Belated learning

Three days into my experiment with Google Ads to direct readers to the paper, I find myself more than impressed. Since initiating the experiment, the initiative has generated 11 clicks from 16,056 impressions. (Since beginning in December 2007, the site, has 474 visits from 39 states and 23 countries resulting in 942 pageviews - an average of 1.99 pages per visit - with an average time on site of 2 minutes). These visitors are spending demonstrably more time on the site than when the paper was left to fend for itself. More than two years late, I have learned the right way to attract interested readers.


When using Google Ads, you set a daily budget that you are willing to spend, and identify a series of keywords relevant to your ad. Initially my keywords were very specific to education and unsuccessful; but when I added the broader, more popular "education" keyword, impressions and clicks jumped. Based on your daily budget, Google automatically places a bid among all competing ads on that keyword to determine the order your ad appears alongside page results. I've learned that writing multiple iterations of an ad is most helpful (and Google optimizes your results by showing the more successful ads more often).



The question to come is whether this uptick in visits and time spent will translate into increased interaction (through comments or direct contact) or references by other websites. Now, after realizing that this was the right way to go about sharing the paper all along, I'm continuing with the experiment to further optimize performance. Most visitors view only the homepage before leaving (55% start at the homepage and 38% end there). Now, I am using multiple ads focusing on the entirety of the paper and more specific ones focusing on just national standards or funding that go directly to the relevant article. By doing so, the hope would be that readers engage with the content and are more likely to click through to other parts of the paper, thereby lowering the number of quick entries and exits.

Learning how to share

When I posted the paper online almost two years ago, my intention was to shift away from one-off contacts and instead build a sustainable degree of traffic to criticize and comment on the paper in advance of its submission in consideration for a scholarship. While this site did succeed in opening the paper to a broader audience and facilitated unexpected opportunities, its success was still relatively muted.

I have always been interested in the intersection of business, policy, and economics. This portfolio is but one of many papers that I have written over the past few years. With each I have utilized contacts with relevant experience to share the paper in question or have reached out to authors whose thoughts I'd read online or in the media. Again, while generally successful, the effort is time consuming and builds little momentum. As this paper's blog has shown, it is difficult even to share one's ideas online.


Enter an experiment. For the next two weeks, I'll be using a $15 placement on Google Ads (see image) to advertise the paper and to track its ability to turn related search queries on education reform into pageviews. If successful, the blog will have generated much more pageviews (and potentially new criticism) at a fraction of the cost in time and effort one would otherwise exert. In effect, I am paying Google to get others to read the paper. I value outsider's thoughts so much that, if successful, I will extend this approach to share my other concept papers.

As of 4pm today, after starting in mid-morning, the effort has produced 175 impressions (views of my blog's advertisement), but no clickthroughs. Of those 175 impressions, 132 were on Google's website (where on average they appeared as the 3rd ad); and 43 on outside websites. I'll keep you posted on the experiment.

Maryland PRIDE Award

I was honored to learn that the Maryland State Department of Education has recognized me as a recipient of the department's Pride award, "an initiative designed to recognize and applaud the outstanding accomplishments taking place in Maryland public schools."

Profile in the Calvert Recorder

Huntingtown student gets national recognition
Gretchen Phillips. Calvert Recorder
October 10, 2008

"What started as an extracurricular project made one local high school student $10,000 richer toward his college endeavors.

Kyle Hutzler, 16, was the recent recipient of a Davidson Fellows scholarship by the Davidson Institute of Talent Development for an essay he wrote on education reform."

Davidson ceremony

On September 24th, my family and I were honored to attend the Davidson Fellows ceremony at the Library of Congress, where I was delighted to meet this year's nineteen other fellows, Senator Cardin of Maryland, Roberto Rodriguez, education policy adviser to Senator Kennedy, and the Institute's founders, Jan and Bob Davidsion.

The Davidson Fellowship

28 June 2008

Dear Friends:

It is my sincere pleasure to inform you that I have been selected as a 2008 Davidson Fellow for my policy paper on education reform.

On 24 September, I will be recognized alongside some of the most promising scientists, artists, and writers of my generation at the Library of Congress, where I will receive a $10,000 scholarship.

