April Fooled You!!!! Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - April 4, 2009June 30, 20106 Since nobody commented on it, I am not sure that anyone really caught on that Wednesday's post was an April Fools Day joke. It was actually written by The Scholastic Scribe. I don't normally rant in real life, and I'm not about to start doing so on my blog. I'm sure a lot of you were worried, which probably explains why there wasn't a single comment! I posted on Wednesday, but my article 10 Things To Help Keep An ADD-Inflicted Teacher Focused actually ended up on one of the few edublogs I regularly read, It's Not All Flowers and Sausages. I gotta tell you, this was some good stuff in the article also. This whole April Fools Day Switcharoo was
The Hunt For The Missing Carnival Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - March 10, 2009June 30, 20104 Turns out I’m not the only teacher out there who gets so busy teaching that he overlooks his blog somewhat. Perhaps you can relate. Oh, I’m sure you can! It happens to us all. We get bogged down with so many things in our life that the unimportant things shift to the back. Hopefully. Sometimes if we’re not careful, we let the important things shift to the back-burner. That’s an altogether
New Theme – SYWTT 2009 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - February 28, 2009June 30, 201010 I have been working together with developers at Dizzain.com to create a brand new, professionall designed) theme for So You Want To Teach? We are just about finished and plan on launching it sometime in the first week of March. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask you, my loyal readers, to leave your email or RSS reader, go to the website (www.soyouwantotteach.com) and let me know
SYWTT Celebrates Two Years – A Brief History (2008) Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - February 28, 2009June 30, 20100 2008 was the first full calendar year that I ran this blog. It saw its ups and downs, and in some senses, it was a sort of anticlimactic year as far as my personal blogging habits went. Nevertheless, So You Want To Teach? continued to flourish. January began with my hosting the Carnival of Education. That was also the kickoff of my new WordPress theme, which I had personally designed and kept playing with throughout the year. To this date, I still have not seen a blog theme even remotely similar to it. But I will be putting the SYWTT 2008 theme to rest sometime next week. More info on that later. As I mentioned in the last article, the
SYWTT Celebrates Two Years – A Brief History (2007) Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - February 11, 2009June 30, 20106 A Matter of Priorities During my first two years of teaching, I discovered that I had a whole lot of information, but the students just weren’t listening to me or learning from me. It is not, mind you, because I was giving them wrong information. It was, however, because I had placed the priorities in the wrong order. When we have the proper perspective, we will end up teaching far more than we ever imagined we might teach. And so began the very first post on the blog that would turn into So You Want To Teach? That was posted two years ago today, on February 11th, 2007. Over the remainder of this month, I will be looking back at
February 2009 Music Education Blog Carnival Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - February 5, 2009June 30, 20101 In case you missed it, the February 2009 edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival is up over at The Collaborative Piano Blog. The carnival is still going strong after its 8th edition, and it's exciting to see it perpetuating! Join in for the March edition. July 2008 - So You Want To Teach? (22 submissions) August 2008 - MusTech.Net (14 submissions) September 2008 - Amy M. Burns (16 submissions) October 2008 - Teacher in a Strange Land (16 submissions) November 2008 - Composing Like Mad (13 submissions) December 2008 - Discover, Learn, Play (12 submissions) January 2009 - Theresa White’s Education In Music (15 submissions) February 2009 - The Collaborative Piano Blog (26 submissions) Don't forget to submit your favorite blog article to the March
52 Teachers, 52 Lessons Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 19, 2009June 30, 20100 My buddy Mr. D who writes I Want To Teach Forever has started up a little project this year that I hope lasts all year. He is asking teachers to email him and write a guest post for him about "What is the most important advice you can give to other teachers?" The project is 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons. I will obviously be submitting an article to the project (I had intended to do so before the end of December, but it didn't work out). I wanted to provide him with a larger audience of people who might potentially write an article for him and get featured in this project that is sure to be a valuable addition to the
Another List of Top EduBlogs Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 13, 2009June 30, 20105 Over the last almost two years that I have been reading and writing blogs, I have come across a handful of lists of Top Education Blogs. Normally, I discover them when I either get a trackback or (more commonly) when a pagr refers someone over to my site. The latter was the case today. As far as the rankings I've seen before, this one was the most intriguing. Instead of simply using Technorati data or any type or arbitrary kind of thing, Jason Falls (an outsider to the world of edublogs) pulled a list of 150 EduBlogs, and ranked them based on reader interaction over the past 30 days through Postrank. All in all, it is definitely an intriguing methodology
The Great Fish Fiasco of 2008 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 3, 2009July 1, 20101 Go read my first publicly available narrative account of my teaching career. The Great Guest Fiasco of 2009 was just posted at Learn Me Good.
