The Shift Personal by Joel Wagner - June 6, 2010June 30, 20102 The background It took me about three years. I heard rumblings of Twitter way back in the fall of 2006 when I was getting into blogs. "Who cares what you ate for lunch?" So I ignored it. I finally got on in the spring of 2008, but never really got around to doing too much with it until then. Evidently my first tweet was something about an enjoyable weekend. How fun. It was so much fun that I blogged about it. This all came less than two months after I reached a subscriber count of 150. I was excited. Fast forward Now even despite the incredible slowdown of RSS subscribers (and even RSS reading in general) due to Social Media,
Inspired By So You Want To Teach? Inspiration by Joel Wagner - April 14, 2009June 30, 20108 New readers are coming to this blog all the time. As a new reader, the comments below will show you some of the many ways that reading this blog can be beneficial for you! I have received a large number of comments and emails from people who tell me that they have been inspired to begin blogging as a result of this here blog. I must admit, I am very interested in getting other people to begin seeing the benefit of blogging through their experiences. I also am quite focused on personal growth in many areas of my life. With that in mind, I know that I say some things very bluntly and don't pull too many punches. Sometimes the
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
The Blog Revolution On Hold General by Joel Wagner - May 12, 2008July 1, 20103 For reasons beyond my control, my blogging time will be extraordinarily limited this week (lots of concerts and exhaustion has begun to catch up on me). For these reasons, I will be putting the Blog Revolution Project on hold for this week. It will presumably resume again on Monday the 19th. Thanks for bearing with me. While you are waiting, I invite you to check out these outstanding blogs that have linked to my articles recently: Betty's Blog : Friends Resource for Bloggers Carnival - 12th Edition | My lucky number 13 Tag: I’m It! Guitar Building, The Daily Grind and a Lottery Wish at www.matthewktabor.com : Education and School Issues, News and Analysis A Little Personal « The
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
Help! I’m On The Verge of Burnout!!! Do I Quit Teaching Or What Do I Do? Why Teachers Quit by Joel Wagner - April 30, 2008July 6, 201622 Teachers get frustrated. It happens. It's a part of the job. This article explores the subject of teacher burnout a bit and includes some robust discussion in the comments. I got a comment on my article Valid Reasons Teachers Quit tonight: I am up past my usual time and I just decided to go on the web. I came across this. I have been teaching for seventeen years. Maybe you can help. Every morning I dread the thought of going to my job. This has been the worst year ever. I don't have the desire to ever teach another child. Last year a child brought a knife to school-told his friends he was going to kill me. This year I seem to have the
The State of the Blog 03/30/08 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - March 30, 2008July 2, 20105 Wow, it has been over five months since I have done this kind of thing. I've written some informal blog updates from time to time, but nothing formalized like this. I have noticed that So You Want To Teach? seems to be entering a new phase of its life and want to ask you for some help. There's also a completely unrelated video at the end. But first, the latest blogging news from SYWTT. I revamped my Links page today and only put those blogs that had commented or emailed me back in January. Keep reading for info on how to get your link added there. We reached 100 subscribers for the first time on November 15th. We reached
February 2007 Personal by Joel Wagner - February 26, 2008July 2, 20103 On February 11th, 2007 I wrote the first blog post that is included in the archives of So You Want To Teach? I didn 't actually set up the blog on this domain until June, but I thought that since the blog was now over a year old (at least as far as some of the content), I'd go back and take a look at some of the old stuff. By the way, none of them have any comments at this point... If you have a blog, you can direct some of that traffic your way simply by writing a good, thought-provoking comment 5 Keys To Educating People February 11, 2007 Classroom Management: The Key To Your Success
Update: Double Your FeedBurner RSS Numbers Overnight Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 29, 2008July 2, 20100 My recent tutorial, Double Your FeedBurner RSS Numbers Overnight, has been featured as one of 71 tutorials in Daniel's Blog Writing Project at Daily Blog Tips. Daily Blog Tips has over 8,500 subscribers and is among the top 500 blogs in Technorati's ratings. If you wanted to help me out by going to the site, clicking on the article (toward the bottom of the blogging section at the top), and linking to both my article and his, I would be happy. Heck, while you're there, check out some of the other great tutorials! Some like these: Zero to Rhythm in 12 Days How To Eat Healthy At Fast Food Joints Tutorial: How to print blog articles the smart way
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
150 Subscribers Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 15, 2008July 2, 20102 Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed. You people are awesome! I want to challenge you to invite one person you know who is either a great teacher or an aspiring great teacher to check out So You Want To Teach? for themselves. Email Updates Did you know that email subscriptions are available? Even if they aren't familiar with blogging, you can sign up to receive the updates via email. Could you sign up with your school address, and begin sending articles around to your colleagues? I want to see how quickly we can build our "class size" to 200. Will you help me by inviting one friend? :)
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