Random Quote
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"
---- Kelvin Throop III
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
---- Edward R. Murrow
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
Technology will not replace teachers...teachers who use technology will
probably replace teachers who do not.
---- Ray Clifford
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
---- Franklin D. Roosevelt
it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
---- Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
Who do you blog for?
Langwitches draws my attention to a number of blogs debating a clique of bloggers that are the big guys and no one else is invited to the cocktail party.
langwitches post
cool cat teacher post
cool cat teacher again
dangerously irrelevant
classroom 2.0 thread
And the post that started it all - educational insanity.
Personally I don’t know what all the whining is about. If you write quality material and make your blog known people will comment. The key to getting your blog known is to link to other blogs and then follow the links. Also comment on blogs you like and that are relevant to your own - leave a link. It’s simple. All of the bloggers that wrote on the classroom 2.0 thread are unknown to me. Why are they unknown? they never linked to me and clicked the link. They also never left a comment here.
I’ve been blogging on EFL for over four years. I consistently put out 2-5 posts a week, though the last year has dropped a little. I used to get more comments than I do now and I know why the frequency of commenting has gone down. I, myself, don’t comment as much as I used to on other blogs. Additionally I am not writing my own entries related to other bloggers entries. (I first brought up my lack of commenting 2 weeks ago)
To answer the question in the title. I blog for me, but I also take into account my readers. I know I have quite a few considering I get on average 200 hits a day (I know that’s not a lot, but it’s not tiny either). I blog to organize my thoughts and reflect on teaching, my classroom, conversations I have with colleagues, and on reading I do related to teaching. I also blog to share ideas with readers, to ask questions of readers and on occasion to post questions readers have emailed me.
some of the other blogs are talking about technocrati ranking - I used to care about this, but it’s been over 2 years since I last checked. It’s really not important to me at all. There are so many bloggers out there, that trying to get a top ranking is futile and not worth the time and effort. I like to have a life outside of the internet and worrying about how I rank according to other bloggers is not conducive to that or my mental health.
I particularly like Dangerously Irrelevant’s advice for new bloggers - go read the post.
Kate Olson wrote 185 words on Tuesday Apr 15, 2008 at 02:29 AM
“I blog for me, but I also take into account my readers.”
I love that you’re being honest about this, since I think a lot of bloggers think about their readers but pretend it’s a purely reflective activity. Because why would we link to anything if we’re only writing for ourselves. Of course, this is a generalization. Although many of us don’t get huge responses at first, just getting one person reading our work is always exciting! With that being said, I think the difference comes in when we start writing ONLY for other people and to attract readers rather than choosing our own content. Neither is right or wrong, but as Sylvia of Langwitches says,
“Each one of us has to negotiate with themselves how much you are going to allow “your readers” dictate who you are, how much time you will dedicate to blogging, and how much emphasis you are going to allow to be placed on ranking, numbers of comments and posts.”
I love that this discussion has gotten so broad - I’m finding a lot of new blogs because of it
Sean. wrote 241 words on Tuesday Apr 15, 2008 at 06:08 AM
Kate,
Thanks for the comment. I do agree that getting an audience is a good thing. I can also remember when i first started blogging in 2004 that I regularly checked how I was doing on technocrati, and other ranking sites. I most eagerly followed my blog on google search results and when I reached number one I was ecstatic. But I didn’t care enough to not change my domain - my google rating sank and hasn’t recovered in over 2 years.
My rambling point here is that I blog because it allows me to organize my thoughts about teaching. In the end I have received recognition through online interviews, invitations to present at conferences and most recently a request to write a bi-weekly column for a local newspaper.
Would I continue to blog without the interviews, conference invitations and newspaper column? 100% yes.
Your point, or more rather Sylvia’s point that Each one of us has to negotiate with themselves how much you are going to allow “your readers” dictate who you are, how much time you will dedicate to blogging, and how much emphasis you are going to allow to be placed on ranking, numbers of comments and posts. is absolutely true.
I’ll quit blogging when I no longer enjoy it, find value in it, or blogging becomes a chore. Until then I’m happy to write, read comments here, write comments on other blogs, and enjoy the edublogger community.