005.3 Feedjit: Virtual Trip by Blog

On of the most interesting aspects of this blog for me has been the opportunity through various means to connect with librarians, educators and other bloggers from all over. When I started, I thought I would merely be interacting with a small group within my circle of influence. Had no idea how big that circle would become.

As I learned about things like Technorati, I signed up because of how it let me know who was linking to my blog. I found it fascinating and it has brought me many hours of virtual travel experiences. Even studying another blogger's blogroll was often done just so I could see where I would end up, geographically speaking.

As I have already noted, I have more blog readers (many I affectionately call "lurkers") than commentors because they verbally tell me so! But no way of knowing where all of them come from.

So when I began to notice the Live Traffic Feed widget from Feedjit on several blogs over the last few days, I took the plunge. Now I can see where visitors to my blog come from. It is SO cool!

But I can make a case for it being an educational tool as well. Having the flags of different countries pop up is a review of sorts, plus a understanding of where English speakers are. It also is a clock of sorts because certain areas of the world tend to pop up in clusters during certain parts of my central time zone day.

But I'm not going to get too serious about it...I added it simply because I think it is fun.

O BTW, it is super easy to add. It is basically all done for you from the site if you are using a Blogger or Typepad blog. Unfortunately, the creators say that it is not possible (or maybe not easy) to add to a WordPress (including Edublog) blog...at least right now.

So take a look...to the right and all the way down.