by Scott McLeod | Aug 19, 2007 | Communication, Leadership and Vision, Miscellaneous, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Integration |
Karl Fisch just sent me a link to this video. If you watch the first 10 minutes or so, you’ll see Hal Lindsey of the Trinity Broadcasting Network use Did You Know? (Jeff Brenman’s adaptation of the original version) as an indicator that Armageddon is near.
Oh, and if you like the video, you can order it on DVD at 1-800-Titus35.
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by Scott McLeod | Aug 15, 2007 | Blogging, Communication, Edublogger research, Miscellaneous, Research and Evaluation |
[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]
Two weeks ago I reported on my second effort to catalog the edublogosphere, to put some shape and form to the amorphous network, to try and measure the largely unmeasurable. Some of my blogging colleagues raised various concerns and objections. Here’s my take…
- As is described quite clearly (and eloquently) in Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, the Internet and the education blogosphere are both examples of complex, self-organizing networks. As such, they have multiple hubs of varying sizes, each connected to each other and to multiple individual nodes (i.e., blogs and web sites). [click on image for larger version]
Some hubs are connected to thousands of other hubs and nodes; we might call these superhubs (e.g., A-D). Other hubs (e.g., E-H) are connected to less than a dozen nodes. The key here is that many nodes never would come into contact each other except for the hubs. For example, edublogger 1 only finds out about edublogger 2 because edublogger A highlighted and linked to something edublogger B wrote about edublogger 2’s post.
- The hubs and superhubs are the essential connectors, the glue that holds the network together. For example, if edublogger 2 quits blogging, the only one that loses access to that voice is edublogger B. If edublogger C stops blogging, however, the rest of the network not only loses access to that person’s voice, it also loses access to the voices of those edubloggers to which only C linked. If edublogger A quits blogging, the network loses access to edubloggers E and F as well as all of the individual edubloggers to which only they were connected (at least until those nodes get reconnected to other hubs). The process is all very fluid, shifting and changing with each hyperlink.
- There are advantages to being first, but over time quality wins out. One of the reasons that edubloggers like Will Richardson and David Warlick are superhubs is because they were some of the first ones in the education blogosphere. They had first-mover advantage and have had time to build up their audience compared to the new edublogger who started yesterday. That said, over time their advantage begins to diminish as others enter the network. If Will and David’s posts didn’t continue to be of high quality, people would link to other bloggers instead and Will and David’s audiences would dwindle. Hubs and superhubs must have ‘sticky’ content in order to retain their roles in the network. It’s a testimony to many of the top edubloggers that they’ve been able to be consistently good, as defined by their audiences, for a long period of time.
- If you are interested in making change, the hubs and superhubs have important roles to play. Why? Because they’re the ones with the ability to reach many. They’re also the ones with the ability to bring important ideas generated out on the fringes of the network into the mainstream center of the network.
So, in response to some of the objections…
- It’s not just an issue of ‘popularity.’ Because we voluntarily visit / subscribe to blogs, content wins out over superficiality in the end. High-ranking blogs are there because others value their voices. You may not think an individual blogger is interesting, but others often do in large numbers. So Terry Freedman says, “Quality not quantity.” And Vicki Davis says “meaningful” is more important than “popular.” But as item 3 above notes, these supposed dichotomies actually are conflated.
- I see knowledge and identification of the hubs and superhubs as important for facilitating change. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach advocates focusing on impact, not just ranking. To me, impact and ranking tend to blur since I think about large-scale, comprehensive reform of schools, not just localized change. Most of us are change agents – whether our agenda is K-12 technology, home schooling, back-to-basics education, or whatever – but it’s hard to make change when no one is listening. If I want to influence the educational technology arena, I need to catch the attention of folks like Will and David and Sheryl and Terry and Vicki and also be able to point educators to them. If I want to influence the homeschooling arena, I need to catch the eye of SpunkyHomeSchool. And so, again, I believe that impact and ranking are somewhat intertwined.
- Each of us has our own reason(s) for blogging, and of course we always must respect those. I would never presume to either guess others’ reasons or judge the legitimacy of those motivations.
