If you’re a homeschooler, you’ll want to browse the list of award-winning blogsites over at Spunky Homeschool. I’m starting to recognize a few of these blogs that I’m seeing other places. The Best Homeschooling Mom Blog award goes to three sites: Mother-Lode, Here at the Bonny Glen, and True Blue Semi-Crunchy Mama. And the Best Homeschooling Dad Blog goes to Doug Phillips.

Spunky (Karen Braun) is also a Mind & Media reviewer, and her blog has really taken off. She’s now a regular columnist with The Old Schoolhouse Magazine — so she’ll be announcing all the winners in her column (giving these blogs great publicity!)

If you’re blogger, you’ll enjoy Spunky’s selection of articles in her “About Blogging” section:
Why I Started This Blog
Principles of Blogging
Discovering My Voice

I followed a link to an article by Jakob Nielson, Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes. Oops — I’m finding out I’ve got lots of room for improvement. I’m still not used to writing headlines that actually tell you what the post is about (opting for clever-sounding titles that make sense only to someone who’s already read the post.) I also don’t stick to one topic, and I bury my “classic hits.”

I’m hoping to make this site more user friendly in the months to come. It helps me enormously to see what key words people type in to find me. Maybe I’ll be brave and join the TTLB ecosystem, which will make public my site statistics. Not quite there yet — but I’m thinking I’d like to someday open my blog for a few very tasteful ads. I know advertisers will want to know my number of visitors and hits. (Someone who entered my blog today was my 3,000th visitor this month.)

Edit: I’ve been informed that I’m already in the TTLB ecosystem — ranking as a “slithering reptile” — now that’s an enlightening thought!