iNACOL 10 Weeks of Activities for Better Blogging: Week 10 – Putting It All Together

The Week 10 or Final Activity – at least until Week 8 – Thought Leaders and Bloggers gets added – for the 10 Weeks of Activities for Better Blogging is entitled “Putting It All Together.”  Essentially, it is a reflective task, asking us to look at the volume of our blogging and ask the following questions:

• Which blogpost had the most views or comments?
• Which blogpost did you most enjoy writing? Why was this the most enjoyable one?
• Which blogpost did you feel best represents your voice for online and blended learning and why?
• Now, can you identify what it was that caused you write the above blogposts?
• How much time did you spend writing each blogpost?

So, let’s take a look, shall we…

Which blogpost had the most views or comments?

The three blog entries that have had the most views (at least since moving to the WordPress platform) are :

• Questions About The School Of Tomorrow (5,027)
• Problem With Cyber Charter Schools – PA & NJ Edition (4,629)
• Advice From My California Readers (4,551)

As for the most comments, that is a bit more problematic to figure out as the free WordPress only tells me the most popular from the last 1000 comments and trackbacks.  However, based on my own knowledge of my statistics, I’d say that these two are probably close to the top:

• Questions About The School Of Tomorrow (131 comments)
• EDTECH597 – Potential Hazards Of Blogging (121 comments)

The second one had so much interaction because it was part of a course that I was teaching on blogging in education for Boise State University.

Which blogpost did you most enjoy writing? Why was this the most enjoyable one?

This is actually part of an unofficial series that I worked on about a year ago.  The spark for the series actually came from an entry I wrote back in July 2010 entitled Worst Online Learning Law in America? Really??  Over a year later, I posted these five entries over a month one period:

• Politics Of K-12 Online Learning?
• Ideology of K-12 Online Learning
• Tactics of The Neo-Liberals/Conservatives in K-12 Online Learning
• Tactics of The Neo-Liberals/Conservatives in K-12 Online Learning – Part Two
• Critiquing K-12 Online Learning

These entries were fun for me because it was the first time on my blog that I really began to intersect my current passion for K-12 online learning and the research that I do in this field, with my former life as a political science major and professional political operative.

Which blogpost did you feel best represents your voice for online and blended learning and why?

In all honesty, I’d have to say the same five posts that I listed for the previous question.  Up until this point in time, while I had started to gain a reputation for being a critique of the dominant narrative in the K-12 online learning community (at least from the neo-liberal, cyber charter supporting, professional association folks), I had not really defined the specific ideological boundaries that overlay our field.  As a progressive voice in the field of K-12 online learning, these five posts really outlined the lay of the land and put myself squarely in the progressive camp.

Now, can you identify what it was that caused you write the above blogposts?

In terms of the ones that represent me the best and the ones I enjoyed the most, it was a desire to meld together some ideas that had been percolating in my mind for some time.  I had been seeing these connections between my political science/social studies education life and my K-12 online learning life.  I just needed to give those connections a voice and by able to lay it out for everyone to see and understand.

As for the most viewed and commented on entries, it was simply:

• Questions About The School Of Tomorrow – trying to get information for a colleague of mine in South Korea
• Problem With Cyber Charter Schools – PA & NJ Edition – part of a semi-series that I had been doing where I commented on a series of news articles that came across my electronic desk (and at the time I just had a few from PA and NJ ready to talk about)
• Advice From My California Readers – someone from California e-mailed me to ask a question about K-12 online learning and I used the blog as a way to get a wider variety of responses
• EDTECH597 – Potential Hazards Of Blogging – a topic that I have included in my Blogging in Education class that I believe to be important, largely influenced by the questions posed from Dale Kirby as a part of my participation in two Blogging in Academia panels that Dale organized

Can’t be much more honest than that…

How much time did you spend writing each blogpost?

Here are the best estimates that I can provide:

• Questions About The School Of Tomorrow – 15 minutes
• Problem With Cyber Charter Schools – PA & NJ Edition – 45 minutes
• Advice From My California Readers – 10 minutes
• EDTECH597 – Potential Hazards Of Blogging – 30 minutes
• Politics Of K-12 Online Learning? – 30 minutes
• Ideology of K-12 Online Learning – 30 minutes
• Tactics of The Neo-Liberals/Conservatives in K-12 Online Learning – 60 minutes
• Tactics of The Neo-Liberals/Conservatives in K-12 Online Learning – Part Two – 30 minutes
• Critiquing K-12 Online Learning – 45 minutes

Again, these are best guesses, as the most recent of these was the one for the BSU course this past summer and all of the others are one or more years older.