- Maybe it’s the academic in me, but I think there is worth in someone doing a systematic study of the education blogosphere. It doesn’t have to be me, but someone ought to be able to cite some basic statistics about what’s going on. For example, those of us who advocate educational blogging gain legitimacy from the fact that we know that there are 50,000+ education blogs rather than just a few hundred. In other words, we have the numbers to show that educational blogging is not a fad; whatever form it takes down the road, it’s here to stay. I also don’t know how else to identify the hubs and superhubs other than to do what we did. Although we may have missed some blogs with smaller audiences, I’m fairly confident that we got all the big ones (maybe not in the right ranking order).
- I personally feel that there is no better way to recognize and honor voice than to share new and powerful voices with others. When I see interesting, illuminating writing, I want to share that with others and to do my part to help those writers gain large audiences. Sheryl said “What is important is giving our students and teachers ‘voice.’ We need to focus on helping them develop as communicators and writers, not rankers, so they have a place at the policy table and can help to leave this world better than we found it.” I concur, but I disagree that ranking is unimportant. If we want students and educators to ‘have a place at the policy table,’ the inherent nature of a complex, self-organizing network almost demands that those folks become a hub or superhub in order to gain the attention of policymakers. Policymakers rarely, if ever, listen to folks who represent small constituencies, so the larger the audience we can give powerful bloggers, the better.
- I could have listed just the top few dozen edubloggers in my results, but I didn’t. Instead, I included every single URL that we found so that others could find new voices and bring them to the attention of the hubs and superhubs. I will continue to do this and encourage others to do the same. Indeed, illustrating that perhaps I was deeper in the ‘echo chamber than I suspected, I found some new hubs and superhubs that I didn’t even know existed (for example, how many ed tech bloggers knew about The Panda’s Thumb or Classical School Blog or that they were reaching large audiences?).
- Terry is right: Technorati has many issues. But until someone points me to something better, that’s the best I have. I, too, am somewhat confused by the different rankings that occur when different URLs are used for the same blog, but I don’t know what to do other than to provide an online form that people can use to fix or include their URL for next time.
So with all due respect, Vicki, Sheryl, and Terry, I understand and respect your perspectives but I don’t share them, at least not on this front. As always, I appreciate everyone’s input and welcome further suggestions for how to improve this ongoing project. Many thanks…
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by Scott McLeod | Aug 1, 2007 | Blogging, Communication, Edublogger research, Miscellaneous, Research and Evaluation |
[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]
Back in January, when I had been blogging for five months but was still a blogosphere fledgling, I am embarrassed to say that I made a post that purported to present the top 30 edublogs as measured by Technorati rankings. The more time that passed since that post, the more chagrined I became at how laughably naive I was (I only analyzed 66 blogs!). So I decided to try again…
Step 1: Define the size of the education blogosphere
This in itself is a challenging and important task. No one knows exactly how big the education blogosphere is because it’s both dispersed and hidden. Here’s how my two phenomenal research assistants, Jenni Christenson and Eric LeJeune, and I tackled the issue:
- We started with CASTLE’s participant lists from LeaderTalk and our Principal Blogging Project, January’s education blogosphere survey, and the messages I received from my aforementioned January post on top edublogs. This garnered us a few hundred blogs.
- Then Jenni and Eric combed scores of education blogs’ blogrolls. We found over one thousand blogs this way.
- They dug through blogger lists like the ones at Support Blogging, BlogBridge, and ScotEduBlogs and got hundreds more.
- With the gracious assistance of all three organizations, Jenni and Eric scraped blog URLs from November Learning Communities, Edublogs, and Class Blogmeister and found hundreds more.
- In the area that Edublogs uses to communicate with its users, James Farmer posted a link to an online form for us and we got another 224 that way.
- And so on… In other words, we tried to find every list, edublog hosting service, blogroll, etc. that might have new blogs that we hadn’t found yet.
Then we had the joy of finding and eliminating duplicates. Ugh.
Technorati lists 14,854 blogs with a tag of ‘education.’ It lists 23,807 blogs with a tag of ‘school.’ James informed me that Edublogs alone is hosting over 50,000 educator blogs, most of which are private and classroom-oriented. As you’ll see, we didn’t get anywhere near that many URLs.
How many edublogs are there? Over 50,000. How many are in this analysis? Over 3,600.
Step 2: Rank the blogs we found.
This was easier. Jenni and Eric copied each blog URL into the search box at Technorati.com and then entered into our spreadsheet the blog’s Authority (i.e., how many blogs have linked to it over the last 6 months) and Rank (i.e., overall rank among the tens of millions of blogs that Technorati monitors; lower is better). For example, at the time we checked, Patrick Higgins’ blog, Chalkdust, had an authority of 40 and a rank of 153,160. Many blogs had an authority of 0 or had nothing listed at all for either factor.
