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.
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.
November Edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival General by Joel Wagner - November 2, 2008July 1, 20100 The 5th edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival is up over at Composing Like Mad. Be sure to check out the wonderful music education resources and also submit your own article for the December Edition. Also, if you are a music educator and you blog, let Joseph know and join us in our effort to have 100 ME bloggers signed up by the end of December. Only 13 more to go!
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
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
5 Things To Do While Taking A Break General by Joel Wagner - May 19, 2008July 1, 20103 There come times in life when we need to find something to do. There come times in life when we need a break. There come times in life when we need to cut back some things so we can find that perfect place. This is one of those times for me. With the end of the year approaching, I am so busy with school and concerts and trips and contests and planning and everything else that goes along with it. In addition, I am playing trumpet in a mariachi now, so that is starting to require individual practice time as well as rehearsals and gigs. Plus, I have been doing quite a bit of preaching in church lately too. So
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 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