Ok, this is a true story. I’m talking on the phone with my cousin in Vermont and she’s telling me that her twins are reading none other than The Secret Life of Bees in their high school. Now my cousin knows the book because I was raving about it to her and we ended up giving her a copy last year and she loved it. So she goes in for parent teacher night and she’s chatting with the teacher about how she loved the book and how cool it was that he was teaching it. Well, believe it or not, it comes up in conversation that in studying the book, the class is using a “really great Website about the book” that was made by some high school class in New Jersey. My cousin just looks at him and says, “actually, I know the guy that did that site…” Too strange.

But also very cool. I searched the book title on Google, and I couldn’t believe it when the first hit was the amazon.com site and the second was, you guessed it, my site. This is a book that’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has been on the best seller list for months. And get this. Since August when we moved our server, that site has gotten OVER 160,000 HITS. Swear to god. Now I know that hits don’t necessarily mean visits, but still…and that’s just in two months or so. That site has been up for a year now.

That really is the power of this stuff. The thoughts and ideas and connections that my kids made to that book (good or bad) would of had a shelf life of about three weeks without that Web log. Now, they live on, and they apparently are spurring others to learn about what I think is a truly great piece of literature. Amazing.
—–

Pat has added some details on what might be on tap for our gathering in SF next month. Personally, I think they are a good start, although I think I’d like to see a “Next Steps” or a “Where Do We Go From Here” type discussion to end things on Sunday. It would be good if we could talk about more ways to work together to bring Web logging in schools to a greater audience, or something like that. (I’m writing as I think…not always a good thing.) BTW, if there are any well-to-do attendees out there, we’re in need of some support for our reception…
—–

I got my official Blogger sweatshirt today, my compensation for upgrading to Blogger Pro only to have all the extra goodies become free anyway when Google aquired them. It’s kind of strange to look back at that first iteration of this site…my how things have evolved. Now I actually have three pieces of blogging wear; my “I’m blogging this.” shirt from NECC, my official eBN black polo shirt, and now my Blogger hoodie. I’m not sure what this signifies, really. But on some level, it feels kind of unsettling…
—–