My blog is now two years old which means we have had time to establish some traditions: such as listing off the top 5 most popular blog posts of the year! 2018 has certainly been an interesting year in the EdTech space, so without further ado, here are the five most popular blog posts I wrote this year (by number of views):
ONE:
Video: OneNote + iPad Pro + Pencil = Awesome
Coming in first by quite some margin was this video I found showing how you can use the very popular Microsoft OneNote app on an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. For me, this highlights the value of platform mobility with OneNote providing your note taking app of choice across virtually very device and OS combination you may wish to have. Additionally, it reinforces the value of Digital Inking, something I’ve blogged about extensively.
Unfortunately, the original video appears to have been removed, so I suggest you search on YouTube for equivalents.
TWO:
Hybrid Cloud Printing Via AzureAD Is Here
A slightly more technical post, but useful in education nevertheless. As many schools plan strategically to move their IT infrastructure from being on the school premises and into the cloud, having a cloud identity that supports printing is a crucial component.
In this blog post, I link to a video and official documentation to assist IT Administrators with understanding how they can configure and deploy cloud printing with Microsoft’s AzureAD services.
THREE:
Cloud Attachments In OneNote – Game Changer For Educators
Proof of the popularity of this post is that it was only published in mid-November and yet has still managed to come in at number three! To be fair, this was helped by some social media posts about it from some well known EduTech Twitter leaders! Another reason I believe this was so popular is that it highlights the continual evolution and development of OneNote, a core product in Microsoft’s Education Suite. By adding cloud storage to OneNote, notebooks will sync faster and documents will be shared more effectively. My colleague Crispin provided a great video for this post and I suggest you check it out.
FOUR:
The Ultimate Minecraft:Education Edition Guide – Getting Started
Again, perhaps no surprises why this post proved popular, with students and educators all over the world loving Minecraft: Education Edition. When I wrote this guide, it was really an attempt to help condense all of my acquired knowledge over the last 18 months into a single post that I could easily share and also update and maintain as new information came to hand.
I’m really pleased it made the top five, as again, it was only published in September this year and shows that the content is valuable to people out there on the internet.
FIVE:
OneNote On Windows – The One App For The Future
Rounding out the top five with a similar focus: OneNote and the future of this awesome app. Published back in April this was really helpful in terms of learning the roadmap of OneNote and the emphasis that was going to be placed on the Windows 10 App over OneNote 2016. This informed many of the sessions I ran with schools and educators and also provided answers to the most common question “Which version of OneNote should I be using?”
The fact that three of the top five blog posts of 2018 were around OneNote surely points out how popular and in demand the app is for educators.
Final Thoughts For 2018
There you have it – the top five blog posts of 2018. Given I wrote 72 blog posts this year (an average of 1.38 posts a week, which I can’t quite believe), the above posts performed particularly well to distinguish themselves from the 67 other posts I made!
My blog traffic increased 163% year on year, much of which was driven by traffic to the above posts, along with the most popular blogs from last year also ranking pretty highly still.
Thanks to all those who read, comment and share the content – I’m glad you like it.
