31 Days To Build A Better Blog – Unofficial Extra Task

So a few days ago, Darren posted an unofficial task for his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog journey by ProBlogger Blog Tips that I did last year.  This unofficial entry was Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO.  Since I did the 31 tasks that he posted last April-May (he posted them in April, I didn’t finish them until late in May), I figured that I would give this one a try.  The entry that I selected to work on was Disrupting Class: Chapter Two – namely because it is the most popular entry on this blog since moving to the WordPress platform.

The first thing that Darren suggests doing is to determine why the entry is generating traffic.  While I don’t have the same ability that Darren has with Google Analytics, from the internal statistics that WordPress keeps, I can see that the search terms that bring people to this blog since moving to the WordPress platform are:

1. teacher (958)
2. classroom (897)
3. the west wing (445)
4. west wing (330)
5. conspiracy code (282)
6. blogging (260)
7. westwood cyber high school (167)
8. one room school (153)
9. high school classroom (138)
10. poppy flowers pictures (129)
11. disrupting class (123)
12. how to motivate students (120)
13. virtual schooling (107)
14. karen cator (98)
15. businessman (97)
16. westwood cyber school (92)
17. westwood cyber high school michigan (88)
18. why we need to communicate (86)
19. disrupting class: how disruptive innovation (85)
20. virtual high school (83)
21. generational differences (81)
22. virtual high school meanderings (81)
23. odysseyware sign in (80)
24. virtual school society (77)
25. sunday comics (75)
26. old classroom (73)
27. usdla (68)
28. calvin (67)
29. escience labs (67)
30. disrupting class how disruptive innovation (66)

Interestingly, three of the first 30 search terms include the title of the book on which the post was based.  Four of the 30 terms include the words virtual school and another three had the words cyber school.  I mention this because the actual post in question doesn’t use the term virtual school or cyber school, but both are included as tags in the post.

It is actually kind of interesting looking at these search terms.  Disrupting class falls into the 11, 19, and 30 positions (with 274 total searches).  As an entry, Disrupting Class: Chapter Two has had 1702 hits.  This is followed by Quality Science Labs Hands-On Science Lab Kits with 1572.  The search term that might hit that entry is escience labs, which only appears once on the list in the number 29 position (with only 67 searches).

I say this is interesting because there are search terms related to the Westwood Cyber High School appear three times on the list and fall in the 7, 16, and 17 positions (with a total of 347 searches).  Yet the third most popular entry on this blog is Westwood Cyber High School with 1152.  Given the higher position of these search terms, and the fact that there are three variations here, I’m wondering why this entry isn’t in the number two position.

In the end, I haven’t made any changes to the Disrupting Class: Chapter Two based on this unofficial extra task for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog journey.  But it has given me some food for thought about how people who aren’t regular readers of this blog find me, and what I can do to help increase traffic from that source.

31 Days To Build A Better Blog – Day 31

Well, it has only taken me 56 days to actually get to the end of this 31 Days to Build a Better Blog journey by ProBlogger Blog Tips. For this final one we were asked to Plan the Next Steps for Your Blog [Day 31 - 31DBBB]. Essentially, Darren wanted us to make a plan for the next month that schedules out our blogging activities.

I have kind of been doing some of this anyway, as throughout this journey (and based upon the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series that Steve Dembo did), I have begun to add in placeholder entries where I begin to drop stuff as I find them to ensure that I post those items monthly, but also to decrease the amount of work at any one given time putting them together.  But beyond this, I believe one of the reasons why I haven’t been as good at producing original content for this blog is because I do it when I have the time – and like most busy people finding free time ot not always an easy thing to do (so, I’m hoping that this plan will help.

And to try and get started on the right foot, I created a Google calendar for my blog and began to create an outline for the next two months.

June

July

I’m not sure how readable this calendar is, and you’ll note that I have a few empty days in July (one of the difficulties with planning out that far in advance I suppose).  But this is what I will use for my general guidelines.

You’ll note in June I’ve included the completion of the Disrupting Class series that I have been working towards on and off since this past December.  Also an entry about my visit to Odyssey Charter High School in November 2008, and in July the long threatened entry on my problems with charter schools.  Continuing in July, there are plans to begin blogging about my IT6230 class that I will be teaching.  You’ll also see plans for the month podcast to begin again in earnest.

