Three observations – one substantive, one superficial, and one libelous – on Scott McLeod’s recent ranking of the edublogosphere, and the ensuing fracas.

Libelous

We all get this right? Whenever Scott feels his Technorati ranking slip a little, he issues another Technorati-based ranking of the edublogosphere and watches his inbound links explode. Here’s another link, bud, but I’m on to you.

Superficial

Eduwonkette notwithstanding, do any of the top fifty blog anonymously? Most feature an author bio, an author photo, and – bonus! – a unique voice.

This strikes me as the darkest dividing line between a well-written well-observed edublog and a well-written well-observed edublog on Scott’s list. Gotta pin it to a compelling voiceWhich is the challenge facing Educatorblog, barely a week old and already a sharp, prolific addition to our little set. Its readership will grow in spite of its indistinct title and anonymous author..

Substantive

I have seen two very right-minded disputes with Scott’s list (thrown into the comments for brevity) and two very murky ones which I’d like to clarify:

1. The bloggers at the top of the list have attained their position artificiallyFull disclosure: I’m on the list. You can decide if my midshelf ranking represents a conflict of interest..

   A representative response:

   The trouble is that it’s human nature to kind of hero-worship people. We all know who the ‘rock-star teachers’ are (to quote something that came my way by email recently…) and it would seem that, unfortunately, they run the show.

   I’m not saying that they necessarily try to run the show. It’s just that because of extra time (they’re no longer teaching, they’re consultants), motivation (they’re this close to effecting a long-awaited change) or energy they’re the ones who are read the most.

   This response suggests an edublogosphere stocked with idiots, each one duped of their subscriptions and trackbacks by a cabal of energetic consultants. Somehow, post after post, these rubes never wise up.

   A less sinister, less unhinged explanation would note these bloggers’ consistent, prolific, and quality writing, their interesting ideas, artfully written – in short, the objective quality of their output.

2. The quality of a blog’s output is entirely subjective.

   Truly, it’s impossible to account for taste, and in any other corner of the blogosphere, I wouldn’t even bother with this one. But these are educators, and I worry when educators dismiss even broad objective standards of quality for blogging / podcasting / vodcasting / whatever, or when educators confuse interesting ideas, artful writing, and a compelling voice for extra time, motivation, and energy.

   This dismissive stance squanders one of the Internet’s coolest promises for our students:

   You are your output. You can rise, fall, and affect change solely on the strength of what you submit to a blog, irrespective of age, gender, race, status, or disabilityI mean, how would these critics rationalize the success of Students 2.0, a group of bloggers who aren’t first-movers, consultants, or otherwise endowed with vast stores of free time, who are, instead, just good writers with interesting ideas?.

   How can we promote the blogosphere’s meritocracy to our students – the fact that no one knows you’re a high school freshman on the Internet, that your ideas can go viral just as fast as anyone’s – but deny it in our own blogging?

TMAO:

What gets me going is the pursuit of exponential student growth, and what keeps me coming back for more is the chance to hack away at the intensely complex pursuit of that growth. What stymies me, what blunts me, is the unraveling and solving of this particular puzzle. When the work becomes less about discovery and innovation and more about delivery and application, when the achievement becomes less shocked success and more the expected norm, when the cool thing you did to dramatically accelerate progress still accelerates progress but becomes less cool every time you do it, further and further removed from the spark-joy of innovation… I start checking for exits.

TMAO isn’t another canary in this coal mine of new teacher attrition. His kind needs an entirely different prescription. Ordinarily, I’d close comments and send you over to Room D2, but I’ve gotta ask the question here:

Where, in the vast sphere of education, do you deploy someone like TMAO, someone who is more satisfied by instructional innovation than by instructional implementation? How do you play to that teacher’s strengths? How do you keep him challenged?

‘Cause I can’t see it.

John August’s advice to new, improving teachers screenwriters:

My advice for you is to dedicate one day a week to disassembling good movies. Take existing films (and one-hour dramas) and break them down to cards. Think of yourself as an ordinary mechanic given the task of reverse-engineering a spaceship. Figure out what the pieces do, and why they were put together in that way.

What was that thing you were saying about the intangible art of teaching?

Whatever I am as a teacher, I am a hyper-observant hack, stitching together the best I see around me, trimming back the brush. None of what you see here comes naturally.

To be fair to the teaching-as-calling crowd, August also writes:

If you were writing in for advice about how to be funnier or more charismatic, I would have probably let your email sit in the growing folder of unanswerable questions, because those are pretty much inherent qualities. [emph. added]

Which begs the question: what qualities of a teacher are inherent?