100 MusEduBloggers by 2009 Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 29, 2008July 2, 20102 I have been blogging about teaching for a while. I came across a post by Joseph Pisano (the original post is here) where he is trying to get at least 100 Music Education Bloggers blogging about music education or music technology. Part of me has been wanting to jump into the MusEduBlogging world, but it wasn’t until this morning that I decided to take the plunge. I have learned a whole lot about blogging over the last year and so I hope to be able to use the knowledge I have gained to try to make this site one of the premier sites in the MusEduBlogging world. Yes, I just created that term. A Google search for both MusEduBlog returns
Double Your FeedBurner RSS Numbers Overnight General by Joel Wagner - January 27, 2008May 29, 201612 This article is part of a Group Writing Project about Building RSS Numbers. I recently achieved the milestone of having 150 subscribers (I'm still hanging out in that area). In reaching that, I realize that many bloggers use Blogger to host their blogs and FeedBurner for their RSS syndication. That's a good combination (I much prefer WordPress, but Blogger can be simpler to set up). This post will serve as a simple tutorial to allow people in this situation to double their subscriber count overnight. If not overnight, then quickly to say the least. I've noticed that a lot of the bloggers who have this setup seem to have low subscriber counts. I noticed that Learn Me Good is still hanging out around
All Time Best Teaching Advice Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - November 17, 2007July 5, 20104 As I have been reading the interviews for the Reader Appreciation Month (by the way, there is room for another 7 interviews. If you don't send them in, they end on Wednesday!), I have been amazed at the depth of knowledge of some of the readers of this blog. I was going through my Google Reader the other day and came across a post by Gxeremio entitled Best (and worst) advice. In it, he lists some of the best teaching advice he has received. Additionally, he points to some standard "wisdom" that really isn't all that wise. It made me think... If I were to give only one piece of advice to a brand new teacher, what would it
25 WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - November 6, 2007July 5, 20102 This post is outdated. Edit 06/06/2009 - I have recently written a much more current and similar article. Please check out 20 WordPress 2.7 Plugins You Can’t Live Without. Reader experience is the most important element of any site. Whether it be an entertainment site or an information portal, the ease of use for the reader is vital. I run this blog using WordPress because it gives me incredible control over the reader experience. I large part of that control comes in the way of plugins. What are plugins? Plugins are basically optional programs that run behind the scene. Some of them are never even seen by the reader. Technically, they aren't programs -- they are really scripts that run on
A Recipe For Less Stress Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - September 29, 2007July 5, 20100 In preparing for my month-long series on 25 Tips For Less Stress, I realized that I left out a few key ingredients. If you follow all 25 tips listed, and leave out the foundational ingredients, you will still be under intense stress. If you follow the tips with little success, you may actually be under more stress at trying to figure out why they don't accomplish their goal! So today, we will look at the very first and most essential elements of a stress-free classroom. I have written on each of these issues at great depth previously. Below each ingredient are links to four of my articles that address this very issue. I also went to Google's cool Blog
But I Don’t Have Time To Subscribe To Your Blog! Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 8, 2007July 5, 20106 I knew of RSS about five years ago, but only in the context of news sites. I started seeing the little icon popping up on more and more sites, but I thought very little of it. It wasn't until around a year ago that I was introduced to Google Reader. It revolutionized the way I get information online. If you have never really dug into RSS feeds much and you like to get information online, then it will do the same for you too. I didn't want to spend the time figuring out why I should be interested in this stuff. Then I found out that it's incredibly simple! Getting started in the world of RSS can all be explained
Weekend Wrapup 09/03/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 3, 2007July 5, 20100 Labor Day edition. It's raining. I'm catching up on housework. And falling WAY behind on blogs. I am going to trim my RSS subscriptions this week so I can get through them more quickly. I hate it when Google Reader says I have 100+ articles to read every day. Life is too short to squander it all online. I have fallen out of touch with other bloggers because of time commitments. What I'm going to do with today's wrapup is send you to some friends around the web. Leave comments on their blogs. I find that leaving good comments on other blogs really helps out my blog as well. With this being said, I have turned comments off for this
The State of the Blog: 09/01/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 1, 2007July 5, 20100 The most popular post I made to the blog in the entire month of August was The State of the Blog: 08/01/07. I glanced through it again today and was impressed by the changes that have happened in a month. Specifically, in the readership and authority arenas. it's funny how a little change each day is much less noticeable when viewed daily than it is when viewed from a greater distance. While numbers fluctuate from day to day, FeedBurner tells me that I have averaged 52 subscribers throughout the last 30 days. That number is up to 60 as of this morning. A month ago, we were hanging at 35. My Technorati Authority number has gone from 13 to 24
Habit 3: Relationship Habits Personal by Joel Wagner - July 11, 2007July 5, 20100 This is the third in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers. Relationship Procedures In teaching, as in most any businesses -- and life in general -- relationships will either make you successful, or else make you fail. Our relationships spring ultimately from the first habit; our ability to communicate well. But good communication skills alone are not enough to establish powerful relationships. There are more important elements. Here is where again I point out the important role that reading How To Win Friends And Influence People has played in my life. Outstanding book. While on the subject of 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers, I felt it important to once again go over some