5th Anniversary Post

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfsoul

Last night I was participating in the #educoach chat and people started talking about starting to blog. I almost tweeted that I wrote my first post on St. Patty's Day, 2011. But I stopped and checked the date and I was off by 2 years!  So now I realized that I have been writing posts for 5 years - sounds like a celebration.

Five years and almost 200 posts later and I still only have a handful of regular readers. You know what? That's ok. I'm not in it for the money. I don't plan my post titles to maximize SEO. I don't spend time on the captions under my images to get google juice.  And, I don't link bait.  

Actually, that last paragraph should place some great bait, boosting my juice, and maximizing the SEO. This post could be worth BIG bucks!

I write for me. I reflect on things I have done. I think about things I would like to do. And I write about things that are happening in the real education world.  In the first year, for example, I wrote about Twitter safety, co-teaching a class, and assessment in a PBI environment.

Looking through my second year (2010) I can tell that I was going through a transition time in life. I went from teaching math to teaching engineering classes. It was also a transition time in our state and district with budget issues causing all kinds of job eliminations. The beauty of having a blog over a long period is that you notice how these life changes affect you.  I didn't write many posts in 2010 and none were that good. But one post did get some good traffic. It was a link-post to steer my summer reading.

When you write a lot of posts over a long period of time, not all posts end up being profound. That's something new bloggers need to realize. We can't be writing Pulitzer-Prize-winning posts every time we sit down at the computer. Some posts, however, end up getting legs. My most opened post (from April, 2013) - "What Should a PBL Classroom Look Like?" - has been opened nearly 1000 times! I say "opened" because the stats we get can't state whether the post was actually read. 

My next two "hot" posts were both in the three hundreds with numbers of time opened.  One was in 2011; my third year. These posts "PBL Should Not Be Done in a Vacuum" and " Four Posts to Get You Ready For the PBL New Year," are posts I am pretty proud of writing. 

My stats also show that the posts have been opened nearly 40,000 times! If you divide that amongst, roughly, 200 posts, then I can expect around 200 openings of each post.  But looking closer you'll see that about 3000 of the openings were in France and Russia. Blog post scraping is a real thing and can really pad your stats.  That's why, when you look at my last 9 posts, you'll see anywhere from 15 to over 200 times that each one has been opened.

Enough on the statistics from my blog - sorry, I'm a math guy and it's interesting to me.  

I am a reflective person. I am a reflective teacher. Writing blog posts can help you be more reflective. To perfect our craft we need to be able to critically analyze our work. I really believe that all teachers should take time to reflect. Whether this reflection is kept in written form (a blog or a "diary") or orally (a podcast or recorded memo) doesn't matter. I chose to record my thoughts in this manner - it works for me. 

Thinking about a blog? Check out Edublogs (I LOVE these guys. I have an account and would shift over but I haven't had time to figure out how to set up a landing page to connect the two.), Blogger (where I have this blog), or Wordpress (the gold-standard of blogging platforms). There are many, many more platforms out there but these are the ones I think of first. Ask your friends for recommendations. It seems everyone knows someone blogging. 

Finally. You are reading a post. I wrote this post. You did not just read a blog and I didn't write a blog. The blog is the platform where all of my posts are kept. When you write about this on Twitter, say "Read a great post today." Or, you could say, "@cfanch has a great blog. Read this post today." I just want you to sound like you know what you're talking about. And thank you for reading this post today. This is one of my first posts of my 6th year of blogging. It feels good - come join me.

You Can (and Should?) Have Your Own Blog

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fmckinlay/

I have averaged better than fifty posts per year for three straight years. I'm proud of myself. And, yet, I feel like I don't write posts nearly often enough.

I write for me. I use the writing as therapy; as a reflective process; and as a way to document things I have done or learned. And this has been incredibly therapeutic.

There are days, like today, when I look at the link to my blog and wonder, "when did I last put up a post?" Or, "I have nothing to write but I need to put up a post." It feels like pressure but it's more of a gentle nudge to get off of my butt and start putting down words.

As a matter of fact, today I'm using this post as a reason to not do something I need to do for work tomorrow. So I guess you could add that as a reason I write. It's a lot more fun playing with words that are my own than coming up with words and ideas that I need to have for others to use or read.

There are lots of different places you can go to to create a blog. I chose Blogger almost 4 years ago because it was simpler to use than Wordpress and more professional than some of the educator-related blog sites. If I were to do it again today, I would probably set up on Wordpress or Edublogs. My friends over at Edublogs are awesome and it is a very easy place to set up shop. I opened an Edublogs blog when I moved over to Decker Middle School but I've never put up a post there.

Since I am only writing with myself as the target audience I don't have to worry about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And neither will you, if that will be your goal. If you want to drive people to your site so you can make some money from the blog then you will need to be able to do analytics and Wordpress will be the way to go. I can do a lot of analysis in the back end of my blog, with Blogger, but I really don't worry about where people have come from before they opened my latest post. And, I don't spend time using the right words in the title or in the searchable title. It's just not important to me.

