents learning how to comment on their child’s blog. Chrissy of course took it one step further and Skyped in some pals from Australia to help make the point that we can learn from anyone anywhere.

We don’t have all the answers on how we’re going to monitor or keep kids safe but we’re out there….and being out there is the first step to learning how to be safe when you’re out there. Kim met with some middle school teachers who came up with Blogging Guidelines for the students. I know she’s going to blog about it, so I won’t steal her thunder. (Yes we do have conversations in the office around who’s going to blog what….not a day goes by that you don’t hear “You should blog that!” Yes, you should be jealous of the team I get to work with everyday. )

This week I start the third round of lessons with the 5th grade students. Lesson 1: Set up your blog and learn to post. Lesson 2: Add links and a visitors map, learn about widgets. Lesson 3: Talk about comments, the difference between a comment and a compliment, and adding a picture to a blog post.

That’s about it for actual blog set up for students….the rest they have already learned on their own or we’ll teach them in context through the year. Three 1 hour sessions that should change these students idea of writing and reflecting for the rest of their schooling at ISB.

I’m sure you’ll be hearing much more about these blogs from Dennis, Kim, and I this year. I suggest following all three to get a true feel of how they are being used from 5-12 grade. So here we go READY, SET, BLOG!

Related posts:

1. The Best $25 Your School will Spend this Year
2. A blog post, a tweet, a connection
3. Today’s student blog postings

We spent some time searching and exploring the Google Earth in Education section. Where teachers can download some amazing layers into Google Earth to teach with. From there we looked at some high school examples of how wikis and blogs are being used in different high school classrooms.

We spent some time discussing Welker’s Wikinomics still one of my favorite class based wikis. What’s great is that Jason Welker freely shares his rubric for grading the wiki and his rules of conduct for students. Teachers appreciate seeing exactly what the student expectations are for such a site.

From there we talked about WikiBooks.org and how teachers could use this site to not only study, but create the textbook of the future with students. I’ve yet to hear of a teacher actually doing this…but still feel it has some potential in the classroom.

Next we looked at some examples of blogs. My two favorite student blogs Theory of Knowledge and Chemical Paradigms where perfect examples of just how introspective high school students can be. Teachers were shocked at how personal and in-depth some of the posts from students were. How they took pride in their work and how having an authentic audience engaged the students in meaningful ways.

After spending the first half of the day discussing how these different tools might fit into their classes we took the second half of the day and just allow teachers to start and build their wiki or blog or play with Google Earth. The history department got together and laid out some ground work for a wiki they want to use this year. Others explored the use of Nings from previous presenters in the summer. In the end we just gave them time to work….the kind of time teachers say they never have.

It was a nice relaxing day in beautiful St. Louis and I hope the teachers that spent the day with me learned as much as I did.

Related posts:

1. Wetpaint Wikis add some great features!
2. If students had the choice…
3. I’m still amazed

I predicted this year would be about building value with these tools and that I personally was going to focus on bringing the conversation to people who are open to hearing it and are ready to hear it.

These courses are just that. Some people never before hearing the word ‘podcast’. While others have wanted to dive in but were waiting for the right opportunity.

This also extends to my approach at up coming conferences. I’ll be leaving next Saturday for Portland, Oregon where I’ll be doing a three hour workshop at the NCCE conference on how teachers and schools can communicate with their communities beyond using e-mail. We’ll talk about blogs, podcasts, and everything Google spending a good hour on each.

With trying to keep up with almost 50 new blogs, I have found myself reading much more of late and want, from time to time, to point out some great thinking that is happening as another wave of educators joins the conversation.

Becoming a Fish:

For those that find an end to their learning (which we all must know as never existing) whether it be acquiring that degree or comfort level in their profession, they have fallen short of their potential. When one stops seeking knowledge or even questioning their current knowledge and understanding, they have failed themselves.

Do Bloggers Care About Copyright Laws?:

So, I’m curious…is there a different standard for information found in blogs? I doubt it, but I have a sense that bloggers don’t care really. They’re all about sharing.

How are My Thoughts Changing?:

I’m not sure how my thinking has changed yet.  I am just sure that it is changing and I am so interested to see how these new ideas play out.  I am excited to be in a profession that has the opportunity to engage directly with these ideas with children and youth.  It is an exciting time to be in the field of education.

