mguhlin

Almost 500 Blog Entries: 2020 Blog Roundup

“I have ninety-nine jumps out of the airplane,” said my Dad. He had been a paratrooper, special forces, and retired Canal Zone police officer. 

“Why did you stop at ninety-nine jumps, Dad?” I would ask him. He’d shake his head and tell me how glad he was to have the ninety-nine jumps under his belt. He simply stopped there. Of course, he also fought in The Korean Conflict as well. I got the sense he was grateful he had stopped at ninety-nine.
In this blog entry, I engage in some navel-gazing my work blog and do a round-up of the blogs I’ve written during 2020.

Surprisingly, I find myself at 99 100 blog entries written this year (so far), the fifth year of my work at TCEA TechNotes. It’s not like I jumped out of a plane, but blogging can be a bit exciting, leaving you breathless for what words will come tumbling out next. You hope the blog entry will exit the plane properly and land well.

Update: This blog has been updated to reflect that I now have 100 blog entries. That means my December, 2020 and Y2020 graph info is slightly inaccurate.

When I started writing blog entries for my work blog, I started a bit tentatively. Even though I had over 7K+ blog entries under my belt at Around the Corner, as well as in other spaces, I was new on the job. I’ll admit that since I started writing a blog for work, I’ve done less writing here at Around the Corner. And, of course, the nature of blogging has changed a bit since then. Blogging does seem a bit archaic compared to micro-blogging options, and social media immediacy.

Serious Navel-Gazing

Ok, here’s some fun navel-gazing. I hadn’t paid that much attention, but since I’m coming up on my five year marker, I was curious about the numbers a bit. Have fun with these graphs…

Isn’t that cool? My highest point appears to have been August, 2018. Here’s another way to look at it…each month shows a comparison for each year. This (below) is not my favorite graph. Everything looks crammed together.

This next graph is easier to figure out. You can see my total blog entries by year:

It seems like my best month was August, 2018 with 17 blog entries, and my best year was 2017 with 134 blog entries that year. It’s kinda cool to know the numbers since it gives me a measure of how well I’m doing during 2020. 
Of course, 2020 may be my second best year since 2017. Of course, these numbers are a bit deceiving. My five years doesn’t end until March 21, 2021. This means I could count blog entries from April of one year (2020) to March of the next (2021). But that’s too much research and counting. 
🙂

WHAT’S THE PERCENTAGE?

The next question is, what percentage of total blogs published are mine each year? This is trickier and involved a bit more research.
It was no fun getting the data for these graphs, but this involved counting and adding up how many blog entries I’d written in one year, then how many TOTAL blog entries had been written. I honestly wanted to see what my contribution was and how it stacked up to everyone else (guest bloggers included!).
You can see my total numbers by year matched up to the rest of the bloggers at TechNotes.

Another question that plagues me is, what percentage of blogs I had written each year? Apologies for the color…I’m still learning LibreOffice and it’s not quite as easy as Google Sheets.

When I average out how much of the blog entries I’ve written, it’s about 33%. Cool, huh? 

500 Blog Entries by End of Year 5

As I look back over my almost five years at my current employer, I realize that I have written about 97.6 blog entries (on average) per year. That means, barring any weird stuff, I’ll have written 500 blog entries in five years by March 21, 2021. Isn’t that cool? 
Between January and March, I write 19.8 blog entries (on average). I should reach my goal of 500 blog entries easily by March 21. However, my 2021 stats will be off if I slack off.
I was hoping to hit the big 500 earlier this Fall so I could coast into the new year. I was going to blame my slowness on the pandemic, but I see now that I’m right in line for what I should be writing during December. 
Still, I spent massive amounts of time, and still am, working on online, self-paced courses. It’s not a bad thing, but I admit it has distracted me from blogging more. I also recorded quite a few video resources for remote learners. The benefit of these activities is that they’ve given me content to write about and focus on.

More To Write

This means that while I have written 99 100 blog entries as of 12/13/2020, I am only at 486 total blog entries. So, I have 14 more blog entries to write before 3/21/21. I’d like to knock those out before Winter Break.
Do you think I’ll make 500 by 3/21/2021? Let me know in the comments. In the meantime, it might be fun to do a quick roundup of work blog entries for 2020. The graphs and spreadsheet will help me better target my goals going forward. I blame Jonathan Moeller for mentioning how he tracks his words written toward a novel for planting the idea in my head. 
😉

Revisiting 2020

Since I’ve written quite 99 100 blog entries in 2020, I thought I’d do my usual blog entry round up here. Ready? Let’s get started.

Note: Bold, italicized entries deal with my understanding of John Hattie, Dr. Doug Fisher, and Dr. Nancy Frey’s work. Simply bolded items are one I really enjoyed writing. Of course, I had fun with each blog entry, but the bolded ones were especially fun.

Pre-COVID-19

I wrote quite a few blog entries right before I left for Spring Break this year, not knowing I wouldn’t be going back to work. These are the ones that published in January and February, but you can see, COVID-19 quickly grabbed ahold of the reins.

