5 Guilty Pleasures On My iPod Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - October 1, 2008July 1, 20106 The 4th edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival is up over at Teacher in a Strange Land. Our beloved host Nancy asks the question, "What five songs on your iPod do you consider guilty pleasures?" It's difficult to boil it down here with over 11,000 tracks (somewhere around 5,000 songs and 6,000 sermons) on my iPod, but I'll see what I can come up with. Here they are: The Devil Went Down To Georgia performed by Mariachi Sol De Mexico The song itself is not too off target for a Texas boy, but the fact that I recorded this off of a live performce video on YouTube makes it all the more funny. Mariachi Sol De Mexico's trumpets
Exploring EduBlogs Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 30, 2008July 1, 20107 As my series of 10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher comes to a close, I want to point out that the world has changed dramatically over the last 7 years since I began teaching. As an educator, the primary advantage in the tremendous growth of the Internet would be the incredible EduBlogs that have sprung up. As someone who is quite technologically sophisticated, the presence of this many blogs would have been tremendously helpful for me back then. The problem is that most of the people out there aren't quite as technologically saavy as I am. So what is an aspiring young educator to do? I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Honestly, there
Blogging Your Way To Being A Great Teacher Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 22, 2008May 29, 20160 Blogging makes me a better teacher. It's clearly not the only thing that makes me a better teacher, but it is a tremendous benefit. This is the second installment in my series on 10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher. I have previously written on this subject back in January (8 Ways Blogging Makes Me A Better Teacher). At the time, I was in the midst of dealing with a medical emergency. The other band director I work with had a stroke in December and was actually out for over three months. That was back when I had 146 blog subscribers, by the way. Currently I the blog is approaching 450. The benefits for me about blogging from that
Speedlinking 9/5/08 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 5, 2008July 1, 20104 I have done a poor job lately of pointing out some of the great blogs out there that have included So You Want To Teach? in their posting. Thank you so much for considering SYWTT to be a great resource! If you have linked to me and asked me to do something, I'll get to it. It is on my back-logged list of things to do. I expect a series of responses to some recent emails coming soon, and I would also expect me to be returning some of the link favors soon. As you may have noticed that So You Want To Teach? has slowed down quite a bit lately. This is to give me and you a break
The End of Summer Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 1, 2008July 1, 20106 Well, my summer has come and gone. I want to first of all extend my appreciation to all of the bloggers who posted while I was out. I am interested in hearing some impressions of the little experiment from the community here. If you posted something (and even if you didn't), let me know if you enjoyed reading the other perspectives and the whole experience. I had an incredible trip. It was nice to get away for almost 10 days. But alas, high school summer band has started up now. With that goes my summer vacation. I am simply wrapping everything up now and getting things under control as the new school year rolls in. I will do a sort
10 Awesome iPhone 3G Apps (Band Director Style) Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - July 11, 2008July 1, 20106 For an updated list of iPhone apps I actually use in band class after over year of use, check out 20 Ways I Really Use My iPhone To Teach Band Class I haven't gotten a new cell phone in the last two years, so I am excited about this opportunity to upgrade. My decision to buy an iPhone was anything but spur-of-the-moment. In fact, I have been planning on getting one for just about 5 months. I was going to get it shortly after my band earned Sweepstakes at the UIL Concert & Sight Reading contest back in April. But I heard rumors of a new version of iPhone coming out then, so I waited. I have been eagerly
A Community Is Developing Here! Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - June 19, 2008July 1, 20104 If you haven't been keeping up with the comments on here, shame on you. Fortunately, I have been. Let me fill you in. You see, I have installed a new plugin that allows people to reply to comments that others make. The reply will include a link directly to the comment that was left. It's working out pretty well for me. I have noticed that as I reply to some of the comments, many of you have subscribed to receive other comments. And so my replies go to your inbox. And then sometimes people reply back. It's working out well. Recently, Stephanie posted a comment on my article No Child Left Behind: Doomed To Fail? In her comment, she suggested
Top 50 Edublogs? Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - June 11, 2008July 1, 20100 The conventional wisdom from professional bloggers is to come up with a regular posting frequency and to stick to it. If you post once a day normally, don't do more than that. If you post Once a week, don't do more than that. Also don't do less. Well, it's summer. I am home a bit more now and actually getting a chance to read some blogs finally again. Other teachers are home more now too. So I see some cool stuff that I want to share. I'm going to throw the conventional blogging wisdom out the window for now and post whenever I dang well feel like it! Who's with me here? :) That being said, I will continue with