Connectivism:

So my questions are these:  Knowledge…is it something we construct (constructivism?)…something within us?; something always there, but masked by our own delusions (Buddhism)?; or does learning and knowledge now depend on CONNECTIVISM?  I am still not sure how constructivism and connectivism are entire different. Do we not build knowledge (constructivism) through our interactions with others and our experiences?

A little rain for the 2.0 parade:

Did anyone else read the articles on Connectivism and Messing Around and wonder “What’s the big deal?” I don’t see much novel about those discussions, just technology-specific applications of pre-existing ideas.

Addressing Truth and Bias in the Classroom:

Imagine the individual who cares deeply about a subject is dedicated to finding truth. To avoid bias, it makes sense to work with other passionate individuals with alternative points of view. Compelling arguments may win the day. Reporting the truth involves admitting the biases and reporting the truth from multiple perspectives, pointing out the gray areas and areas where further investigation is needed. Is it possible that truth is relative depending on perspective or truth is “the best information available.”

Connectivism the new constructivism?:

I guess since I entered adulthood in a pre- internet world I would attest that learning can and does take place off line and maybe, I would argue, in a more visceral way. I will never forget the first time that I saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. It had to be at least 20 years ago and I remember waiting on line to see it and being surprised at how small it was and being distracted because the painting was under glass and there was glare on the glass.

These are just a couple of the posts that have me thinking this week. I’m really enjoying teaching teachers, and adults in general for that matter. Wonder if there is a way to make a living at it.

Related posts:

1. Today’s student blog postings
2. Knowing Knowledge Highlights 1-20
3. Starting the school year off with a blog!

First I think we need to understand how I view my job and what I think the job of an educational technologist should include.

First and foremost we are educators. Our job is to educate. Our students range in age from 60+ to less than 5 years old. Our mission is to teach them how to use technology to learn, create, be more productive or make a task easier. The only way we can do that is to have a solid understanding of what is out there, that tools exist both as part of the computer’s operating system and on the web that allow us to do our job easier, to learn differently, or connect us to people, thoughts, ideas that we never had access to before.

Our job….is to explore!

Our job….is to understand!

Our job…is to motivate!

Our job…is to change habits!

Our job…is to support!

Our job…(leave your thoughts in the comments)

So when Dan asked the question yesterday:

How do we keep from continually dividing/splitting off conversations?

Answer: You can’t! You can’t control the web, you can’t keep the conversation from splitting into different parts; into niches. That’s what the web is so good ate. Yes….having one big conversation would be great…but at the same time overwhelming. The splitting of conversations on the web allows each individual to choose the conversation they want to follow (aka network). On Twitter for example, you follow the conversations you want. You create your niche (or personal) network on Twitter. You don’t want to hear about the group around dogs….or maybe you do. Only you can decide that. Twitter allows the conversations to be split. We see it in the use of Nings as well. There is a Ning site for almost any niche in education. Sure we could all benefit from one large Ning, but then again…it would be to “noise” for me and I wouldn’t be able to find my place.

I don’t have the answers…but whereas I realize we need to be using
multiple tools as technologists, that is not such an easy sell to get
faculty, teachers, instructors on board with using yet more tools…

And this is the ultimate role of the educational technologiest. Our job is to know all of…or as many as we can…tools that can be used to further learning. Our job is to understand how these tools and technologies can be used so that teachers don’t have to.

We can’t give the tools to people when they don’t need them…there first needs to be a need for the tool.

The first question I ask any teacher is: “What do you want students to learn?” The second question is “What’s your idea to get there?”

As the teacher is talking, I (and maybe this is just me) can start to visualize what tool they are talking about. They might not be talking about a technology at all, but I can usually visualize a digital tool that can reach the outcome they are after through their idea.

Start with the idea and apply the tool.

If you start with the tool first…you have a lesser chance of effecting learning. This happens to me quite often. A teacher will come to me and say “I want to blog.”

OK, that’s great, but why? What are you thinking? Why do you want to blog? What do you know about a blog?

From there I try and understand what the teacher wants to do, what is the outcome they are looking for. Maybe it is a blog that is best, maybe what they really want is a wiki, or just to use Inspiration.

