Today, I came across the Social Media Explorer blog through my Google Alerts (more about Google Alerts in the next blog post). Social Media Explorer is written by Jason Falls. SME appeared in my Google Alerts because Free Technology for Teachers appears in Jason's list of the top 50 education blogs according to reader engagement as measured by Post Rank. (Incidentally, the Post Rank widget on the right side of this blog ranks the five most popular blog entries at any given time).
Usually, when I see a blog post with list like this one I scan the list and don't think twice about it. This blog post was interesting because the list was generated by someone that is outside of the edublog-o-sphere or "echo chamber." In the blog post Mr. Falls explains the process he used to find 150 education blogs. The final top 50 list includes some blogs that I had not heard of prior to today. That said, the list is by no means inclusive and clearly misses some bloggers that are well known in the edublogging world . Overall, the article and list is worth taking the time to read because it provide us with an outsider's look at the edublogging echo chamber.
Edit: I initially wrote that Larry Ferlazzo was not on the list. As Larry points out in the comments, he is on the list, in fact he's number 9. My apologies to Larry.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
A Look at Edublogs From Outside the Echo Chamber
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3 comments:
Richard,
This is an interesting list and ranking, and thanks for sharing it. I'll be doing the same on my blog.
I appreciate your plug, though, for what it's worth, I actually am on the list.
Larry
Whoops, sorry Larry. I guess I didn't look hard enough.
There is definitely some really obvious missing blogs on the list especially Webblogg.ed.
I would also recommend looking really closely where blogs are on the list. Some are down a lot lower than they probably should be.
While I like the concept of PostRank I still believe it needs the human factor to consider what the ranks mean. For example I've seen it rank some people's posts as a 10 but when you look closely it's because the post has been twittered a lot not because it's necessarily a great post but because it is a post asking for assistance (and nothing wrong with that).
But Twitter link rates a post highly as does lots of comments. Not all posts with high comments are created equal. I have one post with 150 + comments which is important to me for connecting with student bloggers but isn't a great post in terms of necessarily meeting the needs of my readers.
Though not sure of the answer since technorati not happy.
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