* Uncle Arne gives a speech. I agree with basically everything he says, or at least everything in this bullet-pointed version as published. I think the "doctors and lawyers don't work nine months a year" line is a little glib, but I am broadly in favor of increased school time.
*Fun with Blogger stats, updated. So in my post marveling over Blogger stats, I was amazed that I had people coming to my blog after searching for auto mechanics. Well, it turns out that I actually wrote a post about auto mechanics. 'Course, it wasn't about auto mechanics. Further, it turns out that the person who got here looking for auto mechanics left a comment on the blog. It got caught in the spam filter. S/he asked for advice on how to find auto mechanics. Poor devil.
Showing posts with label metablogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metablogging. Show all posts
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Fun with Blogger stats
Okay, so probably everybody does at least one of these. Possibly more, if they find something interesting. But if you'll forgive the self-indulgence, I thought I'd share some of the stats, not because of anything great about this blog, but because of something extraordinary about the world we live in.
This blog has been viewed over 3000 times by people who aren't me. My average blog post has about 5 non-me viewers; the median is probably 4. A few of them have as many as 20. This isn't a huge readership, but it's a much bigger readership than the notes I used to write in the margins of my notebooks when I was studiously not thinking about my anthropology lecture; really, the blog is just a more complex, better polished version of that.
My readership comes from all over the world. People from Russia, Singapore, South Africa, and Vietnam have all seen this blog. Who knows how useful to them it was, but they saw it. 18 people from the Netherlands have been here. 18! (Hallo!) I have 6 followers: a few educators, my wife, one person who would, for his/her own nefarious purposes, follow anyone, and a couple of people I can't tell anything about. I know I have at least 1 regular reader. I don't believe he's following me under an alias, but he might, I suppose. I don't know why he would choose to comment under his real name, then, but the ways of the mighty are mysterious.
People get here in all sorts of ways. Lots of people get here by searching for "Never work harder than your students" or some variation thereof; if I'd known that was going to be my big traffic driver, I might have worked harder on those posts. (But not harder than my students.) Some people get here by searching for "kohn vs marzano." Some got here by searching for notes on "Art and Science of Teaching," a few by searching for "components of a lesson plan," one guy got here by searching for "lesson plan for i am (and i mean it) not going to move." I think it must be a book; it's not one I've heard of.
Someone got here by searching the phrase "do we take the whiteboard for granted". I wonder what they intend to do with the answer to that question: lead a whiteboard awareness campaign? Replace all the whiteboards in their school with chalkboards? Anyway, if the person who searched for that phrase is still here, the answer to your question is "yes."
One poor soul got here by searching for "site:blogspot auto mechanics." I wonder what I've written to make any search engine ever think that this was a valid result for that search. I think about the searcher must have felt when s/he got here; all they wanted was instructions on changing the light bulb in their Mazda 6 (answer: you probably can't in later models; you have to take the whole front end of the car off. It takes 2 mechanics over an hour.) and what they got was a diatribe against, say, Michelle Rhee. How disappointed they must have been. I take comfort in the speed of the internet. At least their disappointment was lingering. I like to think, though, that the confusion lasted for a while.
As I said at the outset, none of these things are meant as self-congratulations. I didn't earn any of those things. My miserable scribblings, more pre-writing exercises than drafts, and certainly not published-quality works, do not deserve to be taken seriously by educators from Florida, California, India, Russia, Germany, and Singapore. More people have been exposed to my thoughts through this blog than through my teaching career, and that's shocking and humbling. The digital world is a strange and wondrous place. It's true that you never know where the road is going to take you when you walk out your front door, what adventures you'll be whisked away to. The less explored corollary is that you never know, when you put out the welcome mat, who will show up at your door.
So thank you, dear reader, and to the people who wanted instructions on replacing the timing belt in their Ford F-150, sorry about that.
This blog has been viewed over 3000 times by people who aren't me. My average blog post has about 5 non-me viewers; the median is probably 4. A few of them have as many as 20. This isn't a huge readership, but it's a much bigger readership than the notes I used to write in the margins of my notebooks when I was studiously not thinking about my anthropology lecture; really, the blog is just a more complex, better polished version of that.
My readership comes from all over the world. People from Russia, Singapore, South Africa, and Vietnam have all seen this blog. Who knows how useful to them it was, but they saw it. 18 people from the Netherlands have been here. 18! (Hallo!) I have 6 followers: a few educators, my wife, one person who would, for his/her own nefarious purposes, follow anyone, and a couple of people I can't tell anything about. I know I have at least 1 regular reader. I don't believe he's following me under an alias, but he might, I suppose. I don't know why he would choose to comment under his real name, then, but the ways of the mighty are mysterious.
