“… The real benefit has been through using it as part of geography and IT lessons - it helps their global location work and gives a community focus to this, to be able to show on the map from where people have visited the school website, as well as encouraging a sense of global citizenship, that people have heard of our school from all over the world. For IT, it’s a useful way of illustrating the _world wide_ web, as well as providing some handle on the uniqueness of IP addresses. ” - Miles Berry

Please convey to the tech admin people that far from ‘bog down the district servers’, your little ‘thumbnail map’ is a mere 13K image that is designed to pass the counting/traffic/everything to *OUR* servers at ClustrMaps Headquarters - that’s the whole idea!!

Best wishes, please feel free to contact us any time with technical enquiries, and thanks again Wes).

-C.J. on behalf of the Clustrmaps Team

On the shorter posts and less frequent posts– I have heard that suggestion from others (Will Richardson for one, whose opinion I certainly respect)– but my main response is that I am not just blogging for other people. I also blog just as much for myself, to document events, ideas, and links– so I recognize most people want to read shorter posts and are probably turned off by the longer ones. If that is the case for you, that’s fine– just skip those posts. I wish I had been able to podcast with permission during the conference, but I didn’t have a recorder with me…. even if I had, however, I would have likely also posted notes. This is just something that I do when I attend conferences now, and I have done this for some time.

So, thanks very much for the feedback and suggestions. I don’t want to come across as self-promoting, and I’ll keep that in mind– and I do understand the importance to generally chunk information, keep it short and to the point, and go for quality rather than quantity. At a conference, however, the rules change a bit in my perception– but for better or worse I don’t end up attending too many conferences. So most of my posts that you should see will be shorter!

Thanks for reiteratively sharing about the ClustrMaps! I recall first hearing about ClustrMaps, del.icio.us, and many other Web 2.0 tools from you at a conference. I was hoping to use ClustrMaps to check progress of traffic coming to our school site, however the Technology “top brass” banned ClustrMaps usage on district web sites because it would “bog down” the district servers? I really have not heard much grief from anyone that this could pose a tremendous threat on servers. Hmm?

I also appreciate you posting your notes from the latest COSN/CTO clinic, and the like. Even though I may not attend I can “feed” off of your notes.
All of it doesn’t always apply, but there is always a nugget to pick up and learn by or use.

I totally agree with you regarding blogs. Furthermore, they are free to read, relevant material to what I like to read, convenient, and (in this case) educational. Thank you for sharing!

David

Keep it short and simple:
http://www.livingroom.org.au/blog/archives/blog_tip_1_get_to_the_point.php

Write less and produce more:
http://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2006/06/changing-format/

Keep up the good work, but dont feel like you have to post so much.