Technology in our classroom

Thanks to all the visitors coming to check out our classblog.  We have recently had our clustrmap account updated and now we have been  announced as a monthly winner.  Check out this email I received.

I’m pleased to announce that you’re a winner of the ClustrMaps User Of  The Month (there are more than one this month)!  CONGRATULATIONS!!  I’ve already updated you to ClustrMaps+ status, and the ‘zoomed in maps’ (continents) will begin appearing after the next map update (normally overnight at 0400 GMT, but it also depends on there being an increase by 20% of the number of ‘dots’ shown, so it may take an extra day or two).

You’ll find your URL listed on our User of The Month page, at

 http://clustrmaps.wordpress.com/user-of-the-month/

in one of the collections reasonably near the top,

and the upgrade stays in effect for 2 years (after which I can easily guarantee plenty of great new features).

Best wishes, and thanks for being a loyal ClustrMaps user and fan!

Thanks again visitors and the Clustrmaps team!!

Your blog is up and running but not many people are visiting you to leave comments.  How do you attract comments and how do you find out who is visiting?

Attracting visitors:

• my students and I visit lots of other blogs and leave comments
• the name of the post is important for search engines to pick up eg Fighter jets
• making links in your posts to other blogs and websites
• having an interesting post that lots of people want to read and comment on
• making sure the class blog URL is attached to my avatar when I make a comment
• having an activity linked to the page, so the reader has something to comment on
• check out the other blogs on the class blogrolls

Check out these student posts and the comments about building your blog audience:

• Ashley
• Nicholas
• Hayden

Checking who is visiting:

There are a few ways to do this.  You could have

• a counter such as the flagcounter on this page
• a clustrmap, how to add to your sidebar
• and if 13 or older, a feedjit map

Some classes taking part in the challenge are keeping a large world map showing where their visitors are coming from. They want to know about your country and where you live.  This week’s challenge is to visit at least 10 other blogs that are new to you and leave a comment on an interesting post.

Make sure you stop by Mrs Cranford and Mrs Rush with their class blogs.

Remember the most important point as Sue Waters says

the key to blogging lies in effective reading of blogs

Original image: ‘Groveland Museum Visitors – Day 309‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29145750@N00/1035938155
by: Steve Ryan

Released under an Attribution-ShareAlike License