During COVID-19

My wife’s work as a 2nd grade teacher has inspired many of these blog entries, not to mention all the learning I’ve done on my own as a result. 
  1. Teleschool Ready? Learning in the Time of COVID-19
  2. Lab Diagrams Made Easy with Chemix
  3. Letting Students Choo-Choo Choose Their Own Track with a Choice Board
  4. Remote Learning Tools for Schools
  5. Microsoft Learn: Beef Up Your Technical Skills
  6. Animate Learning with The Wick Editor
  7. Celebrate Notable Women with Google’s AR App
  8. Class Discussions Gone Digital
  9. TCEA Responds: Making Copies of Google Docs
  10. Maintain Teacher Privacy with Google Voice

  11. TCEA Responds: Exploring Google Contacts
  12. Free, Open-Source LibreOffice Goes Mobile
  13. Test-Enhanced Learning Made Simple with Knowt
  14. Tracking Online Content with Fraidycat
  15. Video Sharing in Google Classroom and Seesaw

  16. Digital Stories for Remote Learners
  17. Napkin PD: PBL Your Jigsaw
  18. Note-Taking and Outlining: Five Digital Helpers
  19. Background Removal Tools for Photos and Videos
  20. Remote Learning for Special Education Teachers

  21. Listen and Learn with Listenwise
  22. Enhance Instructional Leadership with Digital Tools
  23. Formative Assessment Tools for Remote Learning
  24. Six Steps to Easy Virtual Conference Organization
  25. Nonfiction Media for Remote Learners

  26. Digital Physics with Physics Classroom
  27. Google Meet Add-Ons and Updates
  28. TCEA Responds: Starting a Virtual Book Club
  29. Crafting Spoken Feedback in G Suite EDU
  30. Make It Relevant: The Collaborator ISTE Standard
  31. Synchronous Remote Learning with SyncTube
  32. Connect Instructional Strategies with Tech
  33. Five Amazing Add-Ons for Google Classroom
  34. Appifying Repeated Reading Assessments
  35. Google’s AI to the Rescue: Ask Socratic
  36. High-Effect-Size Instructional Strategies and Digital Tools
  37. Google Play Store Labels Teacher-Approved Apps
  38. Naraview: The Wikipedia-Powered Game Maker
  39. Streamline Your Work with Joplin
  40. Blog, ‘Cast, Engage!
  41. Becoming a Technology Director
  42. Virtual Backgrounds for Google Meet (Updated)
  43. Buzz Me In: Remote Learning Buzzers and Scoreboards
  44. TCEA Responds: Keep Parents in the Loop with Google Classroom
  45. Google Meet or Zoom Transcription
  46. Unfollow and Declutter Your Twitter Account
  47. Create Interactive Lessons with Deck•Toys
  48. Come Read with Me: Google’s Read Along App
  49. Teaching Math with G Suite EDU
  50. Computer Giveaway Program for Students

  51. Adobe Khan+Create Activities
  52. Chrome Tablets in Your Future, Part 1
  53. Chrome Tablets in Your Future, Part 2
  54. Planning G Suite EDU Use for Special Needs Children
  55. Clip That Web Page with Joplin

  56. Make Audio More Accessible with YouTube Playback Tools
  57. Recording Video into Google Slides
  58. Translate YouTube Captions and Audio
  59. Video Editing Tools for Remote Teachers
  60. Tracking Attendance for Remote Learners
  61. Remote Learning Tools, Part 1: Make Schoology Work For You
  62. Remote Learning Tools, Part 2: Button Menus for Canvas or Schoology
  63. Remote Learning Tools, Part 3: A Simple Design
  64. TCEA Responds: Remote Teaching for Speech Therapists
  65. Remote Learning Strategy #1: Classroom Discussion

  66. Remote Learning Strategy #2: Summarization
  67. Five Schoology Hacks for Google Educators
  68. Converting PDFs/Images to Digital Worksheets
  69. Remote Learning Strategy #3: Three More
  70. Semantic Maps Made Easy

  71. LMS Apps and Support Groups Roundup
  72. Get a Clue: The SOLO Taxonomy
  73. Virtual Manipulatives for Math Remote Learning
  74. Essential Gadgets for Remote Educators
  75. Sharing Schoology Solutions
  76. Comics and Graphic Novels: An Imagery Invasion
  77. Five Tech Tools to Simplify Your Teaching Life
  78. Fix Your Grumpy sELF: How to Change Your Bitmoji Expressions
  79. 12 Learning Strategies and Their Ed Tech Tools

Blog Entries Pending Publication

As you might imagine, one of my favorite things about blogging is instant publishing. That was an adjustment when I came to my current employer, since they schedule the blog entries. I simply worry about cranking them out. Here are a few that I’ve written in the past few weeks that have not yet been published. 
If there’s any below that you’d like to see sooner rather than later, make sure to write the editors of TechEdge blog (I like to point to Andrew Roush but that’s a mean thing to do to such a nice guy…haha).
  1. Enhance Canvas LMS with Google Chrome Add-Ons
  2. 5E Model: Blending High-Effect Instructional Strategies
  3. Make Student Writing Known: Publish
  4. Teach Critical Thinking with Map Design
  5. Frayer Model Goes EdTech

  6. How To Plan and Moderate an Online Panel Discussion
  7. TCEA Responds: Streaming Morning Announcements
  8. Twitter Takeaways: Google Meet Breakouts Plus
  9. Just-in-Time Coaching with Discord
  10. Free Online Screen Recorder and Video Editor
  11. Google’s New Storage Policies: Avoid the Terror
  12. Five Seesaw Holiday Activities for Your Virtual Classroom
For me, writing is a powerful act of creation that banishes the dark. I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to write about topics close to my area of interest. I’m grateful for the work and the opportunity I’ve had.
I’ll be sure to revisit this blog entry and add any new blog titles that I come up with before Winter Break. For now, I wish you well.
Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

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