To all of you who have played a part in this project, offering your insight, your platform, your nominations, and your best wishes, this award is the highest thanks that I can offer you.

I began this project with a quotation by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." At this culmination of our shared endeavor, I cannot help but turn to Robert Frost. It was he who wrote, "But I have promises to keep. / And miles to go before I sleep."

And miles to go,
Kyle Hutzler.

Où est le dénoûment?

The portfolio and application materials were Priority-mailed to the Fellowship in Reno, Nevada on Monday; today, I received confirmation from the USPS of their arrival and am waiting for a similar confirmation from the Fellowship . It feels great to have brought this paper to fruition - for now, my work is limited to checking with my advisers to ensure that their necessary forms have been sent by deadline. I'll continue to post updates on the project and scholarship. More than ever, I appreciate your comments, your insights - and your luck! kah

Statistics

Since publishing the paper online in December, the paper has received 315 pageviews on 157 visits from nine countries, including Canada and Australia. In the U.S., where the majority of pageviews have originated, the paper has received hits from 27 states where Maryland, California, and Texas are the most popular sources.

History is not kind to idlers, Je le vous diray, and First are the most popular articles excluding the front page. 46.5% of visits come from referrers (ed421.com is the largest), 27.39% from search engines, and 26.11% directly.

One step closer

As I finish my guest-blogging tenure at ChangeAgency, my work towards the Davidson Fellowship is now all but complete. I have secured the three nominators required to submit the paper, and have finished the required process essays and video commentary. Most importantly, I have completed the paper's transition to the new graphic design layout that I previewed in some of the first posts. I am excited to post the near-final paper (PDF).

It's becoming ever more exciting in the final weeks before the paper goes out the door (with all the necessary copies and additional elements, I am only beginning to imagine how much postage for the project will be. I offer my tremendous thanks to the some fifteen educators from around the country who have intensively offered their insights to the project - from the editorial to substantive. The support that I have received has been most unexpected - and even more welcome. (Today, I am glad to add Dr. Joseph Bishop at Eastern Michigan University to the list of advisers.)

In the next few weeks, I'll be posting additional updates as I finish the project. Until then - only the best.

A welcome to Change Agency readers

I've been asked by Stephanie Sandifer at Change Agency to be a guest blogger from January 11th to the end of February. It promises be an exciting opportunity to move this paper ever closer to its aspiration of being a part of the necessary debate over education reform. I'm thinking through what to post at the moment - my biggest concern is how to best present the essence (if not totality) of the paper. Beyond a first, introductory post, I'll need to think about concisely (and coherently) presenting the paper's analysis, positions, and policy proposals.

I'll be responding intensively to comments - Change Agency has upwards of 70 "listeners" on Feedburner - throughout my tenure. I welcome your criticism and opinions - especially in the areas of policy. The Davidson Fellowship expects its submissions to be of graduate-level quality. I ask: how would you assess the paper's quality? What additional research, books, and theories should I consider in the final months before submission?

As I've noted before, the interconnectedness of the Internet means that once you've been brought into the echo chamber, your voice tends to spread increasingly quicker and louder as others tune in and serve as a conduit in spreading your message even further along. I'm close to reaching the level of sustainable readership that will allow the paper to reach more and more people. I'm looking forward to interacting with you all in the next month. Thanks for welcoming me into the debate.

Update | Posts on Change Agency:
Flattening out and shaking up | Hapless, utterly hapless | The politics of choice, accountability, and autonomy | Houses of vacuous ability | Blog, meet thesis| Introduction

Three sides of the same debate

I hope that you all head a pleasant holiday. I've finished my working draft of Choice, accountability, and autonomy and published it for your review and comment. An introduction:

For the past decade, the debate over school reform has been fragmented into three debates: one of choice, one of freedom, and one of accountability. Choice remains dominated by the championing of voucher programs - an approach that this paper believes only serves to stratify the education system into schools of the poor and privileged. The continual rejection of voucher initiatives - most recently in Utah - speaks to the movement's ineffectiveness. Freedom has reached the forefront most specifically in the debate over charter schools - and with it, concerns over accountability. It is accountability, undoubtedly, that has been at the center of these three debates: it is a shorter word for the No Child Left Behind Act.

