Top 50 P-12 Edublogs? - June 2008

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Many of you know that I occasionally try to wrap my head around various aspects of the education blogosphere. In the past I’ve written about hubs and superhubs. I’ve also sometimes attempted to identify and quantify some of the most popular edublogs:

• Top edublogs? (January 2007)
• Top edublogs - August 2007

Below is my latest attempt. I made a few changes from last time, which I describe after the table. Authority and rank are from Technorati as of June 2. Clicking on each blog name will take you to its Technorati page.

	Blog Name	2008 Authority	2008 Rank
1*	apophenia	1,256	1,880
2	Weblogg-ed	897	3,222
3	Joanne Jacobs	798	3,848
4	Stephen's Web	708	4,581
5*	The Panda's Thumb	563	6,314
6	2 Cents Worth	559	6,364
7	Cool Cat Teacher Blog	550	6,527
8	Moving At the Speed of Creativity	452	8,585
9	Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com	434	9,073
10	Students 2.0	415	9,601
11	Dangerously Irrelevant	413	9,650
12	The Fischbowl	402	9,999
13	Larry Ferlazzo's Websites Of The Day…	292	15,222
14	Beyond School	281	16,003
15	EdTechTalk	255	18,132
16	The Thinking Stick	251	18,485
17*	Millard Fillmore's Bathtub	247	18,889
18	CogDogBlog	243	19,288
19	Angela Maiers	241	19,497
20	Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech	233	20,369
21	Techlearning blog	231	20,603
22	elearnspace	231	20,603
23	dy/dan	223	21,531
24	Around the Corner	219	22,034
25	Practical Theory	211	23,110
26	Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy	197	25,258
27	Steve Hargadon	194	25,760
28	Half an Hour	187	27,002
29	k12 Online Conference	180	28,355
30	Mobile Technology in TAFE	179	28,551
31	blog of proximal development	171	30,308
32	HeyJude	168	30,991
33	Blue Skunk	164	31,997
34	The Education Wonks	164	31,997
35	Drape's Takes	162	32,533
36	Always Learning	162	52,728
37*	The Learning Circuits Blog	157	33,890
38	Remote Access	152	35,296
39	PBS Teachers . Learning.now	151	35,621
40	Eduwonkette	150	35,920
41	So You Want To Teach?	149	58,157
42	Eduwonk	148	36,614
43	Teach42	147	36,964
44	History Is Elementary	145	37,670
45	LeaderTalk	144	38,026
46	Infinite Thinking Machine	137	40,556
47	Creating Lifelong Learners	133	42,160
48	AssortedStuff	131	42,997
49	Connectivism Blog	128	44,360
50	think:lab	122	47,149
51	O’DonnellWeb	121	47,646
52	iterating toward openness	119	48,680
53	Teaching Generation Z	119	48,680
54	Generation YES Blog	112	52,751

Information about the table

• This time I only included blogs that predominantly post about P-12 education. No higher education blogs. No blogs that are mostly about training, software tools, or other topics with an occasional P-12–related post. No education news channels that happen to have an RSS feed. Just ‘pure’ P-12 blogs. I was on the fence about four blogs on the chart; those are marked with an asterisk. I included blogs 51 to 54 in case you think those four should not have been included.
• I gave up monitoring the several thousand blogs on my previous list. There were just too many to catalog and also too many newcomers. There are over 100,000 edublogs!
• I feel fairly confident about the accuracy of this list. I considered listing the top 100 but was not as confident about blogs 70 to 100 because I kept finding new ones in that range.
• If I missed you, I’m sorry. Please let me know for next time. If you don’t like or disagree with my selection criteria, feel free to make your own list. It would be interesting to compare yours with this one.
• The very notion of what constitutes a ‘top’ edublog is very personal and individual (see, e.g., posts by Stephen Downes and Peter Rock as well as the numerous comments regarding my last two attempts). Also, Technorati has a number of issues, but no one has yet suggested a more viable alternative. There are many, many great blogs not on this list. While a number of people are finding value in the blogs in this table, some excellent writing is occurring on blogs with lower authority. Read and write blogs for your own reasons rather than worrying about the numbers.

Other lists of top edublogs

Other attempts have been made to catalog the top edublogs. Of note are the following:

• Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Education
• Aseem Badshah’s Live Mocha list

Some stats on Alltop

Only 19 of the top 50 blogs in the chart above are on Alltop Education. Interestingly, I also discovered that at least 9 of the blogs on Alltop Education have an authority of less than 26, meaning that they have less than one inbound link per week.

Blogs with big gains in authority

Take heart, bloggers who want more readers / links! As the chart below shows, a number of the blogs on this list had large gains in authority over the past 11 months. Some of the top blogs (including Students 2.0, Angela Maiers, and Eduwonkette) didn’t even exist a year ago.

Final thoughts

As always, please let me know if you have any thoughts or reactions regarding this post. I am deeply honored that so many of you choose to read my blogs, appreciate any and all feedback, and look forward to the conversation!

Comments

[Kevin]

1.

Making a list can be dangerous(ly relevant?) but anytime anyone does, I appreciate it as it turns my attention to some sites that might otherwise escape me.
So, thanks.

