Weekend Blogging Musings

At the NAGC Conference in Baltimore a month ago today, Ian Byrd and Brian Housand spoke about the virtues and benefits of blogging.  I'd been blogging for about 10 weeks at that point, so I attended.  They gave a lot of good tips, some of which I've incorporated into this blog since then, and challenged us to use blogging in our classrooms with students.  (Which will happen next semester!)

One of them - I think it was Ian, indicated that the views on his blog had grown from 5,000 the first year, to nearly 30,000!

Weekend Blogging Musings

I started this blog on September 1st, 2014, after a Facebook "dare" from my college friend, Cindy.    The folks at Te@chthought.com had come up with thirty days of prompts to engage teachers in blogging.  It seemed like something worth trying -- thus the beginning of the obsession.  The first month, even though it coincided with the early weeks of the school year, was very easy.  Along the way, I was encouraged by other educators' responses, either offering suggestions, relating to my posts, and, in one case, blessing my efforts by telling me that my blog was inspiring her to both blog AND share my reflections as part of her own professional development.

I hadn't really considered the value of blogging in terms of the wonders of the required evaluation system , and suddenly had new purpose.  Added to that, my own mother confessed that she is a daily viewer, and looks forward to the daily pinhole look into my classroom to see what I am doing.  (Or perhaps make sense of the acronyms I over-use in her presence?)

One of the things that blog readers might not know is that blog writers are provided with statistics.  I totally understand the significant SPIKE in viewership when my son became engaged on Tuesday, as his facebook friends, presumably, stalked the post -- with a whopping 264 views.  The commentary on ALICE school security was also of rising interest, with viewers from Finland that day.  I can tell you that viewership is significantly down on weekend posts.  Certainly retweets and favorites of tweets by high -profile bloggers like Beth and Justine at Te@chthought, or the previously-mentioned Brian or Ian after posting at NAGC, contribute to increased viewership.

Ian mentioned that his first year of blogging, he was shocked by the fact that 5,000 people had viewed his writing.  This morning I actually checked my totals.  In less than four months, 9208 views from people in Finland, Alaska, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and (obviously), the US.  I'm thinking that -- unless you all let me down and stop reading over the Christmas break -- I'm on track for hitting 10,000 by the end of the calendar year. 

Oh, and the front-runner of all my posts?  The musings of the collaborative hijinks of my friends at A Lunch -- with a whopping FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN views. 

I really don't understand the extraordinary obsession with that post.  But it warms my heart to think that there are that many people who are as warped as my friends at A Lunch.

Have a great weekend!

#reflectiveteacher