Comments on: Who’s Bigger?

By: Lori

Lori — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:48:31 +0000

The reason there is no authoritative parenting blog is because parents are continually moving in and out of the system; no one stays long enough for their concerns to turn into action. They are interested in preschool issues when their children are in preschool, elementary school when they are in elementary school, and so on. This is the challenge for anyone trying to organize parents .. just as you convince them and get them on your side, they are gone and you have a whole other group of newbies to educate.

The only parents who care long enough are those with 10 children, and they are homeschooling.

By: Laurie Rogers

Laurie Rogers — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:19:19 +0000

I agree – It can be a dangerous game to try and rank sites on anything other than actual content. After all, much of what’s wrong with education right now is the tendency to rank curricula, programs and schools on a host of factors that have nothing to do with content.
The more voices we have – ranked or not – the better. Information is power. Open debate helps to keep any system healthy and strong.

Laurie Rogers
http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/

By: Jay P. Greene

Jay P. Greene — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:34:25 +0000

Since I believe so strongly in being broader and bolder, I added Google Page Ranks for each of the blogs here: http://jaypgreene.com/2008/11/21/education-next-ranks-the-blogs/

By: Robert Pondiscio

Robert Pondiscio — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:53:57 +0000

Nancy’s right. We need a broader, bolder approach to blogging.

By: Nancy Flanagan

Nancy Flanagan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:05:11 +0000

Thanks for this posting. I learned early on not to follow Technorati with bated breath–when it did find links, the tallying process often occurred weeks after Google Alerts found them. I’ve been stuck at 76, and seem to have been left in the dust by Technorati as well, Claus.

There is a certain rich irony in education bloggers comparing their numbers, believing that higher means better, eh? Technorati as Value Added Blog Arbitrator… Some of the most thoughtful and provocatively written education blogs have a smallish audience, and any blog assessor who divides sites into “practitioner” and “policy” captions is missing some good stuff from the front lines. Renee Moore’s TeachMoore blog, for example–

By: tm willemse

tm willemse — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:27:16 +0000

God help us if there ever comes to be a “national parent advocacy group in Washington.” Isn’t that how the NEA got started?

By: Robert Pondiscio

Robert Pondiscio — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:03:58 +0000

Claus von Zastrow has a good point. In putting together the list above, I tried unsuccessfully to find up-to-date Technorati rankings for his site, Public School Insights. I excluded it from the list above for exactly the reason he cites. I should have said so and regret the error.

Here’s the url: http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/

It’s very much on my required reading list.

By: Claus

Claus — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:47:36 +0000

Something else to consider: Technorati is notoriously unreliable. It stopped acknowledging blog postings from our site months and months ago, and our “authority” has declined precipitously as a result. (Feeling just a tad bitter about this….) Apparently, many other bloggers have had similar complaints, and Technorati can’t handle the volume of requests to fix the problem.