If you are worried about having something to say, then create your posts and don't tell anyone until you feel like you've written something meaningful. Or, you can do like I do and just publish it out there and not worry about what other people are thinking. The important thing is that you are writing down your thoughts, periodically, so that these ideas can leave your brain. When you can read what you have written you will feel better about life - I promise. As a matter of fact I'm smiling right now -

- just knowing that I'm getting this post done.  Of course I have that work to do for tomorrow. Better stop here and deal with it. But I refuse to stop smiling!

Nothing to Write About Today...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbgrigby/

I really want to write a blog post today. I wanted to write one yesterday.  This past week was pretty busy so I didn't think about it. But I wanted to write a post last weekend too.  It's not like I don't have anything to say about PBL. It's not like I haven't read some great posts that got me thinking that I should write my own post on that certain topic. No, I just can't seem to get started.

As a matter of fact I'm making myself write this post that may, or may not, get published. I do that quite often. I write a few paragraphs and get distracted and get up from the laptop. When I return I don't have any interest in finishing the post and it gets deleted (usually) or saved as  draft.  Currently I have 134 published posts and 4 sitting in draft.  One of those drafts is more like a diary entry and will probably never be published. But I do have a couple that I have kept and could dust off and finish and post in short order.

But not today.  It's lovely outside and I don't feel like writing a post. Yet, ironically, here I am in my third paragraph - not wanting to write.  What would I write about? There's PBL stuff I guess. I've done a lot of thinking about helping people get over their fear of trying PBL. I've thought about how schools, who are planning on using PBL as their primary mode of instruction, could set up their master schedule and their classrooms. Sometimes I feel like I'm ALWAYS thinking about PBL. But I won't be writing a post about PBL today.

Last week I went to Edcamp Waller (in Waller, TX) and I could write about Edcamps. No, just wrote one and there are tons out there right now because we're in Edcamp season. There were some great sessions about apps at the edcamp and I could write about them but I'm just not feeling techie today. No inspiration coming from edcamps......hmm.....maybe teaching, in general.

I'm about to conduct training, for our staff, tomorrow morning on C-SCOPE, which our district will be using next year. It houses curriculum and assessment pieces, as well as other great resources. C-SCOPE is a hot button topic in Texas because many school districts are using it as their curriculum, instead of a curriculum resource.

There are conservatives in this state upset with some of the lessons found within it.  Can you believe they portray those great heroes of 1773 (Boston Tea Party) as potential terrorists? All they did was destroy a ship's (flagged by the Crown) cargo. I mean it's not like they attacked a U.S. Ship - oh wait, we were under British rule....don't let me continue, I might say something wrong.  Not writing about that....

You see there's just nothing to write about today. So I'll wrap up here. It can really take forever to write a post. I've been at this for almost 15 minutes today.  That's 15 minutes that I won't get back.  Maybe I'll sit down tonight and start on a post. Or maybe tomorrow.... I've really got nothing to say.

Why Attend a Blogathon?

via http://www.atasteofkoko.com/

    The fact that I have only gotten this post written and it is nearly 4 PM is irrelevant to the premise of this post.  And that premise is that it is always good to be around fun, energetic, and knowledgeable people.  Talk about fueling the creative juices!

     Blogathon ATX (as in Austin TX) is in its 4th iteration.  It is the brainstorm of Ilene Haddad.  And, in addition to all of the obvious blogging experts available, she enlists friends from the area to (gently) arm twist food vendors to provide wonderful items for breakfast, lunch and a late afternoon snack.  For example I just had some incredible sushi for the late afternoon snack from Roll On Sushi Diner.

     But it's not just about the food.  Ok, the food IS a major draw but definitely not the major draw.  The real draw for me is the energy flowing throughout the building.  So what happens at a "blogathon?"

     The obvious answer is that bloggers come to work and to share.  There are Q & A sessions, there's  tech support, there are classes, and there are people conducting site reviews.  Each of these elements varies slightly from blogathon to blogathon but here's what we had at today's event:  (1) Q & A on Branding Yourself Online, (2)  WordPress 101, (3) Q & A on Long Term Blog Maintenance, (4) Intro to WordPress Premium Themes, and (5) Blogging For Business.

     As people sit around and blog and tweet they are talking and discussing.  The conversations can be funny.  They can be technical in nature.  They can even be what I would call "off task" as a teacher - talking about politics, events, concerts, and happy hour specials.   But embedded in those conversations are little nuggets about the how and why people blog.  You can learn tips and tricks.  You can learn what things are frustrating the other bloggers.  You can find what obstacles bloggers are running into.  And you can find others with your passions, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your subject matter.

     In summary, blogathons will help you be a better blogger just be being surrounded by others experiencing the blogging world.   For example I learned today that I hadn't been able to make changes to my blog because I had updated my email address and ended up not giving administrative rights to that access point.  Thanks to Lydia from Understand Blue.com I was able to see my admin information on my blog again.  It just took one click.  I hadn't seen my stats in more than a year.  I didn't know that, behind the United States, most of my readers come from France!  Who'd-a-thunk!

     Thank you Ilene and I can't wait for the next version of BlogathonATX.