As always, I’ll continue to post things I find in the iNACOL forums, Facebook, my inbox, or just general searching – but this is a general guidelines of where I am going for the next two months….

While this journey is complete, I should note that Darren did send us a bonus task – see Bonus Task 31DBBB – How to Write Compelling Post Titles – that I am simply going to try and do better with, and not write a complete entry about.  My next challenge, likely for August, will be to participate in the NaBloPoMo or National Blog Posting Month – I just have to wait for an appropriately themed month.

31 Days To Build A Better Blog – Day 23 [OR] Name Some International K-12 Online Learning Programs

After this entry, I only have the final day (and then an additional task) left to do to complete the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by ProBlogger Blog Tips. For this one we were asked to Call Your Readers to ACTION [Day 23: 31DBBB]. The basic premise was that the vast majority of people who come to this blog or read it in their RSS readers are passive in that they never comment, never participate in polls, never follow links, etc..  So, Darren suggested that we write an entry that asks the readers to do something specific to get them active.

In the next month or so iNACOL is planning to undertake a second version of their international survey (and you can access the first version here).  As such, they are planning to send out their survey again and I was recently asked about contacts that I had so they could send the survey directly to folks who might be in the know (as opposed to simply sending the survey to various federal or regional departments or ministries and it getting lost).

Outside of Canada and the United States, the specific K-12 online learning programs that I know about are limited to:

• Virtual Learning Network (New Zealand) – http://www.virtuallearning.school.nz/spaces/space.php?space_key=2
• Not School, Inclusion Trust (United Kingdom) – http://www.inclusiontrust.org/notschool/
• A School Without Walls (United Kingdom) – http://www.brightfuturesonline.co.uk/
• Virtual School for the Gifted (Australia) – http://www.vsg.edu.au/
• Virtual Schooling Service (Australia) – http://education.qld.gov.au/learningplace/vss/

I also know for sure that there is K-12 online learning occurring in China, Finland, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, and Turkey; but I don’t know any of the specific programs.

Your call to action – in the comment section below, please tell us of other K-12 online learning programs that exist outside of the United States and Canada (and if you have a URL or contact information include that as well).

31 Days To Build A Better Blog – Day 24

Only three more activities – including this one – to complete the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by ProBlogger Blog Tips. For this one we were asked to How to Use a Magazine to Improve Your Blog [Day 24: 31DBBB]. The basic notion that Darren tasked us with was to take a look at a magazine in our field and examine it for ways it could contribute to our blogs in terms of marketing ideas, design ideas, post ideas, learning about our niche, writing tips, monetization lessons, and reader engagement. As there is no specific K-12 online learning magazine, I selected a magazine that recent ran a special issue on K-12 online learning as the one I examined.

The magazine that I selected was Threshold Magazine, which is a publication of Cable in the Classroom, specifically their Fall 2008 edition (note that the magazine is available online, but I used a paper copy I have for the completion of this activity – as I thought that was more what Darren had in mind).

In looking at each of Darren’s categories…

Marketing Ideas

Well, there were a couple of things that stood out to me on this front as I read through the magazine.  The first was the branding, and this mainly came from the adverts throughout the magazine.  The way that various companies and products branded their names.  The second was the use of images (something I’ve discussed in Day 17 of this journey).  The final one was the colour, particularly in the text (and really noticeable with section headings).

Design Ideas

There are two things that really stand out to me as I read through the articles in this issue: images and sections.  As I have been trying to do a little more of in these past few days, it appears that on at least every second page is an image to accompany the text.  In most cases this image is simply an icon that is related to the article (or even that particular section of text), but really adds little to the content – beyond breaking up the text.  Very much like the “31 days” image I have above.  The second was the use of section headers to break up the articles.  In most cases, I don’t believe that my entries are long enough to warrant this.  But it does help with the organization. For example, in this I have broken up my discussion of Darren’s seven areas with little headers in italics as a way to section off the entry.  While the entry isn’t that long and there isn’t a lot of text, it does appeal a little more to the eye I think.

