Why Monitor Blog Stats?

Everyday I find more resources for my classroom because I monitor the statistics on my various web sites. This morning I found an interesting wiki for Scratch as a result of my stats.

My Main Tool
The site I use most often is Stat Counter. It is a free site. At this point, I am monitoring several wikis and this blog. It's very easy. After you sign up for a free account, you will have to provide the URL of a site you wish to monitor. The Stat Counter can be invisible or displayed. There are several choices. Finally, you will be given a window with code. The code can be copied and pasted into an HTML/Java Script Gadget in Blogger. In Wikispaces, use the Embed Widget icon and paste the code in the Other HTML window. Each tool has its own location for pasting HTML. Classblogmeister was one of the hardest. I pasted the code in the Control Panel window in the About You sidebar.

I'm still trying to figure out where the code goes for my DEN Blog.

The Main Display Window


This is a portion of my main display window in Stat Counter. It shows me the web site title along with counts for the number of visitors today, yesterday, this month, and total. When I click on the web site, I get more details.

Where I Find Value
I learned about a new Scratch resource as a result of looking at Stat Counter today. It is actually a lot of fun to see where people find value in my writing. When I saw the name of the person to make the last edit on the wiki, I saw jepcke. Judi is a colleague from Twitter. We share resources, but I wasn't online when she might have mentioned creating this wiki. My Stat Counter helped me find it. Now it's bookmarked with my other Scratch resources in Delicious.

What Else Have I Learned?
Over time, I see that even though I may not receive a lot of comments, my resources are being used. Many people come to my blog to learn, get ideas, and solve problems. I help people find my resources on my wikis when I link to them on the Classroom 2.0, Elementary Tech Teachers, and other nings. My whole goal is to give back to the teaching world what I received when I was looking for resources back when I got started as a computer teacher.