My point….don’t try to control the conversation on the web. Don’t try to control the learning in the classroom. Allow the thoughts and ideas to control where you go. You can’t force conversations to happen in a certain spot or in a certain way. You have to be able to build a place for conversations to happen. As an educational technologiest you have to be able to understand the tools and be able to teach those tools, apply those tools, and support those tools within your school. The more you know, the more powerful you become as a resource for teachers and students.

Don’t just learn blogs, wikis, and twitter…learn all of it! Your a technology person…go out there and learn it all! And by that I mean get yourself a network of like minded folks that know it for you. You can’t know it all…but you can build yourself a network that will know more collectively than you will ever be able to learn as an individual.

Related posts:

1. Just in time learning
2. A blog post, a tweet, a connection
3. The changing landscape of blogging

What happened? Where did all the links go?

Don’t worry…I have a theory…here me out.

First of all please do not think that I am all hung up on my ranking within the edublog community. No, I just find the whole thing fascinating. So here’s my thought.

Technorati Authority is based on the incoming links to your blog over the past 6 months. Meanings every day you drop a day and add a day to maintain your 6 months of incoming links. From that and some other data like who those links are coming from it figures out what your Authority is.

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

So why over the past 6 months have I seen a falling tend in my authority ranking?

First…it’s not just me.

Using Scott McLeod’s Top 50 P-12 Edublogs posted in June 2008. I went back to see how other blogers authority rankings have been doing.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: June 2008=550         Nov 2008=430

2 Cents Worth: June 2008=559          Nov. 2008=404

Stephen’s Web: June 2008=708     Nov. 2008=620

Weblogg-ed: June 2008=897      Nov. 2008=604

Dangerously Irrelevant: June 2008=413     Nov. 2008=310

What the heck happened? Why, across the board everyone has dropped in authority?

So I started thinking…what happened about 6 to 8 months ago that changed? What happened to bloggers and blogging? Why are there less people linking to blog posts and reflecting on them? Has the writing gotten worse? Or has something changed?

One word!

Like it or not Twitter has changed the way we communicate. Twitter has taken all those links that we use to put on our blogs and has shifted them to a different place, to a new conversation.

I’m just as gulity as the next twitterer. I use to blog about good posts that I found. Now I just write: Great post from @? you have to read this http://?????

As I bounced this theory off of Kim and Chrissy over the last couple days it made more sense. Kim recalls going to NECC in Atlanta (two years ago) where there were only a hand full of us twittering. (There’s a picture somewhere of me hacking a flatscreen to put twitter on a TV at the blogger’s cafe). That was about 24 months ago. I would say somewhere around 10 to 12 months ago the dam broke and twitter for educators hit mainstream. Somewhere around 8 to 10 months ago educators started to shift the conversation. Started using twitter as a place for links and personal conversations and blogs became the well thought out personal posts.

Start looking at blog posts. Very few anymore refer to something another blogger wrote. Most link to a blogger about something they did, a project they are working on together, but very few blog posts reflecting on what other bloggers wrote.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I just think the landscape of what blogging is, is changing.

Add to that the fact that bloggers are blogging less because they are twittering more we end up with less blog content to actually read and link to therefore once again driving down the links coming and leaving blogs.

So where does this all lead?

Teacher: “So should I start a blog, or get involved in Twitter?”

Answer: Both!

Related posts:

1. When blogging catches on in schools!
2. Teachers as blogging models
3. Blogging, Classrooms, Clarence

The problem is….you can’t make people comment. What you can do is write compelling blog posts that make people want to leave comments. How do you do that….I’m not sure.

Seth Godin outlines 9 rules of blogging:

1. Use headlines. I use them all the time now. Not just
   boring ones that announce your purpose (like the one on this post) but
   interesting or puzzling or engaging headlines. Headlines are perfect
   for engaging busy readers.
2. Realize that people have choices. With 80 million other
   blogs to choose from, I know you could leave at any moment (see, there
   goes someone now). So that makes blog writing shorter and faster and
   more exciting.
3. Drip, drip, drip. Bloggers don’t have to say everything at once. We can add a new idea every day, piling on a thesis over time.
4. It’s okay if you leave. Bloggers aren’t afraid to include links or distractions in their writing, because we know you’ll come back if what we had to say was interesting.
5. Interactivity is a great shortcut. Your readers care about
   someone’s opinion even more than yours… their own. So reading your
   email or your comments or your trackbacks (your choice) makes it easy
   to stay relevant.
6. Gimmicks aren’t as useful as insight. If you’re going to
   blog successfully for months or years, sooner or later you need to
   actually say something. Same goes for your writing.
7. Don’t be afraid of lists. People like lists.
8. Show up. Not writing is not a useful way of expressing your ideas. Waiting for perfect is a lousy strategy.
9. Say it. Don’t hide, don’t embellish.

