I was really surprised when I noticed last month that Sarah Stewart had nominated me for an Edublog Award for Most Influential Blog Post. Actually, I was more than surprised I was shocked! The post in question was written a few weeks after I broke my wrist and was in response to an online BBC news article, with the title "Tech Addiction 'Harms Learning'". You can read the blog post here. It is about poor research and poor journalism. I'm not so sure how influential the article was, as none of the authors, the universities involved, or the publishers responded to my emails seeking clarification on the research.
I discovered later that the BBC were not the only people to publish the story. Most of the main UK newspapers had also picked up on it. So as google-sidewiki appeared at the same time I went around leaving links to my blog post anywhere that I could not leave a comment directly.
Paul Bradshaw did manage to get a response from the BBC after he picked the story up on his blog. Well done Paul! But not such a great response from the editor.
I am not so sure that the blog really was influential, or how anyone judges what an influential blog post is. But I am very happy that Sarah nominated me, and that the Edublog Awards team agreed it should be shortlisted.
Still, this post starts with a chart. There are 30 blog posts short listed in the Most Influential Blog Post category and I noticed that several of them, like mine seemed to be posted in the latter half of the year. So, why is September such a good month for blogs? Are we all well rested after the summer and keen to get back to blogging? Or are memories just short, and when nominating posts we tend to remember best what we have read most recently?
What do you think?
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