Step 3: Sort and present the results.
After doing a lot of cleanup (eliminating more duplicates!), we sorted by rank and authority. Here are some example results (click on the images to see the full-size charts)…
As you can see, Inside Higher Ed is the most popular edublog on our list according to Technorati’s Rank feature. Rounding out the top 30 is Infinite Thinking Machine.
If you look at the Authority of the top 204 edublogs, you’ll see the classic long tail distribution. The top blog, Inside Higher Ed, had nearly 2,400 other blogs link to it over the past six months. In contrast, the blogs near the end of this graph only had 45 blogs link to them. About two-thirds (2,542) of the blogs on our list had 0 blogs link to them in the last half year. Only 264 averaged more than 5 external links per month.
Caveats and disclaimers
- Exactly what constitutes an ‘education blog’ is a matter of interpretation. Jenni and Eric looked for blogs by teachers, principals, superintendents, school librarians / media specialists, technology coordinators, education professors, education critics / commentators, and the like. They had to make some tough choices but tried to include anyone that blogged regularly and often about education. If you think they included a blog that shouldn’t be on the list, get in touch.
- As hard as we tried, I’m sure we still missed a bunch of folks. If you’d like to be included in our next analysis (hopefully January 31, 2008), please complete the online form.
- There are many reasons why educators blog and Technorati numbers are just two of many metrics of success. If you’re happy blogging, by all means keep it up! If you’d like more traffic, this list of tips is a good place to start.
- Technorati numbers were compiled over a 2–week period in late July. All blog rankings and authority numbers are approximate and already out of date.
Next steps
If you want to play with the data yourself, download the Excel file. Please link back to this post or send me your findings so I can see what you come up with!
I’d like to do this twice a year, so the next time should be in January 2008. As the list grows bigger, it gets more unwieldy and time-consuming. If you’d like to lend a hand, get in touch. If you have any suggestions for how to expand this analysis or do it differently, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
8/1 Correction: The data for Education Week, The Fischbowl, and eSchoolNews were erroneously omitted. The two graphs above, as well as the downloadable Excel file, have been updated to reflect the data for these two sites.
by Scott McLeod | Jul 27, 2007 | Communication, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Online Learning, Planning and Funding, Tech Integration |
Earlier this month I featured a
report from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) as my
Report of the Week. Although I know that each of you
usually reads every comment on this blog (hah!), Beth Allen of the CWA left
a later comment that I thought was worth bringing to the forefront:
by Scott McLeod | Jul 26, 2007 | Communication, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Research and Evaluation, Safety and Security, Tech Tools |
Some of you may remember that I’m headed to Iowa State University in about a month. I ran across a story on its news service last week about Chad Harms, a professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, who has been doing research on how online sexual predators ‘groom’ their child victims and how their online communication can be coded to detect predatory behavior. Read the story and follow the links. This looks like interesting stuff, particularly if you could automate the coding so that it could be done by computer software.
by Scott McLeod | Jul 25, 2007 | Blogging, Communication |
As you can probably tell, I’m reading The New Influencers by Paul Gillin. I’ve already read The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil and Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble & Shel Israel. All three are good reads. Each has a slightly different voice and thus they complement each other well. I’ve learned a lot about organizational blogging from these three books. Time to put my new knowledge into action!
by Scott McLeod | Jul 24, 2007 | Blogging, Communication |
Nora Carr wrote in eSchoolNews in February about the need for schools to have policies regarding employee blogs. I thought it was interesting that she cited Harvard Law School’s policy as the model for public school districts since Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, notes that it may be the longest employee blogging policy he’s come across. I suppose it may be too much to hope for a school district to adopt Microsoft’s two-word policy: Be Smart.
For those of you who are looking for some model policies to guide your school system, Gillin points to a few examples that Charlene Li has posted on her wiki. If you know of any school employee blogging policies, drop the link in the comment area?
by Scott McLeod | Jul 21, 2007 | Communication, Leadership and Vision, Tech Integration |
Earlier
this month I asked if we educational technology advocates could articulate a
clear vision of what lies at the other end of all of this change for which we’re
advocating. In other words, what does the end result look like? Can we
articulate the desired state of things in a clear, concise manner that’s easily
conveyable to others?
Here are a few responses to my post:
- Mr.