Kevin

[Jon Becker]

2.

Two, perhaps related thoughts. First, what percentage of those blogs are focused mostly on issues of ed. tech? As best I can tell, at least 13 of the top 15 are (I'm not counting #1...).
Second (and I guess relatedly), it surprises me not to see folks like Matthew Tabor, Alex Russo, Gary Stager, Sherman Dorn, etc. there. Dorn's been blogging (and well, IMHO) for a LONG time. I see Eduwonkette in the mix, but I'm certain she benefits from her affiliation with Ed. Week (not that she doesn't deserver consideration as a "top" blogger). Are there so few people interested in the larger ed. policy issues? I think I'll write a blog post about this...

[Anthony]

3.

You should have mentioned DetentionSlip.org they are ranked 10 on Alltop, just won Best Education Blog of the Year, and are read by thousands of teachers daily!

http://detentionslip.org

[Micah Sittig]

4.

I'm relatively new to the edublog world, so I'm checking out these rankings for new reads. The #1 weblog has compiled a "Best Of" posts page, but I found that it only has the word "education" once, and the word "teaching" zero times. How did it make it to the top of the chart?

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/bestof.html

[Justin B.]

5.

@Jon:

Personally, I am glad to see fewer than expected "policy" blogs in the mix. A lot of what goes on in the policy blogs is a Washington insiders game of charters and unions and testing and fish porn (ok, I like the fish porn). I realize education policy is pretty important, but how you teach history is pretty important too. I want the policy information conveyed to the masses like everyone else, but a lot of what goes on in the ed. policy blogs is writing for other ed. policy blogs, not for the general education audience.

I do think there is an over representation of tech blogs, but that is to be expected at this stage of the development of Web 2.0. Because Scott is using Technorati ratings, the biggest interest group of bloggers on the web are going to have the largest representation on here. Still the largest intra-education interest group that have their own blogs to generate Technorati rating is Ed. Tech folks so it comes as no surprise to me that Ed. Tech is highly (over) represented. It would be interesting if Scott were to do an Ed-Tech list and a non ed-tech list.

The simple fact is that we have to come up with a better way to measure this eventually than Technorati ratings (I have no problem with Scott using it now as it is the best we have). As you said, highly influential blogs like Russo's and Dorns and others should be on most "top" lists, but have not been citied by enough different blogs to be included in the Technorati rating.

I saw that TaxProf Blog uses site hits and page views to create a legal list of law professor blawgs, but that relies on people putting a sitemeter on their blog that others can view. Of course, the law also has their own legal blog directories, which all relevant legal blogs submit to, so there is a ready made tracking and popularity system. See (http://www.justia.com/). Those are not the best ways either, but I do think they come closer to measuring actual influence of blogs.

Still, I like these lists because like Kevin I get to learn about new blogs I otherwise might not know about that others are finding valuable.

[Laura B. Fogle]

6.

This list is very timely for me. I am working on a course about blogging in the classroom. I will share definitely share this list with my students!

There are a lot of Ed Tech blogs and they don't appeal to the average teacher who is not a tech junkie. Would you consider doing a "Top 10 Classroom Blogs" list?

[Ben]

7.

I REALLY appreciate the question mark on your post title, as these results are most likely not the top 50 blogs about education. Given that Technorati's blog search and Google's blog search often give different results, it's also the case to manipulate the results using different search strings.

I appreciate that you stated in your previous posting (from 2007) that you searched for blogs tagged with both "education" and "school". It's a shame that you didn't do the same with this posting, as searching today, with various tags, produces results both similar and wholly dissimilar to your list; which is my general complaint with using search-results for compiling lists. As you stated, there are literally hundreds of thousands of education blogs, and many of them may contain fantastic resources, but when you post a list like this it's not a list of who has the best content, or the most reflective, simply just the blogs with the most sites and other blogs pointing to it. Which often will give you the blogs with the more popular content, but not always the most valuable.

[Scott McLeod]

8.

@Ben: Right. What's 'the most valuable' is in the eye of the beholder. But, as I said in my post on hubs and superhubs, neither should we discount the blogs with 'the more popular content.' We must recognize, like for a best-selling book or a hit song, that the reason these blogs are popular are because readers are finding value in them. Otherwise folks will simply unsubscribe and continue on with their lives. So we have to simultaneously work to bring to the fore smaller blogs with excellent content while also utilizing the power of the hubs and superhubs for dissemination and sharing.

FYI, for this time around I didn't do an open search. I went deep into the list from last time, seeing who moved up or down. I also investigated notable newcomers and utilized the other lists mentioned above. If your Google blog search results indicate that I missed someone, please let me know for next time. This is fairly difficult and time-consuming work so I'd appreciate any help I can get!

[Guy Kawasaki]

9.

If you look at http://educaton.alltop.com/ you will now see that all fifty of your selection are in. :-)

Guy

[Adam]

10.

You should consider the Tempered Radical
http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2008/06/surviving-digit.html

He is a middle school teacher and is doing some great things with his students. Bill tends to right about things that everyone is thinking, but nobody is talking about.