Rather disconcertingly, these ideas have remained more as points of disagreement than being embraced, as this paper sees it, as complementary. As this paper has argued, the No Child Left Behind Act is failing precisely because it lacks the flexibility (and incentives) necessary to enable schools to extend their efforts beyond the test alone. The result is an environment that avoids risks - and potentially great returns.

Giving the numbers a word of thought

When I launched this portal several weeks ago, I hoped that it would serve as the center of the conversation and criticism of this paper prior to its submission for the Davidson Fellowship. My hope was that I could vastly expand the paper's reach and the potential input than one-off contacts.

I never harbored the illusion that a passive approach would secure the level of readership and criticism that I desired - indeed, I've written six education blogs thus far - most with readerships in the low hundreds. The thinking goes that if featured on only one blog, there'd be a sufficient number of bloggers apart of that readership to propel the criticism around the paper to a sustainable level. After all, Wikipedia started 2002 with 19,000 English-language articles; by January of this year the site boasted more than 1.56 million. If placed in book form, the encyclopedia would encompass 65 volumes.

The statistics:
Google Analytics first began recording visitors on 3 December. Since then, Kansas has gotten 37 visits from 24 visitors - predominantly from the United States, but a visit each from the UK and Germany. Within the U.S., Maryland has the most visits (thanks to my skewing them), followed by Alaska, and D.C. (see graphic). The paper's gotten upwards of 90 pageviews - 37.78% the home page, followed by History Is Not Kind to Idlers with 12.22%, and The cast of characters.


Giving the numbers a word of thought
When I had the opportunity to talk to an economist about a development proposal earlier this year, I handed him the paper I had written. He refused to read it, until I could give him a 30-second and 1-minute synopsis. It is the most important thing I learned this year. The statistics thus far have caused for a good deal of questioning about how to present the paper - how do you present an 80-page paper in the online equivalent of a 30-second and 1-minute synopsis?

I'm being forced to learn and apply a great deal about the dynamics of the internet fairly swiftly: The internet is a sideways one, only 20% of the Washington Post's traffic originates at the home page. That, of course, was the reason behind writing bloggers - and posting an article from the paper on Digg. Thus far: 29% of the traffic is direct, 54% from referring sites, and 16% from search engines. But what more can I do?

On the passive approach, I've added the e-mail option to the bottom of each post; the day before, I added a Technorati button. Should I add del.icio.us too? The aggressive approach thus far has been limited to writing the blogs - from which the response has been modest to nonexistent. A look at my tags column shows some fifty descriptors, but a great majority link to only one article. Perhaps the descriptions should be intensified.

Blogs, for better or for worse, are a medium that enjoys extensive analysis of minute soundbites. With an 80-page paper, was it a mistake to not have a soundbite page for bloggers to refer to when I write them? (I had planned to add a criticisms and praise page as soon as I had received a sufficient number.)

Doug Noon's response to my introduction on InPractice is all too telling:

Kyle,
I took a look at your site, and I’m going to need a while longer to work through even a small portion of what you have there. I’m interested on a number of levels - what you have to say, what prompted you to tackle this project, how it got so large, and how your point of view as a student contributes to your research - off the top of my head. To begin with I wonder how an interest in “business, economics, and finance” prompted you to look so closely at Education. I’ve been called an overachiever by some. I wrote a 200 page masters project paper on communication in the mathematics classroom, proving all those people were right, much to my own embarrassment. I know how it feels to dump so much energy into something that few people will ever notice.

Not quite a blog
I wouldn't consider this site a blog in any traditional sense - its simply the easiest means to allow a community to collaborate. This paper's style - length and all - differentiates it from most traditional posts. Is the failure to update the site - regardless of its impossibility for this type of work - the reason why it has been slow to take off thus far? Is this the critical fallacy?

Regardless, there's more to come in the next few weeks: I'm finishing an essay on choice, accountability, and autonomy as well as a more extensive justification of this paper's proposals to better synthesize the policy paper. As I begin to prepare for submission to the Davidson Fellowship, I'll comment on the process as well as post the required submission essays.

I love quotations. My favorite is from Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: "But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Only the best.

Update

I have completed the transfer from PDFs to posts to foster greater collaboration directly through this site. Links to the original PDFs will be embedded in the posts for printing.