In order to get a better idea of who is visiting our class blog, I use two tools to help me. The first is a widget in the sidebar: Revolver Maps. I really like this one because we are an Earth science class, and so watching the Earth spin in space is pretty appropriate! I have only had this on the class blog for a couple of weeks, so we’re still watching our visits grow, but students started checking it out as soon as they noticed it was there. I think they are really excited to see how our class blog is visited from all over the world.
The second thing I use is StatPressCN on the back end of the site. It is a WordPress plugin. It shows how many visitors we have each day as well as page views. It also tracks IP addresses, search terms, and referrers. This really gives me a better idea of how people are finding our class blog and what pages they are visiting.
What is your favorite way to track visitors to your class blog? What have you learned about those who visit you?
This post is part of the Student Blogging Activity #6 supported by Edublogs.
I use google analytics and feedjit 🙂
Ooh – thanks for sharing. I’ll have to check them out. I’m in love with my blog’s statistics! (Okay, I just like statistics!)
Thanks for the posting – don’t forget that if you’re an Edublogs user you get an easy 1-click-add capability for another such tool, ClustrMaps, which provides a simple (without rotating globe) overview of all visitors to your site or blog. Instructions for Edublogs users are listed at
http://blog.clustrmaps.com/html-setup/clustrmaps-on-edublogs/
(which has forward pointers to great instructions by Sue Waters at Edublogs).
As for student motivation, you might be interested in
a) A nice YouTube testimonial about ClustrMaps in the classroom:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V36sGsdDVk
b) An article about ‘ClustrMaps As Student Motivation’:
http://www.mrhiggins.net/blog/2007/02/13/clustrmaps-as-student-motivation/
c) A similar one (‘ClustrMaps Is A Powerful Thing’):
http://beyond-school.org/2007/10/24/a-clustrmap-is-a-powerful-thing-2-minute-presentation/
Hope that’s useful…
All the best,
-CJ on behalf of the ClustrMaps Team