I lost Week #3 thanks to semester changeover, report cards and the Knowschools conference, so, as a result, Day 14 reflections happened in Week #4. Hopefully I’ll get my challenge momentum back soon!
Day 14 – Analyze Your Blog’s Competition – First, I don’t think of other bloggers as competitors, but as colleagues, mentors, fellow educators, and inspiration. Darren Rowse, creator of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog, does mention that he uses “the word ‘competition’ hesitantly”. The point of Day 14 is to find and read other blogs with a similar purpose to your own and then analyze them to learn what’s good/not so good and apply that learning to improve your blog. Sounds like a crit to me…
My ‘competitors’ make up my Blogroll shown at the right under my tags. I do read more than the fifteen listed there so I plan to list the others on a separate page entitled “Blogs I Read“, which is hidden under the Edublogs ad in the top right corner. This page includes a special list of blogs belonging to those participating in the 31 Day Challenge and I think I’ll be moving a few of those into my Blogroll soon.
After analyzing my ‘competition’, I have a better understanding of why I read them – not really the point of Day 14, but I enjoy digression, especially in learning. I read those bloggers because I like their voice, I value their opinions and I like the way that they make me think about teaching and learning. I respect them as educators.
In terms of using what I learned from Day 14 to find my own niche, I think my blog fits in nicely with those created for professional reflection, professional dialogue and professional growth. Everybody’s different though, and my perspective as a teacher is a little unusual due to a special combination of teaching jobs in my teaching journey thus far, so I hope that my voice adds its own flavour to the cyberspace conversations.
Imagery: look into the past by mattsabo17 on Flickr.com