Why didn't I think of this sooner?

In preparation for my new position as Director of Curriculum for Humanities in my district, I realized that keeping the district technology blog going was something that might be difficult given the amount of time I spent on it and the new constraints of the position. Also, I thought about a few other things that were bothering me regarding the blog:

• there was not much conversation going on with it; the staff would read it, but no one was commenting.
• my posts there were very similar in nature; often I would talk about tools and cool applications of tools in the classroom, and highlight staff accomplishments.
• getting people to the site rested squarely on my shoulders.

Thus, my conclusion was that I needed new voices. So I asked a few of my colleagues to pitch in as co-authors, taking a cue from LeaderTalk. So as of last Monday, Angela Dellucia-Davis, Cathy Wille, Erica Hartman, Michael Gregory, and Brad Davis all became co-authors of The Tech Dossier. What came from this in terms of participation and readership was nothing short of amazing:

Saturday was the last day that I posted solo, and Monday began the contributions of the others. Word of mouth and a few emails to the staff were all we did to publicize the change and as you can see from the graph above, we reached highs in page loads and first time visitors almost daily. This is what I always wanted. Comments, at least three on every post, with a high of 7 on one post.

The mix of administrators and teachers blogging together is an interesting one, one that I will watch intently, but it seems to be working after one week. If you have a moment, please check out the writing going on there this week. It is a grand experiment, and I certainly should have done this sooner.


Technorati Tags: sparta, edtech, education, newjersey, blogging

The Maiden Stream

On Friday, October 19th, Angela Davis and I will be presenting to a group of tech leaders, administrators and academics at the NJECC Conference at Montclair State University. We were asked to present based on the strength of a presentation made to the same group last year by Erica Hartman and Jo Shuppon in which they showed the power of having students collaborate on a wiki and the ease of use of Skype.

This time around, I will be going into as much of our work as possible, showing wiki projects, blogging, podcasting, screencasting, tablet applications, and discussing how we develop our staff in terms of technology. Angela will be showing them the dialogue that regularly occurs on her AP Language and Composition wiki, and her SAKAI project with a group of seniors.

Feel like you are missing out? Don't. You can watch our entire presentation and hear us in real time through the incredible technology of Ustream. Follow this link at around 10:00am on Friday the 19th and you will hear either Angela or myself and be able to participate in our presentation via the chat. Ask us questions or cheer us on.

NOTE: YOU WILL HAVE TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT WITH USTREAM IN ORDER FOR YOUR NAME TO APPEAR IN THE CHAT.

Cross-posted at TechDossier.

Technorati Tags: njecc0708,, ustream,, wiki,, chalkdust,, techdossier,, web, 2.0