Below is the text of an e-mail I received from a favorite colleague, Terri Johnson, a day ago.  This is a fun little glimpse into one of the many connections being made worldwide by teachers in my district this year.  While I could go on about positive global connections made by colleagues in the quest to create personal learning networks- this time I got a really nice little play-by-play.

I had to tell someone–and I knew you’d appreciate it.

A series of serendipitous events:

• 1. You taught me the value of Web 2.O.
• 2. I finally started using Twitter.
• 3. Following lots of great people.
• 4. Barak Obama tells all Americans to try to help others-volunteer. (I read about it via Twitter and watching live streaming at CNN.com etc.)
• 5. Thought, OK! What can I do? What can my students do?
• 6. @teachmescience on Twitter Discusses National Pink Shirt Day to put an end to Bullying.
• 7. I recall Pink Shirt Day being mentioned on Channel One last year.
• 8. Start a discussion in my Teacher Advisory Class about the Pink Shirt Day and Bullying-they decide we should promote it at Truman.
• 9. We’ve made posters, kids have created Commercials to run in the AM at Channel TMS (our student run news program.), and are creating pink “labels” for kids to pass out and wear on the date-February 25th.
• 10. I mentioned this to @teachmescience via Twitter as a thank you for the heads up.
• 11. She mentions this via e-mail to the Radio Station who started Pink Shirt Day.
• 12. Evidently “National” meant Canada.
• 13. Said radio station just e-mailed me asking to set up a telephone interview for Wednesday Afternoon.

How fun is that?!?

Terri

So, apparently, she and a couple of her students did a radio interview on the Christy Clark show during school today on CKNW AM980 in British Columbia, Canada.  Unfortunately, it was far too wild of a day for me to listen in, but I hear it was a great experience for all.  A little research on my end led me to the website for Pink Shirt Day, as well as Christy Clark’s page on the topic.  Apparently, this little movement aimed at ending bullying is gaining quite a head of steam, as Ms. Clark says on her site:

“I encourage all of you to wear something pink to symbolize that we as a society will not tolerate bullying anywhere. I wish I could take credit for this idea but it comes from two incredible Nova Scotia high school students.”

Terri-  of course I’m hoping you’ll pipe in here to give up a few more of the details.  Way to dive in an immerse yourself with like-minded professionals the world over.  And what’s more…  involving your students every step along the way in real social action.  You are modeling some pretty powerful connections.

*UPDATE: This just in, an audio link the piece (about halfway through).

Day two of the Dembo assignment is a fun one.  As a relatively nascent blogger, gathering data on the traffic to and from my blog has been enlightening.  That data is what this post is all about.

I started this blog in April.  On August 22nd or so, I added the code for Google Analytics to this site, the tech PD site for my school, and my marine biology site.  I have to say tracking the who, what, when and where of the visitors to my sites has been intriguing.  It is almost addictive.  I agree with Steve when he says, “…those graphs are good for the ego and can be highly motivating. For example, the days when I do post a new blog, I clearly see a bump in traffic, which is always incentive to post more often!”

Not only is proof that people really are connecting to your words validating, it is a fantastic teaching point.  Since all of my students are now dipping their toes into the blogosphere, at least on our network sites, I periodically try to highlight interesting stats for them on the big screen.  What would be the main point here?  Connectedness.  One of the main reasons for participating in blogging is the building of collective intelligence.  This is the key element of Web 2.0.  This is why the read/write web has and is changing the face of communication and of education in bright little pockets all over the globe.  For people generally unfamiliar with blogs-  these connections make an impact.  I spoke of this briefly in an earlier post on blogging.

Writing and sharing to a wide audience is huge.  A few colleagues and I are about to embark on an action research project to examine the effects of writing online compared to merely hitting “print” and walking your words to your teacher.  In recent discussions, we have talked in depth about the differences we see in our student work when interacting online.  We think we see increased volume, engagement, creativity and even a stronger “tuning in” to the elements of our specific content.  Therefore, we are going to attempt a study to examine these effects across several disciplines.  If nothing else, we will certainly be better able to characterize what is going on with our students as we move more of what we do onto the transparency of the web.

