Classroom Toolkit Site Strategy: 2006 in Review
Classroom Toolkit completed our first full year online. Here is a review of our successes and our challenges.
Visitors
Traffic increased to the Classroom Toolkit site. Here are some indicator data:
- Traffic per month:
- Minimum = January - 421 visitors
- Maximum = September - 3,432 visitors
- Mean = 1,952.3
- Standard Deviation = 911.3
- Page Views
- Minimum = January - 2,682, pages viewed
- Maximum = September - 9,090 pages viewed
- Mean = 6,092.6 pages
- Standard Deviation = 2,236.2
Analysis: The number of our site's visitors grew steadily through the year until September, then tapered off. This is consistent with our site's Classroom Planning focus, and coincides with the start of the school year.
The large standard deviation reflects a large increase in visitors, then a gradual slide. The drop in the number of visitors during December reflects the vacation time that most teachers benefit from during the Winter Break.
The number of page views parallel the number of visitors, with visitors averaging about three pages per visit.
These page view numbers do not count individual pages where multiple files were downloaded as separate views since the files are PDF or Text-formatted files, rather than Web (HTML) Pages.
These data are for the ClassroomToolkit.Com site. The traffic to our ClassroomToolkit.Net companion site (where our newsletter and developing tutorials are located) is not available.
Sidebar
The difference is services between the two sites is because of cost. The hosting fees for the ClassroomToolkit.Com site cost $299 UDD per year, and covers page tracking services. The ClassroomToolkit.Net site's hosting fees are $47.52 USD per year.
Our sites became self-sustaining this year with the Google™ Ads just about covering the cost of our site's Web hosting.
Search Engine Ranking for Content Pages
The newsletter article reprints that we post to our site continue to be rewarded with high search engine page rank.
Overall Site Traffic Rankings
One traffic ranking service is Alexa.Com™.
Although Alexa™ provides a relative "guesstimate" of traffic…
- Alexa™ only ranks traffic that uses the Microsoft™ Internet Explorer browser
- Alexa™ only ranks traffic if visitors have the Alexa™ Toolbar installed.
The Alexa™ rankings on 12-31-06 were:
- 1,581,199 for Classroomtoolkit.Com
- 4,426,858 for Classroomtoolkit.Net
Analysis: These page rankings reflect about 100 visitors a day for the ClassroomToolkit.Com site and about ten visitors per day for the Classroomtoolkit.Net site.
The Alexa™ site traffic rank is only a rough gauge of Web progress since…
- Teachers are not likely to install the Alexa™ toolbar at home
- School district IT Departments are likely to ban the use of toolbar-add-ons to the Internet Explorer™ for district equipment since the Alexa™ toolbar functions in a manner similar to "Spyware"
This means that all our site's visitors who use other browsers (such as Mozilla™ Firefox, the Open Source browser that we use and recommend) are ignored by Alexa™.
Search Engine Page Rank for Our Pages
Search engines bring most of the visitors to our site since we do not budget for advertising. The ranking of our pages is important, because, the higher the ranking, the closer to the top of the search results page our site appears.
Here is a summary of our successes:
Number One Rankings:
- Google™ - 14
- Yahoo™ - 2
- MSN/ Live Search™ - 3
- ASK.Com™ - 6
Number 2 Rankings:
- Google™ - 4
- Yahoo™ - 1
- MSN/ Live Search™ - 2
- ASK.Com™ - 8
Number 3 Rankings:
- Google™ - 2
- Yahoo™ - 0
- MSN/ Live Search™ - 1
- ASK.Com™ - 4
Additional First Search Page Rankings:
- Google™ - 2
- Yahoo™ - 3
- MSN/ Live Search™ - 6
- ASK.Com™ - 9
Analysis: Having rankings skewed for a Number One ranking with the Google™ Search Engine is a benefit (and one of our targets.
At the end of 2006, Classroom Toolkit had a total of 67 search engine Page One placements.
Additional page rankings were as follows:
Page Two Rankings:
- Google™ - 4
- Yahoo™ - 3
- MSN/ Live Search™ - 4
- ASK.Com™ - 2
Page Three Rankings:
- Google™ - 2
- Yahoo™ - 2
- MSN/ Live Search™ - 2
- ASK.Com™ - 2
Analysis: At the end of 2006, Classroom Toolkit had 13 pages with a position on the second page of the search engine results pages, and eight pages on the third page.
Having more pages on Page One of the search results is a benefit.
The Classroom Toolkit also had a lot of pages that failed to rank on the first three pages of any major search engines' results. The reason for this is:
- Some pages are management pages: Examples:
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Use
- About us
- Contact Page
- Some pages are Open Source Support Pages
Other Progress
We posted two CD images during 2006. These were:
- Graphic Organizers
- Teacher Time Savers
The ISO CD images allow teachers from anywhere in the world to download these images, and with free software, burn an "auto start" CD. This is a CD that teachers can use and share, and both CDs contain complete material for productive staff development training for actual (instructional) outcomes. These CDs are geared towards providing tools for instruction, rather than training in software. As a bonus, links to free, Open Source (also free) software, software viewers and trial software ensure that teachers can take home the CDs and immediately use the contents.
Access our CD ISO images on XDrive.Com
Sidebar
One missing link (a most-often voiced complaint by teachers) for technology staff development was the tendency to "learn" software that the teacher didn't have. And, once the software finally arrived, the teacher forgot almost everything that was presented during the class.
Our CDs overcome these obstacles by providing complete instructional materials, and tools that are available at no cost.
For a critique of the ordinary "effectiveness" of professional development sessions, read our newsletter article, Professional Development: Fast-Track to Empowerment or an Energy-Sapping Seat-Time Rut
Newsletter Subscribers
As of 12-31-06, we have 322 newsletter subscribers.
Our newsletters continue to be the focus our world-class articles of value to teachers.
The Classroom Toolkit Newsletter targets the following:
- New teachers who need someone to tell them what they need to…
- Survive
- Reduce stress
- Develop realistic goals expectations
- See through the "hype& and "bureaucratic spin" of their employers
- Access to a usable, cost-effective toolkit, starting today
- Teachers who want to become Master Teacher (with three years of dedicated, focused work)
- Teachers who want to avoid burnout
- Teacher trainers who want "Instructional Focused" materials for their in-service presentations
- Anyone (particularly legislators) who wants to rid our country of the "nasty effects of the No Child Left Behind Law
- School district administrator who want to empower teachers instead of running their district from a "policy and directive" mode
- Parents who want to cut through the "obscuring bureaucratic fog" and advocate for real instructional improvements for their children
- Teachers who want to join our Open Source Materials Movement and contribute their creative work to the education of all students
Site Progress Shortcomings
Classroom Toolkit registered some challenges, in addition to our successes. Some of these include:
- Distraction with other presentations (such as High School Web Mastering Tutorials) and the building of Websites for Non-profit Organizations and Small Businesses
- Delay in placing our Tutorials Online (Look for these by February, 2007)
- Deferred release of our eZines (eBooks)
- The release of our first eZine(Classroom Planning and Project Management) failed to produce the rave reviews that we expected
- The 44 page eBook format probably is more detailed and intricate (too academic) than teachers have time to read at once
- The new strategy is to release the electronic text with an adjunct tutorial that breaks the implementation and action plan into doable, "action-application-oriented" steps
Probably our greatest need is to enlist volunteers to help with building the content of our site. So far, Classroom Toolkit remains a one-person mission.
If you would like to join in our world-class materials and teacher support project, please let us know what talents and expertise you would like to share with your colleagues around the world.
Send an E-mail message to:
Joseph Chmielewski, M.S., L.P.C.
