Linky love, snark attacks, and fierce debates about teacher quality? A peek inside the education blogosphere.(what next)(Essay)

If I mentioned Thomas Friedman and George Will, surely you would know that they are among the nation's most influential newspaper columnists. But what about Markos Moulitsas and Michelle Malkin? If these names don't ring a bell, you haven't explored the world of web logs, or blogs for short. They are two of the nation's most influential bloggers.

Likewise, if I asked what Diane Ravitch, Jack Jennings, and Kati Haycock have in common, you would say they are all contributors to K--12 education policy debates, oft quoted in the nation's leading newspapers. But what about Will Richardson, Joanne Jacobs, and Eduwon-kette? If these names are unfamiliar to you, it's time to visit the education blogosphere. As a relatively new education blogger myself (at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Flypaper blog), let me be your guide.

Blogs burst onto the scene in the late 1990s and gained major momentum in the middle of this decade. By some estimates there are now more than 100 million blogs worldwide. But while reading and writing blogs is extremely popular--two blogging sites (blogger.com and wordpress.com) each receive more web traffic in the United States than the number-one online newspaper (nytimes.com)--no single blog is reaching a mass audience. For example, Daily Kos, one of the most prominent political blogs on the net, pulls in only 0.027 percent of the global web audience in a given period, versus 0.87 percent that read nytimes.com. More than 1,600 web sites in the U.S. get more traffic than Daily Kos; nytimes.com, meanwhile, is ranked number 24. (These data all come from alexa.com.) Blogs represent the "long end of the tail" of the media; a new form of mass communication this is not.

And at the far end of that long tail sits the education blogosphere, a niche within a niche, with as many as 30,000 blogs. Joan-nejacobs.com, written by a former San Jose Mercury News reporter and columnist, is among its leading lights, yet is ranked lower than about 140,000 other web sites in the US. (Compare that to edweek.org, which is ranked about 40,000th.) But Jacobs is a big fish in this small pond. Table 1 shows that her site, along with Richardson's weblogg-ed.com, significantly outplaces all competitors when measured by the number of other blogs linking to them recently. This isn't a perfect indicator of a blog's influence (while daily or monthly readership measures might be better, they are not available for all blogs) but it does show the "authority" given to a site by other bloggers. In this world, links are the coin of the realm, and the more the better.

 
Tracking the Top Blog (Table 1) Education blogs by rank, August 2008 
 
Blog           Author (s)                                 Technorati 
                                                          Authority 
                                                          Score 
 
Weblogg-ed     Will Richardson, author, Blogs, Wikis,      850 
               Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for 
               Classrooms 
 
Joanne Jacobs  Joanne Jacobs, former San Jose Mercury      788 
               News reporter and columnist 
 
Cool Cat       Vicki Davis, teacher in the Westwood        531 
Teacher        Schools in Camilla, Georgia 
 
2c Worth       David Warlick, former teacher and founder   529 
               of The Landmark Project 
 
Speed of       Wesley Fryer, former teacher and now        462 
Creativity     director of technology and education 
               outreach for the Oklahoma Heritage 
               Association 
 
Dangerously    Dr. Scott McLeod, coordinator of the        443 
Irrelevant     educational administration program at 
               Iowa State University 
 
Edu.bloqs      Ewan Mcintosh, teacher and professional     406 
               development provider in Edinburgh, 
               Scotland 
 
Fischbowl      Karl Fisch, teacher at Arapahoe High        323 
               School (Centennial, CO) 
 
Students 2.0   K-12 students from around the world         266 
 
The Thinking   Jeff Utecht, technology specialist,         243 
Stick          Shanghai American School 
 
Note: Authority score is the number of unique blogs that have 
linked to that blog within the past 180 days, as measured by 
technorati.com. 
 
SOURCES: Selections culled by author from a list of the "Top 50 
education blogs" available at Dangerously Irrelevant. Authority scores 
from technorati.com. 

So what are these education bloggers blogging about? Will Richardson, whose site is the top education blog, informs teachers about how to integrate technology into the classroom. That's a common theme: 6 of the top 10 education blogs focus on technology-related topics. Joannejacobs.com is more ecumenical, linking to and ...