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In response to "Over Two-Hundred Education & Science Blogs" [Hake
(2009a)], Fran Podrey (2009) of the PHYSHARE list wrote:
"If I had some copious free time, my next step would be to create a
blog index by category (recognizing that some blogs may fit into
multiple categories) and make this list available as a web page. Do
you have any plans for such a web page, which could then grow as more
bloggers start science/physics/education blogs?"
The short answer is "NO, I have no plans to create a blog index by category."
The long answer is:
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In APPENDIX A2b Hake (2009a) I discussed "Some Weaknesses of the
Blogosphere." One of them is the "difficulty in finding out what we
need," due to, e.g.:
a) the vastness of the blogosphere [Petrilli (2009) estimates that
there are about 30,000 education-related blogs, so a blog index based
on only about the 200 edblogs (0.7%) of Hake (2009a) would probably
be of only marginal value],
(b) incompleteness of blog directories (including Hake (2009a)], as
discussed in Appendix C6, and
(c) relatively weak search engines - as far as I'm aware current blog
search engines allow only keyword searches [or more accurately
"keywordS searches" since searches for multiple keywords are possible
and often productive - see e.g., Hake (2009b)].
Compare the ADLsphere's LISTSERV engines [allowing searches within
LISTSERV discussion lists (such as PHYSHARE, PHYSLRNR, PHYSOC, &
POD) by keywords, author, subject title, date, or any combination of
those] with the keywords search engines of, e.g,:
As an example of the use of search engines "1" and "4" above, see my
post "Re: Benezet - Pros and Cons" [Hake (2009b)].
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Petrilli, M.J. 2009. "Linky Love, Snark Attacks, and Fierce Debates
about Teacher Quality? "A
peek inside the education blogosphere," Education Next 9(1), Winter; online at
<http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/34687864.html>. Petrilli wrote:
"Blogs represent the 'long end of the tail' of the media; a new form
of mass communication this is not. And at the far end of that long
tail sits the education blogosphere, a niche within a niche, WITH AS
MANY AS 30,000 BLOGS." Petrilli does not indicate how he derived his
estimate of 30,000 EdBlogs but it's possible that he used
Technorati's Advanced Search <http://technorati.com/search?advanced>
to search *in all blogs* (not posts *within* blogs) for:
"Education." As indicated in Appendix C2, that search netted 28,842
hits on 26 February 2009.
Podrey, F. 2009. "Re: Over Two-Hundred Education & Science Blogs"
PHYSHARE post of 31 Mar 2009 12:36:15 EDT; online at
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