I've been reading your blog for a while now and wanted to comment on this post. This is something I've struggled with in my own blog. While my numbers show that I have a pretty good core of people who read my blog personally, usually it is only a handful of people who comment on a post. So then I start wondering if I should be doing something different.

My blog originally started as an educational blog, but let's face it, being a teacher is not my only persona, so I have shared other things about my life outside of the classroom. This is something I've struggled with because then I worry if people have an expectation that I should only write about educational issues. I've finally come to the conclusion that my blog should be a reflection of who I am, both personally and professionally.

The numbers have become less relevant to me. I figure that as long as I have people who are reading my blog then that's a good thing.

 

Vicki -

I think you've really hit on something when you say, "However, I truly feel the emotional aspect of this whole thing is what our kids are going through! We see this playing out in the desire of teenagers to be Youtube stars. We see it everywhere. When we experience it, we begin to recognize it in others."
This rings so true for me and is one of the reasons I immerse myself in social networking (although I do love it, I somewhat treat it as research). I've posted several times on trying to understand this entirely new social dimension that our students are experiencing and I have to admit that it's entirely different than anything I experienced as a kid. You're right, some of the emotions being shared over Jon's post reflect a bit of the experience of our students have on a daily basis - having something written about them and responding. What happens sometimes (and I've done this myself a few times) is even adults respond too quickly in the heat of the moment and don't practice the "wait until you cool down" method of response. In the extremely civil world of the edublogosphere, this never becomes hurtful or hateful, but unfortunately it can elsewhere. Sorry to get off on a tangent, but what I'm trying to say is that participating in this world makes all of us better teachers. We're learning the lessons that we need to share with our students, thanks for bringing that point up.

And not sure if you got my dm's on twitter, but thanks for taking the time to use diigo annotations to comment on my post - I've since reconsidered and edited to open comments.
I also included your annotations, since only diigo readers are able to see them otherwise.

 

@ms-teacher - I actually have several blogs with different content -- one for business people and idea people and another for my christian blog -- I even have one w/ kid appropriate content.

If you have wordpress, people can subscribe by tag and if you don't blog prolifically, people may be happy w/ all together -- but for someone like me who blogs a lot, I find that dividing content is sometimes a good idea. Part of me is considering creating a blog just for bloggers to put that content over there, but I'm not convinced I should do that... yet.

Kate -- great post -- and thanks for sharing the annotations -- b/c comments were closed that was the only way to share them on the page!!! I will say that I went through all of these emotions when I started and my beginning is alot more recent than for a lot of bloggers who are widely read... I remember thinking about "control" and "he started that" and feeling a little guilty for "stealing" comments. However, remember, most people want to comment when the urge hits... and won't click over anyway.

Let them comment!

 

Hey, Vicki - here's a little bit of push-back (wow, that really is a North American phrase) on the subject of truly not caring about rankings etc. If you really want to let go, you'll have to stop making passing references to "I'll probably drop out of the top 10,000" because that shows that you are taking notice of that sort of thing. And if you truly want to liberate yourself, scrap technorati tags on your post! They truly do not make a difference ... if your stuff is good enough, people find you.

 

@Graham -- Spoken with true Aussie down-to-earth-edness!

Just because I don't focus on it doesn't mean I don't notice it. I use technorati to follow my trackbacks. I also use it to find tags and keywords and find it very useful.

Just because the rankings are flawed doesn't mean they don't have a use. I go in there to see trackbacks & tags and I do see my rating every time I do. It is right there.

So, to not use something useful would not make sense to me.

Good thought though. If it every loses its use, then perhaps my rating will fade into foggy memory!

 

Vicki, this really made me think about my blogging and how I do miss getting my thoughts down when I go too long without a post. It also made me think about the relationship Twitter has to blogging. Thanks for sharing.

 

Dear Vicki:

I’m not sure if it was plain good luck or maybe God working in my life, but somehow I found my way to your blog and I believe I’m a better person as a result! I starting blogging a few months ago and really had no clues. In fact, after someone suggested blogging to me, I didn’t begin until I read one of those dummies books (in this case, Blogging for Dummies), and even then I often felt lost – not just due to technical incompetence, but also trying to discover my voice – to understand who I was communicating to, and why – as well as the whole emotional gambit of investing my time and personhood into communicating without hardly anyone responding. Your instruction . . . your wisdom . . . your gentleness . . . and your graciousness are so welcome, refreshing, and right-on. You are a gifted person. Clearly, your district and the especially the children are lucky to have you.

I’m sure given enough time I’ll eventually come to understand important techie things like trackbacks, pings, nings and zings (and other Dr. Seuss words) -- but for now I’m comfortable just sharing. It’s possible that my lack of response is because the bloggosphere hasn’t yet fully extended to include South Dakota (we’re behind the times in may things), but more likely it’s because people find what I say boring, or simply haven’t found me yet!

It seems to me the name of your blog is too limiting, instead of cool cat teacher, it really should be cool cat lady, or perhaps more accurately, cool cat human-being. Thank you for investing yourself in such a transparent and passionate manner into your blog. You are making a difference.

Fred Deutsch
Watertown, SD
www.school-of-thought.net