Post Ideas

Well, the obvious post idea would be to simply write an entry that was a commentary on the eight K-12 online learning articles that appeared in that edition.  Another take on that same idea would be to write an entry that was a commentary of each of the eight articles in that issue.  On a larger scale, I could begin to write future entries that are commentaries of the various academic and research articles that I read as a part of my own keeping up with the literature.  At present, I do post publication notices when I find new articles (see Publication Notice: High School Teachers’ Course Designs And Their Professional Knowledge Of Online Teaching as the most recent example); however, I rarely write any commentary on these items or portions of these items (e.g., Cyber Charter School Research and Selective Conclusions About Charters were rare examples).

Learning about our Niche

I’m not sure what I learned about my niche that I didn’t already know.  Being actively involved in K-12 online learning for the past eleven years now, I’ve held a variety of roles.  I’ve started by designing online courses and teaching in a couple of different virtual schools.  Because of my online teaching, I began to play around with some teacher-style, action research – which eventually led to my career as an academic and K-12 online learning being the main focus of my research.  I had the opportunity to be an administrator at the district-level of a province-wide K-12 online learning program, and then later worked (for a very brief period) in administration with a private virtual school enterprise.  So, having been a virtual school course designer/developer, teacher, administrator and research – spanning over an 11 year period – there isn’t a lot that I haven’t come across with the field of K-12 online learning, and most of my work now is focused on keeping up with my niche (as it is ever changing).  I suppose if I had to respond to this category when the issue first came out last Fall, my comments may have been different as there were some new voices in this issue (one of the difficulties of using an older issue I think).

Writing Tips

Two things I noticed about the article were that they tended to be written for a practitioner audience (which makes perfect sense given the nature of the publication) and for people who were not currently part of the K-12 online learning community.  This second one was of particular interest for me, as I try to make sure that over the span of my entries that there are things for both practitioners and academics (which I think would cover the first one).  I’ll be honest and say that most – if not all – of my entries are written for people who are already involved or already interested in K-12 online learning.  Rarely do I write entries that are described to draw people in who don’t have some existing connection to this community.

Monetization Lessons

As I don’t make money form this blog and have no interest in doing so, this category was not relevant to me.

Reader Engagement

This is a tough one, as the biggest difference I noticed between how the authors of each of the articles tried to engage readers and how I try to engage readers was the writing style.  The writing in this magazine, even with its practitioner focus, was much more formal (even academic) in nature.  The writing style that I try to maintain for the entries that I write tends to be more informal and conversational – almost as if I am thinking out loud through my blog.  I do that deliberately, as I feel that if I wrote for my blog the same way I write for publication it wouldn’t be as great an interest or accessible by as wide an audience as the current style (and not as much fun for me, as this is my chance to let my hair down (what remains) – at least in terms of my writing).

So, that’s it for another task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.  Two more and then I am finished with that journey.

31 Days To Build A Better Blog – Day 27

Another stop on my journey to complete the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by ProBlogger Blog Tips. For this one we were asked to Hunt for Dead Links [Day 27: 31DBBB]. The basic premise that Darren provided us with was to use a service like Xenu’s Link Sleuth, Dead-Links.com, Siteowner’s Link Checker, Link Valet, W3C free check link free utility, AnyBrowser’s Link Checker, HTMLHelp Valet Link Checker, or NetMechanic’s Link Check to find dead links and then correct them by either finding the updated link or removing them altogether (or you could see if they were available via the Internet Archive and link to the archived version – which is what I tended to do).

Well, I tried all of these services.  Most did not work for me and the ones that did reported in a very odd fashion.  In most instances they would tell me that X link was dead, but not tell me in what entry they found that link.  So, what is the point of learning that a link like http://www.google.com is dead if I don’t know which of the 1200 entries that I have contains that link.

So, I did something different.  I went back over the first 25 or 30 entries on this blog from way back in 2005 and updated all of the links in those entries.  not quite as effective, but at least a step in the right direction.  I also added categories and tags to all of those entries too, so I was able to do double duty.

Now, only three more entries to complete this 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.