The Top-10 Education Blogs in the UK 2015

There are 1,000s of education bloggers in the UK; you can preview a great one-stop-shop list here. For the 3rd year in a row, TeacherToolkit.me has been awarded the number 1 education blog in the UK by Vuelio (formerly Cision UK).

Top-10:

1. @TeacherToolkit (ranked 1st in 2013, 2014)
2. ICTEvangelist (ranked 2nd in 2014)
3. Learning with ‘e’s (ranked 8th in 2014)
4. The Learning Spy (ranked 2nd in 2014)
5. Magical Maths (ranked 7th in 2014)
6. The Whiteboard Blog (ranked 5th in 2014)
7. Mr. P’s ICT Blog (ranked 4th in 2014)
8. Scenes From The Battleground (ranked 6th in 2014)
9. Agility – Teaching Toolkit (ranked 9th in 2014)
10. Resourceaholic (new entry)

Reliability:

In 2013, I was really pleased to feature in the Top 10 Education Blogs in the UK. In 2014, I was on the list once again, yet questioned the validity of the data (not shared) with readers online and wrote Top 10 UK Education Blogs Or Not? and expressed my concerns. In response to my criticism, Cision UK replied with this article; How does Vuelio decide its Top 10 Blog Ranking? It is apparent, that Vuelio’s concerns are genuine. So much so, that Vuelio went out of their way to speak with me on the phone this week before they announced the top-10 blog rankings for 2015.

I thank Vuelio for this opportunity to discuss algorithms and their rankings, but I’m still not convinced (yet). Within Vuelio’s article response, there is a link to explain how the database is calculated. However, on further investigation, the database is still not yet explained in comparison to the detail that Teach 100 offer thousands of bloggers; nor offered transparently. I have asked for access.

This list appears to have been updated in January 2014, then in April 2015, and then this week in August 2015. Very odd frequency patterns for ranking don’t you think? Perhaps the April 2015 list was a few months too late? The data is hosted on the same website, so there is no way of checking past data other than the date-stamps on the blogs that I have shared in late 2013, mid-2014 and this blogpost today.

Image: Shutterstock

Our blog rankings list the most influential blogs across a variety of topics and interests found in the database, ranked according to various datapoints in the index. We started publishing blog rankings in 2008, and since then the method by which we determine influence has been in constant evolution. How does it work? Vuelio uses a proprietary algorithm to rank all the media in our database. For the rankings, we put (usually) the ten most influential blogs in order, after the automated results have been carefully reviewed by our team of in-house researchers. The methodology takes into consideration a number of factors including social sharing, topic-related content, post frequency, social media influence, traffic, design and interactivity. (Source)

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful and this is acknowledgement of the hours of hard work I put into my blog; sharing resources and offering advice; I know ‘top-10 list’ will also annoy many readers too. It’s just one marketing strategy PR companies use to gain the acknowledgement of bloggers.

Disappointment:

I quote again Scott McLeod.

Regarding this ranking, I have been dubious about rankings for a number of years. So, why is this? Well, as prolific blogger @McLeod says here;

• It’s probably going to make some people angry,
• It’s probably going to discourage some people, and the chances are
• It’s missed some people.

Image: Shutterstock

Anyway, despite my scepticism, it is wonderful to be recognised for the countless hours I spend online and in front of a computer. And of course to you my readers, thank you to you too. If you’re interested in starting to blog, you can read my 10 Tips for Blogging Teachers.

TT.

Top 10 UK Education Blogs 2014:

1. @TeacherToolkit (ranked 1st in 2014)
2. The Learning Spy (ranked 2nd in 2014)
3. ICTEvangelist (new entry)
4. Mr. P’s ICT Blog (new entry)
5. The Whiteboard Blog (new entry)
6. Scenes From The Battleground (up 1 place from 2014)
7. Magical Maths (new entry)
8. Learning with ‘e’s (new entry)
9. ClassThink (new entry)
10. Agility – Teaching Toolkit (new entry)

Published in April 2015; listed here.

Top 10 UK education Blogs 2013:

1. @TeacherToolkit
2. @Learning Spy
3. @headguruteacher
4. @HuntingEnglish
5. Learning from my mistakes: an English teacher’s blog
6. @johntomsett
7. Scenes From The Battleground
8. Geoff Barton’s Pick ‘n’ Mix
9. ClassroomTM
10. Tabula Rasa

Published in January 2014; listed here.