[Scott McLeod]

11.

I did look at Bill's stats. His readership hasn't risen yet to the level sufficient to enter the top 50. He's a great read, though (as are many others)!

[Sylvia Martinez]

12.

Thanks for the inclusion of the Generation YES blog! I'm sort of charmed by the thought of being #54 on the list of top 50! ;-)

[Scott McLeod]

13.

@Laura: see the comment thread at

http://snipurl.com/2eab1

[Alec Couros]

14.

Thanks for the list, Scott. I made this list, and I'm still wondering how to make this count for my annual review. :-)

[Britt Watwood]

15.

Great list (and I follow many of these) but does anyone put out a top list of higher ed edublogs (which is what I consider mine)???

[Shaping Youth]

16.

At Shaping Youth, my nonprofit where we cover media and marketing's impact on kids, (always an education!) I like to treat analytics, rankings, lists and even 'awards' as mostly an aggregating method to turn me onto new sites, as well as pointing me to who has their marketing methodology in 'meme' mode or focusing on a sophisticated SEO play.

For instance, I just got pinged from 'Wikio' congratulating Shaping Youth for being "#29 in the world in biz blogs," asking if we want a 'badge' and such...but guess what? I don't remotely consider myself a biz blog!

We deal with all aspects of K-12 and youth media/mktg. literacy, 'e-learning' and techno tools to make the world a better place...but is that 'biz?' I think not.

I immediately forwarded the accolade to my co-authors at Age of Conversation.com (the probono social media project for Variety, the children's charity) who are much more savvy on the social media/digerati side than I am...As predicted, though the ranking was indeed 'true' and included me above some of our AOC crew w/technorati rankings out the wazoo, (I was incredulous) it was not an indicator of our 'authority' or our value by any means...so I shrugged it off as yet another piece of my ongoing learning puzzle in digital education.

Speaking of cool sites and education though...have any of you visited the RezEd.org community of educators in virtual worlds? There's a K-12 group that snagged my interest, fyi.

p.s. Surprised edu-blogger Vicki Davis of Cool Cat Teacher/Women of Web 2.0 isn't on here, she's awesome...though maybe they treat wikispaces as entities in themselves? I can see this will be a 'lifelong learning' process! Whew.

(btw, I arrived here via Generation Yes, #54!) ;-) --Amy

[Ed Darrell]

17.

Thanks for even thinking of Millard Fillmore's Bathtub. Flattery goes a long way with me.

The idea of figuring out which are the 50 most-read blogs is a good idea. Maybe someday we'll figure out a solid method (and Millard Fillmore's Bathtub probably won't make the list then); in the interim, you've already introduced me to a dozen blogs I didn't know about. That's worth the price of the list right there.

[RBH]

18.

The Panda's Thumb Crew appreciates you including us in your list. While we are not exclusively an education blog, on the order of 500 of our posts are about education, mostly in defense of P-12 public school science education. While we wear an asterisk, we do so proudly. :)

[Angela Maiers]

19.

Scott, the list comes out at the perfect time. Many teachers are "off for the summer" and have some much needed time to read and learn. I am looking forward to that myself and appreciate you introducing me to new perspectives and sites.

It is an honor and privilege to be included among these great voices.

[Clay Burell]

20.

Thanks for the work, Scott (and Amy, Vicki _is_ included, in the top 10 or so).

Interesting breakdown, though - by my count, 3 or 3 teachers from k-12 classrooms, and one student blog, out of 50. What do we make of this?

[elementaryhistoryteacher]

21.

Once again....thanks for the number crunching. I've been a little behind lately in locating some of the newer reads that are out there, so your list always comes in handy. I'm humbled that History Is Elementary is included in the mix.

[Darren]

22.

This list is horrible!--but only because my blog isn't on it :-)

[Preston]

23.

Scott, great list. There are a lot of good bloggers on that list.

Have you seen TeacherLingo.com? It's a community dedicated to teachers. Anyone on your list can add their blog to the directory. I believe a few are already members too.

[Miguel Guhlin]

24.

Scott, I'm now at the bottom of the blog heap, having moved my blog from where it resided for 4.5 years--www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin--to http://mguhlin.blogspot.com

My Technorati relevance is 4 million plus, and you know what, that's fine by me. Let's see how long it takes to rise to the top, or at least, the 25K level where I was. I was able to keep my subscribers, whew!

So, I'm an underdog unknown now and you can take me off your top 25 edublogs list. That way the Edjurist won't feel so intimidated when I say some of the espoused ideas are hypocritical! (smile)

And, if we all moved periodically, what would that do to the rating game?

Warm regards,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://mguhlin.net

[Jason Priem]

25.

Over the last several months, this list has been the inspiration for a weekend programming project: an interactive, animated tagcloud of the edu-blogosphere. The idea is to get a sense of the overall conversation, be able to drill down and compare different authors and time periods, and then be able to click through to specific posts.

Now that it's done, you can check it out or download the source at http://jasonpriem.com/feedvis . Thanks for the the work you put into compiling the list!

[Water damage]

26.

Thanks for the list - lets just hope people dont apsm them now and actually post something relevant to the conversation.