The purpose of Wednesday Website is to recognize those blogs that are relatively new to the edublogosphere and illustrate they have potential and promise to endure over a long period of time on the internet through writing on topics related to education. By definition, relatively new blogs are not normally the well-known blogs and thus, do not have a widespread audience. This award seeks to bring a new and larger audience to those blogs.

One website in the edublogosphere will be selected each week after considering the criteria listed (the weight in the consideration process follows each criterion):

1) Content (51%):

Content is obviously very important and is the single largest factor in the consideration process.

Obviously, the blog must be a blog about public education. I appreciate private education and support homeschooling, but the majority of individuals in the edublogosphere are public educators and administrators.

Blog posts should reflect philosophies, insight, and thought about classroom management, discipline, and curriculum (to include specific lesson plans). Additionally, posts can be thoughts on professional relationships, interaction with school administration and with students, aside from classroom management and discipline.

Blog posts can include anecdotes of family life and personal issues particularly during the summer months (I have not begun to go through blogs measuring the percentages of personal vs. professional posts. I have a life, a job, and school. I have little time to measure the percentages of all the blogs out there. However (comma), if I can find a way to do it quickly and efficiently, I may do so in the future).

Blogs posts should not include political commentary or political rants. I have sworn off politics in my blog and I prefer those who do too. I do not want to hear about why the current or previous administration is to blame for all the world’s ills. However, discussing policy and ways to change it is different than discussing politics. I hope I have made myself clear.

Blogs posts should not use a lot of vulgarity, blasphemy, or obscenity. It’s not that I’m a prude (you can’t really be in the military for 21 years and be a prude about such things), it’s just that I believe there are better ways to express oneself than through vulgarity. After all, if you are discussing the things I like to see written about (classroom management, discipline, curriculum), there should be no reason to use vulgarity.

A blog can not simply be a conduit to resources or technical information. A blog can have links and posts about such things, but the entire website must reflect a balance of all of the above.

2) Blog Interaction (15%)

Blog interaction is determined by the number of comments you leave at other blogs not by how many are left on your blog. Unfortunately, there is no sure fire way to determine the number of comments you leave on other blogs. But I can only try to ascertain your interaction by going to blogs on your blogroll and seeing if you leave comments and by going to your technorati page and seeing the number of times other people link to you and seeing if you comment on their blog. It is important to note that I am not looking for blog reciprocity, just comments from you to other bloggers and such. Remember, the whole concept of this is to cultivate a small community of edubloggers. That can’t be done if we don’t interact with each other. It’s all well and good if you want to market your blog, but a blog is nothing without merit and the merit comes in the writing and even that doesn’t help you if you don’t interact with other bloggers.

3) Authority (14%)

Authority is decided by technorati. Therefore, this is an easy one to explain.

Authority is based upon the number of links to your website from other websites. Hence, the more people post about your blog in their blog and the number of times you show up in blogrolls illustrate how popular you are in the blogosphere. The higher the number, the more times people have linked to you in some fashion. This is done through some algorithm that I can not begin to understand as I can barely add more than two digits together.

You can discover the authority of your blog by putting the title or the URL of your blog in the search engine and it should take you directly to it. Additionally, you can register yourself and then claim your blog

The lower your authority, the better. Remember, this award is to recognize new blogs, not well-known ones. Normally, the newer the blog, the less well-known that blog is.

Currently, I consider anything below an authority of 150 to be “low.” Therefore, anything above “150″ is decidedly fairly well-known and will, in all likelihood, not be selected. Sorry to all of you who fit in this category. This could change in the future, but I kinda doubt it. Obviously, if a blog is given the award and then their authority goes above 150 they do not have the award withdrawn.

4) Longevity (10%)

I won’t consider a blog until it has been up for at least three months but no longer than fourteen months. I believe three months shows a certain about of perseverance in an individual’s decision to blog. Blogging is not easy and it can take up a sizable amount of time. I believe three months seems to be a good threshold to determine if a person is in it for the long-haul.

The threshold may change to six months in the future - we’ll see.

5) Number of Posts (8%)

The number of posts is closely linked to longevity. The number of posts should steadily increase over the months and plateau out. I am not looking for daily posting, just a pattern to the posting. One post a month for three or more months is not good enough and will disqualify a potential blog as will simple randomness in the posting.

6) Technorati fans (1%)

Within technorati, blogs can have “fans.” This indicates those individuals who are actively watching that particular blog from their own technorati profile.

The weight of this is minimal as evidenced by the 1%. There are blogs out there with an authority strength in the thousands but have no fans. I place it here to encourage people to set up technorati accounts and begin showing their loyalty to other blogs by clicking on the link to “favorite it”.

7) Truth Laid Bear (1%)

This is something I really want to encourage people to register for (website is here). This operates similar to technorati but you must be registered in it and register your blog.

I check it when I consider a blog, but since most of the blogs are so new the author is unaware of this organization and its ability to bring in new readers.

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Miscellaneous

One thing I do not consider or expect is link reciprocity. If you link to me - great. But I’m not doing this to get more links. I’m doing this to recognize those websites I think are good and have a future.

If your blog is not selected, it doesn’t mean I don’t read it or do not like it, it just means it does not meet the criteria set above.

If your blog is selected and you want to tell me a little bit more about yourself, then I will include that in your Wednesday Website.

If you know of a blog that meets the above criteria; submissions are always welcomed and encouraged and needed. It’s actually pretty difficult sometimes finding good, new, little-known blogs for inclusion. So please submit nominations in the comment section here or email me at the email address in the right hand sidebar.

If you have any suggestions to anything about Wednesday’s Website, let me know. My ultimate desire is to form a loose network of teacher websites. I doubt it develops into that, but I can always have a vision right?

Now you may be asking yourself why is a non-teacher doing this and not a qualified teacher?

As a retired Army soldier who spent over 20 years analyzing and assessing people and events and writing about them in numerous intelligence assessments I feel I am qualified to do just what I am doing here. Additionally, as a future teacher, I am soaking up everything you edubloggers write. I want to fully understand the water I am diving into by becoming a teacher.

Finally, for recipients of this great and most awesome honor of being bestowed as the Wednesday Website, you can include this small icon somewhere on your website. If you need help linking it back to here, let me know. If you want/need it smaller, let me know (or if you have a suggestion on making the icon better looking let me know too).

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