People get here in all sorts of ways. Lots of people get here by searching for "Never work harder than your students" or some variation thereof; if I'd known that was going to be my big traffic driver, I might have worked harder on those posts. (But not harder than my students.) Some people get here by searching for "kohn vs marzano." Some got here by searching for notes on "Art and Science of Teaching," a few by searching for "components of a lesson plan," one guy got here by searching for "lesson plan for i am (and i mean it) not going to move." I think it must be a book; it's not one I've heard of.
Someone got here by searching the phrase "do we take the whiteboard for granted". I wonder what they intend to do with the answer to that question: lead a whiteboard awareness campaign? Replace all the whiteboards in their school with chalkboards? Anyway, if the person who searched for that phrase is still here, the answer to your question is "yes."
One poor soul got here by searching for "site:blogspot auto mechanics." I wonder what I've written to make any search engine ever think that this was a valid result for that search. I think about the searcher must have felt when s/he got here; all they wanted was instructions on changing the light bulb in their Mazda 6 (answer: you probably can't in later models; you have to take the whole front end of the car off. It takes 2 mechanics over an hour.) and what they got was a diatribe against, say, Michelle Rhee. How disappointed they must have been. I take comfort in the speed of the internet. At least their disappointment was lingering. I like to think, though, that the confusion lasted for a while.
As I said at the outset, none of these things are meant as self-congratulations. I didn't earn any of those things. My miserable scribblings, more pre-writing exercises than drafts, and certainly not published-quality works, do not deserve to be taken seriously by educators from Florida, California, India, Russia, Germany, and Singapore. More people have been exposed to my thoughts through this blog than through my teaching career, and that's shocking and humbling. The digital world is a strange and wondrous place. It's true that you never know where the road is going to take you when you walk out your front door, what adventures you'll be whisked away to. The less explored corollary is that you never know, when you put out the welcome mat, who will show up at your door.
So thank you, dear reader, and to the people who wanted instructions on replacing the timing belt in their Ford F-150, sorry about that.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Preview of coming attractions
So I never got around to posting my summer to-do list; I was too busy doing it. That's probably okay. I've got a lot on my mind, though, and I've got either ideas or drafts for the following ideas which I intend to write about:
The role of unions in education; possibly an ancillary on organized labor in general (hint: I'm broadly in favor)
Effective teacher and administrator evaluation
Effective student evaluation
The role of journals in my English classroom
Creating community in the opening days of school
Common Core standards and their implementation
Communicative learning in the mixed-level classroom
Technology integration and educational computer programs you'd like to see
Project-based learning
What's on your mind as we pass the half-way point of Summer 2011?
The role of unions in education; possibly an ancillary on organized labor in general (hint: I'm broadly in favor)
Effective teacher and administrator evaluation
Effective student evaluation
The role of journals in my English classroom
Creating community in the opening days of school
Common Core standards and their implementation
Communicative learning in the mixed-level classroom
Technology integration and educational computer programs you'd like to see
Project-based learning
What's on your mind as we pass the half-way point of Summer 2011?
Monday, February 15, 2010
Metablogging: Clever post titles
Blogging is the only kind of writing I've done in massive amounts with the intent that other people read it. People I don't know, I mean; a few near and dear have read the occasional short story. But some few blog posts have started off as nothing more than clever titles. The one that remains my favorite is, "Curriculum? I barely knew 'um!" I've never been quite sure that the joke works outside my head, but I think it's funny.
And that's a funny thing about this medium. Some of my favorite blogs are usually nothing more than snappy, witty, sarcastic, or funny headlines with links to other websites. Sure, occasionally they offer commentary of some kind, but mostly it's the post title. The whole endeavor seems like an exercise in giving titles. The masters also use tag lines well, but you can tell you've made it when your title is snappy.
I wonder if journalism is like this, as well. I'm laboring under the understanding that, once a journalist writes an article, somebody else writes the headline. (At least in newspapers.) I find myself wondering who writes the lead-ins to TV news segments--the producers, the anchors, or the journalists doing the segment? Or is there a special guy just for writing those bombshells they give you just before going to commercial--"And when we come back, how many things in your home can kill your pets? Stay with us and find out."
One thing I do know, and that's that almost no blogger I read knows how to end a post well.
And that's a funny thing about this medium. Some of my favorite blogs are usually nothing more than snappy, witty, sarcastic, or funny headlines with links to other websites. Sure, occasionally they offer commentary of some kind, but mostly it's the post title. The whole endeavor seems like an exercise in giving titles. The masters also use tag lines well, but you can tell you've made it when your title is snappy.
I wonder if journalism is like this, as well. I'm laboring under the understanding that, once a journalist writes an article, somebody else writes the headline. (At least in newspapers.) I find myself wondering who writes the lead-ins to TV news segments--the producers, the anchors, or the journalists doing the segment? Or is there a special guy just for writing those bombshells they give you just before going to commercial--"And when we come back, how many things in your home can kill your pets? Stay with us and find out."
One thing I do know, and that's that almost no blogger I read knows how to end a post well.
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