Batting 1000+
According to my clustrmap statistics, I am now batting over 1000 visitors to this personal blog. I have only been blogging for about two months but I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge. It was easy during the summer holidays to get on and write a post every couple of days about the steep learning curve I was going through. But now I am back at work, I am only making about one post per week.
I am also administering a class blog which moved from learnerblogs to edublogs a few weeks ago. In a bit over a month blogging there, we have had about 500 visitors and the students love looking at the clustrmaps as well. I have now added Feedjit to both the personal and class blogs to make it easier for the students to see where people are coming into and out of our blog.
But despite the large number of visitors, only about one person in thirty actually makes a comment on a post. I must admit that I too, only comment in some adult blogs that I read. But when I visit a teacher’s blog that has student blogs attached, I try to write in at least two or three of the student blogs and also ask permission from the teacher to add their blog to our class blogroll. This is certainly widening the horizons of my students and I know the thrill on my students’ faces when they get a comment from somewhere overseas – for us that means anywhere out of Tasmania.
How do I know which blogs to comment on? Firstly I look at those teachers on edublogs home page and I try to visit three blogs per day that I haven’t been to before. I also look in the edublogger and edublogs blog to see which people I haven’t yet visited. I also have about 15 subscriptions to blogs of people I enjoy reading and they often mention websites or other bloggers in their posts. In fact, it is all just one big social network that seems to keep growing all the time.
January 2008
- learning to use a smartboard
- convert videos using Zamzar
- using del.icio.us to tag pages
- learning to blog and make comments in others
February 2008
- learning how to use a wiki
- teaching students to blog
- teaching students to use wikis
- creating class and student blogs
March 2008
- using twitter
- joining Skype – but still can’t get the microphone on the headsets to work – hope my school techie will help
- taking part in an online discussion through Elluminate
WOW!! Time for a break to let all this information sink into this little grey head.
Wow Sue
You have had a busy few months. I believe this is such an exciting time to be teaching and it’s great to see you exploring so many new tools with your students. Have fun.
Cheers
Barbara
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Hi Sue
I just want to say that you are doing so well. Some of these tools took me a long time to move from hearing about them to being able to use them effectively — in some cases months. So you should be giving yourself a big pat on your back. If you haven’t checked out my wiki I suggest it’s worth working through — because I documented all my how-tos as I learnt new stuff. I’ve also got a customised Google search on the front page of my wiki that searches all my sites — cause I even forget which site I put the information.
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Thanks Barbara and Sue – I’ve enjoyed the learning and now am passing on the info to a few other teachers at school. Will be a long slow process I reckon but worth it in the end. I doubt whether I am using them effectively yet, but I am certainly having a go.
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Sue – thanks very much for the info on your wiki – it will come in handy when I want to get going on videos or slideshows etc.
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Sue,
Well done on having so many visitors to your blog! I know what you mean with going from posting daily to the frustration of not being able to get to it more than once or twice a week. I hadn’t touched mine at all for three weeks until the start of this week! It’s great that you are looking up new bloggers all the time. I’ll take a couple of tips from that. I think it’s also very sane that you have 15 feeds that you subscibe to. I’ve got around 80-100 I think and wonder why I can’t keep up?! Ah, it’s all a bit nuts!
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Congratulations on keeping up to date! I think it is fantastic you are introducing this technology to your students. We live in amazing times!
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Hi Sue-
I was just checking out blogs and your caught my eye since I also very interested in learning all I can about the SMART Board AND because we have the same background!!!! I just recenty began my blog also– so much to learn. It is a work in progress, to say the least!
CONGATS on your milestone of 1000- that is AWESOME! I just added a clicker map to my site. It took me a while to figure ut how to add it-UGH!!
Anyway- will check back again– kee up the good work.
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@jess well that number of feeds has increased over the last month but it is still at a reasonable number.
@bill – the students are loving their blogs and each couple of weeks, a few more earn their own personal blog. One has even interviewed an Australian Idol contestant and written about her in the blog. The Aussie Idol contestant then came and wrote on comment on the student’s blog. WOW! was the reaction.
@anne-marie – it has been great fun using the Smartboard, but I know I don’t use it to its full potential – I am still using like a whiteboard with the occasional game allowing for kids to move things around on it. But at least the blogs are working well.
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I have the same problem with the mic on Skype on my Mac. My bet is that you’re using Macs at your school. If that is the case, the information I’m getting is that Macs don’t like the ordinary inputs. I’m reading that they need a preamp or an iMac Adaptor, which converts the plugs to a USB. I’m told the recording quality goes up as well, although I’ve not had a problem with quality. I’m wondering whether it is a bug that was introduced with one of recent security updates as my mic just stopped working some time back. I’ve actually tested another headset on my Mac and the same problem occurred.
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g’day Leigh,
No, not using Macs either at school or home. I used to, many moons ago, but when the schools went PC I decided for ease of writing sheets at home to use at school, I needed to become a PC user. I have now got Skype working at home and can often join the OZ/NZ educators meetings every Sunday evening using Flash Meeting. I haven’t tried with Skype yet at school, maybe next term once I have blogging, wikis and Smartboards a bit more under control.
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[...] had a read of two recommended teacher’s blogs which deal with this issue. In batting for 1000+ Mrs W. talks about how in two months she has built a blog up so much that now she is getting over [...]