Teach.com announces the launch of Teach100, a first of its kind ranking of the 100 best and most influential education blogs and news sites. Teach100 allows users to quickly see the education blogs their community is reading, explore topics the blogs are covering, and decide which blogs they want to follow or add to their existing reading list.
Teach.com aims to inspire new teachers to join the field of education and to serve as an informational and inspirational resource for those who may not know where to start their careers. Teach100 was developed to help educators or anyone interested in the subject become more engaged with the education blogosphere.
Teach100 considers for inclusion any blog that focuses on issues in the field of education, ranging from early childhood to postsecondary education. Blogs may feature topical issues such as teaching styles, education reform, the hard sciences or other education-related topics. They are ranked on a quantitative scoring system that takes into account a range of considerations, including social metrics, activity and authority.
Teach100 ranks each education blog on the following factors:
- Social (40%) — Engagement as determined through combined Facebook shares, Tweets and StumbleUpon visits to the blog. Ranking is also based on the number of shares pointing back to the blog’s 10 most recent posts and its main domain.
- Activity (20%) — The frequency of a blog’s updates. The more frequently a blog is updated, the higher its activity score.
- Authority (20%) — The overall authority and influence relative to the rest of the web as determined by the number of sites linking to the blog. This methodology is one of the foundations of the Google Search Algorithm and is a commonly used measure of a website’s authority.
- Teach Score (20%) — This is the single subjective factor in the evaluation of Teach100. The Teach Score considers how media is used throughout a blog, how topics in education are discussed, the timeliness of blog content, the capacity to inform and the overall presentation of the blog.
As of today, near the top of the Teach100, are blogs from Inside Higher Ed, The Learning Network, Edutopia, Free Technology for Teachers, Homeroom, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Teacher Network Blog, On Our Minds, Eduwonk and Busy Teacher.
Any blogger or webmaster can submit their education-related blog to Teach100, and it will be included if it meets three criteria: at least half of the content pertains directly to education, the blog is at least six months old and the blog has more than 50 individual posts. Once approved, blogs are ranked and included in the next update. Ranked blogs can also embed a dynamic widget to display Teach100’s top 10 on their own blog or website.
Teach.com and Teach100 were developed and maintained in partnership with USC Rossier Online.
About Teach.com
Teach.com aims to discover, discuss and encourage great teaching around the world. The website offers a comprehensive educational resource for current and aspiring teachers, including information on teacher preparation and certification in any state across the country, profiles of great teachers and the tactics they use and much more. Teach.com was developed in partnership with USC Rossier Online, the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education’s highly rigorous Master of Arts in Teaching, Master of Arts in Teaching-TESOL and Master of Education in Advanced Instruction programs delivered online.
