Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > August > 08
Tuesday, August 8, 2006
One year later …
That picture above is the Yankees traveling down the Canyon of Heroes, celebrating their last World Series victory over the Mets in 2001. (What, you didn’t know I was a Yankee fan?)
That’s how I feel today, exactly one year after launching Get on the Bus. Put simply, it’s been fun.
But I’ll let you in on a little secret.
Six months before Get on the Bus launched, I had never visited a blog and wouldn’t have been able to explain to you how one worked. At that time, if someone had suggested to me I should write a blog, I’d have thought it was a stupid idea.
With one year under my belt, I’m pleased I did. Get on the Bus has been a bigger success than I had hoped, ranking consistently at or near the top among the best read blogs here at the Dayton Daily News.
For me, Get on the Bus offers a chance to connect with our local readers in a new way. Feedback about what interests you, angers you, perplexes you, etc., is very useful to consider as I write about education in Dayton. The blog also gives me a place to write about interesting stories or education issues that don’t necessarily lend themselves to news stories.
But this venue has also created connections with new audiences beyond Dayton. I’ve said for a long time that our issues here matter nationally because of Dayton’s place of importance in the national school choice conversation. It’s been nice to see Get on the Bus occasionally linked to by edblogging big shots like Eduwonk, Edwize, Edspresso and Joanne Jacobs. I’ve also benefited by connecting with other edubloggers around the country (especially the Education Wonks and those who regularly contribute to their brainchild, the Carnival of Education) and learning about the issues that matter to them.
But if I have one disappointment, it’s that the conversation here has not been as lively as I had hoped it would be by now. Part of this is “blog envy.” To some extent I modeled Get on the Bus after Patti Ghezzi’s excellent Get Schooled blog at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Take a look at her comments and the great back and forth, especially among parents and teachers, and you’ll see what I hoped to recreate here.
I very much appreciate the generally intelligent comments posted here, especially by a core group of loyal readers. I’d just like to expand the conversation so it includes more voices.
Besides asking you to urge all your friends and relatives to read Get on the Bus, I am interested in suggestions any readers may have for connecting this blog with more people, especially teachers, parents and students.
And don’t stop there. What else would you like to see here at Get on the Bus? What do you think would make it better? Tell me what you like most, or find most annoying, about this blog.
And, above all else, thanks for reading and caring about education.
(Image credit: AP)
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