With each passing year of school, family life, and fatherhood (we’ve got a second bundle of joy due in mid-May), I find less and less time to write, reflect, and blog about discoveries. Which is why November is so precious to me. You may not have noticed it if you’re new to my blog, but I’ve been posting every weekday this month as part of my pseudo involvement with the NaBloPoMo movement (except I wuss out and only write on weekdays instead of everyday). It helps me set the tone for the rest of the school year, getting my creative juices flowing, and gives me a general direction of where I want to focus my energies for the year. Already I’ve decided that I need to work on finding more simple resources for my students, as relying on too many “legacy” links has given me a scare or two when I couldn’t find previously used websites that are integral to my lessons.
I mentioned that all of this posting may not be a surprise to many of the newcomers to the site, because it would seem that since the start of November, my blog has been popping up more and more often in the blogrolls of freshly minted Edublogs and other educator blogs. And they’re not all just spam blogs either, as I first assumed. My best guess is that my site has been picked up by some online courses, and instructors have made it a requirement to include a few blogs (mine being one of the choices) in their own blogroll. I’ve seen people post comments here as part of online assignment before, but this is the first time I’ve seen such an explosion of new hits from blogrolls. The number of hits on my site in the first week of November was a 1000% increase over the last week in October (yes, you read that right, 1000% percent). Now, I know that me posting everyday, and many people gathering information from my site via RSS readers and e-mail alerts really helps to drive up my weekly hits, but I thought that number to be a bit high to attribute it just to my recent writing surge. Sure enough, a check with Technorati and Google Blog Search (even if it is giving me wonky results at the moment), confirms that several new blogs have been including me with some very fine company on their blogrolls, and I’m extremely flattered.
So in a round-about way, I guess this is my way of saying “Thanks!” to all of the online classes, teacher prep courses, and continuing credit classes that are using my blog as an example for other learners new to Web 2.0. I’m flattered to be thought of highly enough to be considered worhty reading material for just one class, let alone what appears to be several classes, and truth be told, there are far better resources to read than my own (which I mentioned in yesterday’s post for the Edublog Awards). I’ll try not to let all of you newcomers down, and make sure that reading the site is time well spent for you this year!
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I just came across your blog, and I’m really liking it. I run my own blog called Teacher Tech Talk for the school teachers in my district.
Michael Kiefers last blog post..Co-teaching through Webcam Video Conferencing
Glad to see you getting the recognition you deserve. IMO, too many of the blogs these classes usually follow are full of lots of talk and no action or unrealistic calls to arms. You’ve always walked what you talk and done an excellent job of being optimistic yet realistic.
I’m impressed with any attempt to write regularly. You see how completely erratic I am. 🙂
I appreciate the nomination by the way. It’s very kind of you. The Bionicteaching blog is kind of in a weird place right now with Jim Coe not posting anything for the last couple of months. And with my job change I’m not as sure I’m putting anything worth while out there. Hopefully as the job settles so will the blog.
Tom
Toms last blog post..Not Very Punny . . .
Tom:
The brilliant thing about blogging though is that it doesn’t have to be with any regularity, despite the usurpation of the blogosphere by the “new media” group blogs (gawker, tech crunch, etc). What you do find the time to share and write about it great, especially the videos. It’s just a shame that we can’t find a way to secure some type of stable income just blogging about the discoveries and thoughts we have, while still somehow remain in a real classroom setting to keep concocting all of these ideas 😉
Dear Mr. Rimes, congrats on the new one to be in May! Did I miss something? Anyways, anyone that takes the time to read information that you pass along, I am sure, will be recieving great information. And like your other new hits you have been getting, I am also learning what blogging is all about. I am looking for any information that would help with including technology in the classroom. I will try to keep reading!