These are some great ideas that hopefully have you thinking. But the best idea is

Link, Link, Link, Link

Learn to use the power of linked content. That is what makes the web a….well….web. Understanding how to get your blog linked into the network is important. So here are a couple things I would start with as a new blogger and I hope that others will add their ideas in the comments below.

1)Register your blog with Technorati
Technorati is not only used as a search engine by other bloggers (those most likely to leave comments) but many people use RSS feeds from the different Technorati tags to aggregate information. Being connected into Technorati gives you a wide net as those tags can be and are used for other search sites as well.

2)Learn to use Technorati tags
After you have registered your blog spend some time learning about tagging information. If you are using your own hosted WordPress the Tag to Technorati plugin is an easy way to make sure you are tagging your posts and that Technorati will pick up those tags.

If you are using Blogger. Get use to using what it calls labels (Why blogger doesn’t call them tags like everyone else is beyond me!). If your blog is registered with Technorati and you label your blog posts then Technorati will pick those up as Technorati Tags (Or so is my understanding I don’t use blogger…anyone?).

(Click here to enlarge)

3)Leave comments and leave your URL
The best way to get eyeballs on your site is to leave comments on other blogs and make sure you leave behind your blog address as well. Many times the author of the blog will follow the link to check out who left the comment and to learn more about you (I do) and other commenter’s do the same.

4)Link, Link, Link
Link to other bloggers. Read other bloggers and make sure you link to them. Those links (known in the blogosphere as Pingbacks) show up as comments on most blogs and it’s a way to again link information together.

5)Content
The amount of content on your blog makes a difference as well. I for one benefit from just the sheer amount of content I now have on my blog (some 660+ posts). That content is picked up by search engines and nearly 40% of my traffic each day comes from search engines (Google specifically). So just know that it takes time. People do not just show up and start commenting on your blog. There is a process that readers go through from lurking to commenting.

Write what you’re thinking, be true to who you are, and find your niche in a niche market. My niche is as an international educator. I have the feeling if I was to move back to the States that I’d be just another educational blogger. But I have a niche as an international technology educator. There are a few of us out here, but it’s still a pretty small niche.

I got my first comment on my 10th post. I didn’t get two comments on the same post until around the 100 post mark. So it takes time, write because you want to, write for you, don’t worry about the comments. What I have found lately is how much I end up searching my own site looking for something that I wrote, a website I know I mentioned, or just to reflect on what I was thinking. I write as a way to store my thoughts, as a way to reflect on my practice and share with the larger community. If you decide to leave a comment great….if not I have my thoughts down to share with others if they ask.

Find your niche, find your purpose, and then just blog!

Related posts:

1. Does Your Blog have a Search?
2. 10 things to remember about blogging
3. It was only a matter of time

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with the 5th grade team and talk blogging for a whole day. We had some great conversations, learned some new tricks, and bounced ideas off of each other. One thing I talked about with the group is blogs being a conversation (I know I’ve been saying this a lot lately) and how if we want to get away from blogs just being a place to post assignments, then we as teachers have to start using the space differently, we need to open up our thinking to our students and allow them to think along with us. In a conversation, there is no teacher and there is no learner…there are just people in conversations. Everyone is equal, everyone can comment and every comment is weighed equally. One of the teachers had a great post this week where he asks his students for some help on taking their blogs to the next level. Those have to be 13 of the most thought out comments I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t get my 6th and 7th graders to comment like this (although we’re working on it).

On Deck is the name of my podcasting site. Sticking with the baseball theme I have going here. I went through a few names, but settled for On Deck because I think it best represents where I’m at in my thinking. I’m getting closer to being at bat, but I’m still missing some pieces, which is great because it means I still get to learn. Not sure if I’ll ever be ready to step in the batters box, but I’m sure having a great time taking practice swings On Deck.

[tags]blogs, ondeck, podcast[/tags]

Technorati Tags: podcast, conversations, blogs

Related posts:

1. My school’s podcast site
2. EARCOS Podcast
3. Shifting Our Schools (SOS) podcast