So, on to the “assignment” at hand.  This one was easy for me, since I realized the value of this far before I actually added analytic capability to my site.  However, reading the assignment today reminded me of a few of the stats I had forgotten to check for some time.

I took several screenshots within my analytics page and posted them to my Flickr account.  I will post a few of them inline now, but the rest can be viewed here.  As a scientist by training, trust this:  this much data tends to make me a bit giddy.  Wow.  To start, a 30,000ft view of the traffic pattern to my blog:

As you can see here, when you start any blog, the traffic is quite light.  It is also quite clear to see the bumps I get each time log a new post now.  The really cool thing to me is that the trend shows that there are consistently more people reading those posts as time goes on.  This is a good sign that I’m not making folks too terribly upset.  Or perhaps… I am.  Interesting thought.  It is cool to think of 198 absolute unique visitors in just the past couple of months.  That is encouraging to any blogger and is certainly an impetus to keep on posting.

The chart above was clipped from the tech cohort blog I set up called Virtual Soutside.  This provides a look at the difference when you have twenty people contributing to a site.  Also, instead of a mere three months of visits, I have been tracking this site since June of 2008.

Other assorted facts gleaned from the analysis of this blog to date include:

• Over 60% of the traffic here now comes from referring sites.  These are essentially, other sites that link to my blog.  Some of these are controlled by me, such as posting a link to my Twitter peeps.  Some are controlled by folks posting an outbound link to nashworld on their site.
• My readers are from eleven different countries. (14 as of the next morning)  The vast majority are from the United States, but others are from Malaysia, Kenya and India to name a few.
• 65% of my visitors view this site through the Firefox browser.  That happens to be my personal browser of choice about 90% of the time as well.  There are times when I fire up Safari as well.  They really do perform differently at times.  Only 19% view nashworld via Internet Explorer.  This make me strangely happy.
• 63% of you come to my blog powered by the Mac operating system.  Wow.  That is far more than I expected, even with our heavy usage of OSX in the district.  Almost 3% of visitors now arrive here in the palm of their hand via iPhone, and one person actually found their way here from a Playstation 3.
• The average visitor views 2.6 pages here.  This surprised me as well.  I thought that number would be far smaller.  The way I have the blog set up now, a visitor arriving via the main page can actually read ten separate posts without even clicking another link.  This is also encouraging to me.
• Speaking well to the power of smart referrals, the average time spent on any given visit is far higher when you come from a link posted by another blogger.  The really crazy stat is that the average time spent on the site by visitors arriving from Will Richardson’s blog, Weblogg-ed, is far higher than the rest.  Those of you coming in from Weblogg-ed currently spend an average of nearly 15 minutes on the site as opposed to the four and a half minutes of all visitors.  Hey Will, your readers have taste!
• This is but a slice of the data available from Google Analytics.  Even my Flickr set, with all of the screenshots I just referenced and a few more, is barely a fourth of what the site can reveal.
• Also interesting is the visitor visualization on ClustrMaps.  You can see this map over in the right sidebar of this page=>  I just added this Widget to the blog abut a month ago.  I don’t think it is as accurate as GA, and it is definitely not as comprehensive, but it sure is pretty, and gives your readers a slice of your data at a glance.

So to sum things up, I am two assignments down and 28 to go.  I have a feeling that things will get rocky toward the end when our new little girlie is born, so I am buckling down for the near term.  Also:  I don’t know all of my readers, but I like them.  They tend to be super-connected Mac snobs who read some other really smart blogs.  They can also probably tell me some amazing things about these stats I haven’t yet noticed.  By all means, please do respond with what you see in this data.

If you are local and would like some help setting up Google Analytics for your blog, you know who to ask.  Right?

Artwork thanks:

Warby, William. “Traffic Light Tree.” warby’s photostream. 03 MAY 2008. Flickr.
2 Nov 2008 <http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2077/2460655511_779a1d1a5c.jpg?v=0>.