Calling All Storytellers Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 29, 2008July 1, 20102 Mr. Teacher has one of the most entertaining blogs I've seen. In fact, I recommend his blog Learn Me Good to most of my friends who are looking for restroom reading material! I have recently written a guest post for him that will be appearing over there sometime in the next week or so. While I normally write useful tips and hints for educators, his blog is often filled with humorous anecdotes gleaned from the life of a third grade teacher. I figured I would cater my guest article to his audience and made sure to remove all potentially useful information from it. It's an amazing story about one of the most unique Christmas gifts I have ever received from
The Overlooked Articles of 2008 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 27, 2008July 1, 20100 In continuing my review of the year, I am looking today at some of the articles that I wish were more popular. They may have received a handful of comments, or they may not have received any. The most common cause for their relative obscurity is that they are older articles and have gotten lost. Even so, many of them haven’t received a whole lot of traffic. So I’m dusting them off, polishing them up, and repackaging them here. Two dozen overlooked articles of 2008 January 14th, 2008 8 Ways Blogging Makes Me A Better Teacher January 20th, 2008 What If… January 31st, 2008 Clinicians February 11th, 2008 Hyper-Focus Fosters Higher Quality Output February 21st, 2008 Apologizing March 15th, 2008 Whitespace March 17th, 2008 You’ve Been
The Busiest Articles of 2008 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 26, 2008July 1, 20100 On Wednesday, we looked back at some of The Loneliest Articles of 2008, today, we’ll go to the other extreme and look at the busiest articles of 2008. These are the articles that generated the most comments. I’ve gone through the articles and found those that received the most comments. After boiling down that list, I have come up with the 20 most commented articles. Teaching: Part Time Job At Full Pay Wages???? July 2nd, 2008 (28 comments by 26 authors) (28) Double Your FeedBurner RSS Numbers Overnight January 27th, 2008 (13 comments by 10 authors, 14 trackbacks) (27) The First Ever Music Education Blog Carnival July 1st, 2008 (12 comments by 11 authors, 8 trackbacks) (20) 152nd Carnival
The Loneliest Articles of 2008 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 24, 2008July 1, 20101 In the Christmas break, I am looking back at this blog’s growth and development. I did this last year and it helped some of the newer readers to catch some of the things they missed out on. I know that since the year started with around 125 subscribers and is ending with around 600, many of you haven't gone in and dug through the archives. These year-end summaries will help you out a little bit! As I look through the blog’s archive, it strikes me that there are some articles that have either been buried deep in the archives, or for whatever reason, have gone unnoticed by my readers. So I am giving all of those articles a chance to
Are You Student Teaching Next Semester? Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 7, 2008July 1, 20105 If you are going to be student teaching in the spring semester of this school year, I want you to contact me. Before the end of this month. I am beginning work on a major project that will benefit you (and other students) tremendously. Either comment or email.
2008 Edublog Award Nominations Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - November 11, 2008July 1, 20104 Nominations are open for the 2008 Edublog Awards. This is an opportunity to recognize outstanding Edubloggers for all of their hard work and service to the Edublogging community. Since Thanksgiving is the time for sharing, I thought I'd nominate a few outstanding blogs here. It's hard to narrow it down, but these are the ones that came to mind now. Ask me again in an hour and they might all change... Best individual blog - Creating Lifelong Learners (Matthew Needleman) Best group blog -Teacher Magazine Blogboard Best resource sharing blog - Successful Teaching (Pat) Most influential blog post - Cell phone cameras in the K-12 classroom: Punishable offenses or student-citizen journalism? (Dangerously Irrelevant) Best teacher blog - Learn Me