Top edublogs?

Okay, let me begin by stating that I know several things about this blog post:

It’s probably going to make some people angry,

It’s probably going to discourage some people, and

I know I’ve missed some people.

Now that my disclaimers are out of the way, here’s what I’ve got: Will Richardson is more popular than eSchoolNews. Stephen Downes, David Warlick, and Vicki Davis are more popular than Education Week. Wesley Fryer is more popular than the feed from the main TechLEARNING web site. How do I know? Here is my Excel file. Feel free to play around with the data as desired.

Below is a chart of what I think are the top 30 edublogs as measured by Technorati rankings (click on the chart to see a full-size version). I’ve defined an edublog as any web site or blog having to do with education that has a RSS feed. Web sites like eSchoolNews and TechLEARNING thus are included. If you don’t agree with my definition, exclude whom you want and go a little farther down the list in the Excel file.

Did I forget someone? Highly likely. Let me know and I’ll add them for next quarter (April 2007). I only joined the blogosphere last August and still am learning my way around. Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, the blogosphere is a big place and it doesn’t come with an index. With your help I can keep adding to and expanding this list and start tracking the educational blogosphere a little better. For example, there are a bunch of blogs from the education blogosphere survey that aren’t in the Excel file. I simply ran out of time and will apologize now for anyone on that list that isn’t included. I’ll make sure you’re in the April report.

Below is another chart showing the movement of a few blogs that I looked at back in October (again, click on the chart to see a full-size version). This list simply represents some of the blogs that had crossed my radar after a mere 45 days of blogging and is not intended to be exclusionary. I include this chart to hopefully give some new bloggers some encouragement. The dark blue line swooping down from the top left is my blog. The orange line with a similar slope is Tuttle SVC. What’s the lesson for those who want more readers? If Tom Hoffman and I can move that dramatically in just a few months, so can you. [Note: interpret any declines with some caution: for example, The Thinking Stick dropped dramatically when Jeff Scofer changed its URL in Technorati; it still hasn’t caught up to where it was before.]

I’m a professor at a big research university, but this is not a research study. I’m just playing around with some data because that’s what I like to do (yes, I’m a data geek). Concerns aside, there is some interesting info here. Over time this will get better and more complete, particularly with your help. Please don’t get offended if you got left out: e-mail me your Technorati URL and I’ll add you for April. I figure that by the end of the year this should be humming along pretty well. I welcome all suggestions and feedback; I’m trying to be as open and transparent as possible. Happy data exploring.

P.S. I unapologetically admit that I care about my Technorati ranking. Why? Because I’m trying to make change. The bigger audience I have, the more readers I reach directly and the more people I can influence indirectly through those readers. I’m on a mission. Aren’t you?