Wednesday, January 14, 2009

31 Days Challenge - Next Steps

In typical me fashion - I like to do things in bulk....

Day 6 - Email an Old Timer Reader

Mrrobbo and I joined Classroom20 and started blogging at about the same time. We've kept in pretty regular contact since we first touched base through chats on Skype where we bounce random ideas off each other. So, rather than email him while I'm chatting on Skype with him and after just responding to his latest blog entry I figured I'd be sneakier and thank him publicly for the support, ideas and discussions over the last six months.

Day 7 - Plan Your Next Week’s Posting Schedule


Push The Button

Image: "Push the Button" by Storem @ flickr

Wait, what...a whole week's posts pre-planned? Please remember I've got a fear of commitment and am terrible at making long term plans (sometimes a week is long term for me - see HERE and HERE...oh and HERE to read about my thoughts on this). That being said, I need to get over it and start doing this. At least planning (and sticking to it) as to when I'll blog, maybe even going as far as having a vague idea of what to talk about...I know I need to be a more consistent blogger, I'm just so random in my thought patterns.

Day 8 - Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented On Before

Karl Fisch has long been an inspiration and much admired educator. His videos "The Machine is Us/ing Us" and "Information R/evolution" really spoke to me the first time I watched them and they still do after well over 15 viewings each. Oddly enough it was only fairly recently that I started following his blog The Fischbowl. Anyway, I've never posted over there, prefering to lurk (it's always intimidating the first time you leave a comment for someone you really look up to!), but his post "A Whole New Learning Experience: Take Two" really stood out to me, either because of the English curriculum links or the idea of the Wikified Research Paper which seems to strongly relate with our hypertext unit, and I left a short comment tonight.

I have to admit I find it hard to keep track of things like the comments I leave too - so I'm signing up for co.mments too - anything that helps me get organised is always welcome.

Day 10 - Declutter Your Sidebar

This has always been a priority for me - I hate crowded sidebars and even now with the few widgets I have I think it may be too much. But for now I think it's fairly uncluttered - feel free to tell me if you think otherwise.

Day 11 - Dig into Your Blog’s Statistics

I've had Site Meter account attached to this blog for some time now and it's always interesting digging in and finding out some of the stats. And after spending some time browsing through it's fairly obvious I need to stop avoiding Day 7 and start being more consistent if I want to attract a consistent readership...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oops I did mean to move Day 7. I really think the plan a series of posts is a task that needs to be at the end. While I did it when I did the original project, and it did attract new readers, it is really intense while you are working through the tasks.

Writing a series of posts and having them in draft format is part of Darren Rowse normal blogging routine. However he needs to be really organised because he is paid to blog and has lots of blogs. While I like the concept it isn't part of my routine because I have different work priorities from him.

Oh dear did I mention co.mments is no longer available? At the moment I'm using cocomment and commentful. I've been talking with the technical team from cocomment to address the issues I've had with their service. So hoping for a good solution soon.

Anonymous said...

Meant to also say suggest you try Google Analytics. There is a post on The Edublogger that explains how to use.

Anonymous said...

Sneaky is the word Nic. I completely missed this post of yours. I must also make it clear the same thing, Your help and ideas have been awesome and i'm very appreciative of the work you put in.