The Blog Revolution: Day 5 – Stay On Target! Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 9, 2008July 2, 20100 As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to the final day of our focus on writing. Today's article will focus on keeping your blog focused. One of the main reasons I unsubscribe from a blog is that the content changes from day to day, and things aren't what I expected they would be. This comes when the blogger doesn't have a specified topic of concentration. Another advantage to focusing your blog is that you will convert more of the search engine referrals into regular readers. One of the coolest features of WordPress.com and WordPress.org software is the "Related Posts" type plugins or features that can be added. These add links at the end of the post to allow
The Blog Revolution: Day 4 – Develop Your Writing Voice Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 8, 2008July 2, 20101 As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day four of our focus on writing. Today's article will focus on crafting your own personal style, develop your writing voice. Newer bloggers may have a struggle with figuring out exactly what approach they want to take with their blog. Think of your writing voice as your brand name. Lea Schizas has written some on this topic at Writing with Passion and Developing Your Voice and Brand Some common questions may include: How do I want to attack each post? What kind of a tone should I assume? What kind of audience should I expect? These are all normal. Let's look at these three questions a little bit
The Blog Revolution: Day 3 – Keep ’em Coming Back Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 7, 2008July 2, 20102 As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day three of our focus on writing. Today will look at one of the best ways to keep readers coming back each day. It also happens to be one of the best ways to bring in traffic much further down the road. We'll focus on the art of the series. Just as we looked at how writing lists can be very popular on Monday, another great way to encourage traffic to return is to write lists, but extend them over a period of a few days or even a few weeks. Essentially writing lists of articles, or a series. Some of the pivotal points in this blog's history have revolved
The Blog Revolution: Day 2 – Keywords Are The Key Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 6, 2008July 2, 20102 As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day two of our focus on writing. Today will not really focus on one specific writing project, but an overall vision for your blog. Most traffic that comes to blogs comes as a result of search engines. The vast majority of searches happen on Google. If we can optimize our Google search result ranking, we can greatly increase the flow of traffic through our site. The more visitors your site gets, the higher in the results you can go. So how do we optimize our Google search ranking? Keywords are the key Everyone who comes to a site through a search engine types in keywords to get to your page.
The Blog Revolution: Day 1 – Add Truckloads of Great Content Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 5, 2008July 2, 20106 Today is the official beginning of the Blog Revolution Project. The plan is to transform your blog entirely from something that simply holds some information to a valuable resource for others. Each day, I will write a brief article, end with a mission. Some missions will be things you can accomplish in a matter of minutes, while others will take a while. Today's topic is probably the most important, and ultimately should be the mission of your blog every single time you write something. Add great content If you want people to visit your blog, they will need to have a reason to visit. If you want people to return to your blog, they will need to have a reason
The Blog Revolution Begins Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 1, 2008July 2, 201015 So what exactly is The Blog Revolution? We'll start with some background. I am a nerd. I am a huge nerd. I was co-president of the computer club in high school, went to the Texas State programming competition. I know a thing or two about computers. I have been reading blogs for the past year and a half. I've been reading blogs about blogging for the past year and three months. I began blogging about the same time. I began blogging regularly in June of 2007. As I got into the EduBlogosphere, I noticed a few things about a lot of smaller blogs. Many don't do a lot of the things that bloggers tend to recommend for growth Many
Mark Your Calendars, The Blog Revolution Project Is Coming… Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - April 19, 2008July 2, 201010 They say that April showers bring May flowers South Texas doesn't experience nearly as much rain as the Dallas/Fort Worth area does. I almost miss the weekly tornado warnings and lightning shows we had up there. But I like being able to see stars at night, it's a crazy cool trade-off. Nevertheless, April is the traditional month, at least according to the old adage, for rain. There have been quite a few links to So You Want To teach? coming in recently. I want to highlight them, as well as focus on a few other things as I look ahead to May. You see, May will be a record-breaking month for So You Want To teach? and you can join