Chase: The end result is a classroom in which students’ personal needs are
first recognized and valued by a teacher who takes the time to learn who each
student is as an individual and then uses the limitless reach of tools, 1.0 and
2.0, to create a learning experience that encourages shared ownership and
elevated expectations.
- John
Gross: A motivated student will learn in spite of us, in spite of how we
teach. The vision at the end of the tunnel is a student who can enter society
knowing who and where he/she is and where he/she is going. . . . My vision would
be a classroom full of kids teaching and learning from each other. Teaching is
changing almost as rapidly as technology and the kids know far more about how to
use it to arrive at their ends than we do.
- Alice
Mercer: we should teach Three C’s: critical thinking, creativity and
continuous learning. I suppose it could also be critical thinking, creativity,
and collaboration.
- Margie
Brown: I believe Scott’s ideas are, indeed, what an engaged classroom looks
like. An engaged classroom being a place where student’s experiences and
learning last longer and have a deeper impact than the upcoming state test.
- David
Warlick: What McLeod is looking at is important, what the teaching and
learning experience should look like. But I wonder if this is a bit premature,
that perhaps we should go back to his question and take it out another notch,
What should the end result, the person who graduates from our schools, look
like? It seems that with the answer to this question, we might better envision
what their schooling experience should be. First of all, I see graduates who can
teach themselves. I’m starting to call this learning literacy, and I think that
it is THE literacy we should be teaching – the skills to resourcefully use your
information environment to help yourself learn what you need to know, to do what
you need to do. I would also want to see graduates who know who, what, where,
and when they are. They need to have developed a comfortable and confident sense
of their culture, their physical environment, their geographic environment, and
their historic circumstance – a context for their experience, one that they hold
in common with people they will interact with, collaborate with, and enjoy the
company of. They would also be skilled in adapting to new circumstances – able
to learn, unlearn, and relearn (Alvin Toffler). Then we think of what the
classrooms, teachers, textbooks, technology, blah blah blah, need to look like
to accomplish this.
- Jeremiah
Patterson: I agree with David’s point that the metacognitive process is key.
Metacognitive literacy — understanding of how one/others learn. Social literacy
— understanding how to peaceably navigate the changing world. (From the
playground to the floor of the UN.) Environmental literacy — understanding our
place in the earth, and that of others. Literacy — oh yeah, and understanding
how to read and comprehend.
- Heather Ross: The tools
and rules are rapidly changing and will continue to do so. Our goal should be to
do our best to make sure that the learners know how to find the information they
will need, but also what to do with that information.
These are all fabulous posts/comments, but here’s my new question:
what if these visions aren’t compelling enough? What
if people in our organization listen to these carefully, treat them seriously,
and then say, “No thanks. Not interested?” What if we give it our best
shot and people don’t buy into it? Then what?
by Scott McLeod | Jul 6, 2007 | Communication, Leadership and Vision |
Here’s a challenge for all of us educational technology advocates…
Can we articulate in a few short sentences or paragraphs what the
end result looks like? Children learning collaboratively, students
as self-directed learners, a computer in every kid’s hand, ubiquitous Internet
access, creative problem-solving rather than rote memorization, global
interconnections, etc. Whatever we think the desired end point should be: can we
articulate it in a clear, concise manner that’s easily conveyable to others? Can
we describe what students and teachers and administrators are doing and why
(i.e., the educational purposes and benefits of doing so)?
One of the key aspects of successful facilitation of change is the ability to
convey a clear vision of what lies at the other end. As
David Warlick notes, many of us feel that we need to tell a new story. However, it’s not enough to just say we need one. We actually need to tell it. So can we
do it? Can we tell the new story?
I look forward to seeing what we come up with…
by Scott McLeod | Jun 22, 2007 | Communication, Leadership and Vision, Miscellaneous, News and Events, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Integration, Videos |
Karl Fisch and I are very pleased to announce the new version of Did You Know?
As you’ll see, we tried to minimize what some perceived as alarmism about globalism. We also fixed some errors, changed the music to something that didn’t violate copyright, and got a complete graphic makeover from XPLANE. Additionally, we added some material after ‘Shift Happens‘ to encourage viewer conversation and action.
More information on the new presentation (including suggestions for usage, a link to downloadable versions, and other resources) is available at
As always, comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome!
multimedia textbooks: A strategic investment
multimedia textbooks: Follow-up