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All about blogs, bloggers, blog communities, and the blog posts we have or should have written as we reflect on Chapter #10: Blogs.
25 Years of Ed Tech is a serialized audio version of the book 25 Years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller of the Open University and published by AU Press. The audio version of the book is a collaborative project with a global community of volunteers contributing their voices to narrate a chapter of the book. Bonus episodes are a series of conversations called "Between the Chapters" to chat about these topics and more!
"In this lively and approachable volume based on his popular blog series, Martin Weller demonstrates a rich history of innovation and effective implementation of ed tech across higher education. From Bulletin Board Systems to blockchain, Weller follows the trajectory of education by focusing each chapter on a technology, theory, or concept that has influenced each year since 1994. Calling for both caution and enthusiasm, Weller advocates for a critical and research-based approach to new technologies, particularly in light of disinformation, the impact of social media on politics, and data surveillance trends. A concise and necessary retrospective, this book will be valuable to educators, ed tech practitioners, and higher education administrators, as well as students."
Credits:
Text in quotes from the book website published by Athabasca University Press CC-BY-NC-ND
BG music Abstract Corporate by Gribsound released under a CC-BY license. Track was edited for time.
Artwork X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licenced under CC-BY-SA.
Audio book chapters produced by Clint Lalonde.
Between the Chapters bonus podcast episodes produced by Laura Pasquini.
0:03
Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book, 25 years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura pasquini.
0:16
Welcome to Chapter 10. Between the chapters 2003 blogs, I'm here with Bonnie Stewart and Clint Lalonde. Hi, Sue. Hi. So do you all want to talk about some blogs? We went? Yeah, web blogs, web blogs, web
0:32
blogs. I haven't seen that imprint in a long time. I forgotten sort of, I always had
0:37
a weird relationship with that word. It
0:39
always made me uncomfortable.
0:42
With weblogs. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. I guess it did kind of, you know, it focused on web focused on technology, I think with the word web in there.
0:52
Yeah. Although I think it also probably foregrounded the connectivity piece, which I valued, it's I only came into blogging. 2005 2006, right. So the the transition had already occurred by them. And so it was always a recognition that there was preceding community and world that had its own language that I was sort of treading within, but not fully understanding. And it just always looked awkward to me. But that was partly because of basically when I started.
1:24
Well, and you mentioned, you're starting, and I want to go back to those starting days. Because when Laura said, I was thinking of having Bonnie on for blogs, I'm like, oh, could I be part of that show? Because one of the going back to your early days where where I first met, you was on virtually meet I'm putting it in air quotes was via blogs. And it was nothing to do with teaching and learning. It's because you had a parenting blog, and I had a parenting blog. And I think that's where we kind of first connected was through our parenting, we were just talking about parenting just before we came on here, because our kids are around the same age. But that's where we first kind of connected. And I remember having this kind of, I'm seeing my teacher out of school moment at I think it was at Northern voice when I met Dave. And all of a sudden the penny dropped that you two are connected. And I had my two worlds because I was following Dave in the education space. And I knew Bonnie from the parenting space. And all of a sudden, boom, the two of them were together.
2:24
Exactly. Yeah,
2:25
there's sneaky, those two. Yeah, yeah.
2:29
We enjoy. People occasionally with the fact that we are together are still together, at least
2:36
surprising these days anyone's together in a pandemic.
2:39
So together.
2:41
But you know, we were also talking about affinity groups. And that's that was my affinity group. When I started blogging was parents, I was a stay at home dad. And you know, there weren't many of us around at the time. And this was going back, you know, mid 2000s, when my daughter was born in 2004. And that's where I first started blogging as a way to connect with other dads who were doing this kind of stay at home dad thing. And we had this whole, like stay at home dad blog network. And we all commented on each other's blogs and supported each other through our blogs and what we were going through and that was, that was kind of a big aha for me that, Oh, this is this is a different web than just going and looking for information. There are actual connections that you can have with people here and a different way than sending an email or, you know, that's the web offered at the time.
3:31
It was huge for me, and it was very much that affinity group piece. I didn't really read blogs before I started blogging, I started blogging because I was on extended maternity bedrest in a hospital for hours from where I lived. And I was losing my mind. And I had been sending little mass emails to my small network of people who might give a hoot kind of thing. But it always felt really invasive. Like I was kind of being like, Hey, here's a message from me. And it felt like an imposition to assume that they wanted to read it. And Dave was like, my partner was like, why don't you start a blog? And I was like, I've heard of that. Um, he's like, well, it's easy, like, well, we can just get you a WordPress account. And so I did. And initially, I just sent the link out to the people who were in that email, mass email thread and was like, hey, if you want to read this, it's here. And then I never had to send another mass email. And somehow that was much more comfortable to me the idea that people could just come to me if they wanted to. And so I was initially really writing for an audience, a network of known people.
4:45
But
4:46
early on the same thing where you mentioned, like people commenting on each other's blogs, people found me and the fascinating thing about that participatory web at that time was you they left a comment And their name was usually linkable. Right? And so you could click on it and then you would go to their place. And it would be like, Oh, do I am I interested in hearing more from this person, you can subscribe to their RSS feed, you would comment. And people were very much writing in in Well, the world, way more people out there than I had ever realized who were writing thoughtful, introspective kind of identity work on what it means to be a parent in you know what it's like that sort of the the monotonous drudgery of being homeless, small children. I had initially thought the parenting blogs were all about like lucky pooped. And I was deeply embarrassed by the idea of affiliating myself with that imaginary in my mind, until I started and started writing in my own way, and sort of finding my own voice and discovering that there were all these really amazing thinkers, writers, people out there who were also basically writing their way into being reflective, not just parents, but but humans. And that I had the privilege of getting to see in some ways, deeply intimate windows into their minds and worlds and build relationships with them.
6:15
This year of 2003, wall color were Canadian. So you think we're on delay, because I didn't vlog until 2005 or six as well. And it was out of, as you said, funny connection interest, finding people and finding your voice. And now Clint, you don't call yourself a stay at home dad. You're just a dad. Everyone's at home. So yeah, that's that's,
6:35
that's relevant to stay at home. Dads. We're all staying in here.
6:39
I'm a stay at home Bora.
6:40
Um,
6:40
but do you think that like this was brought up in 2003? As a point, do you think there was a lag in how people got involved based on where they were in the world? Because this is from Martin coming from the UK? Was it just not something we were into right away? Or did we find the translator in Canada?
6:57
Yeah, I was gonna say, I think I think 2003 is a really good place for this. And Martin, in the chapter talks about how especially in Canada, there was a blogging community kind of, you know, coming together. I mean, I started my first my first blog actually started in 2001. But you know, it was kind of like a small thing. And but it was not public. I mean, I did it as part of the post grad certificate program, I was taking an It was like, Oh, let me set up this blog. It was really technical. They set up a blog at that time. And they never really went public. But 2003 you know, I was already starting to see people like Brian lamb and Scott Leslie, and some of the people associated with the organization I work for now. bccampus, we're starting to kind of experiment with using blogs to talk about the work that they were doing. So and, and, you know, certainly the stuff I was seeing that time inspired me in 2004. When my daughter was born, it's like, I'm seeing these people do this over here for the work. And I wasn't comfortable necessarily talking about my work. But you know, I wanted to talk about what it was like to be a stay at home dad. And so I started there. So I think 2003 is a pretty good place to start at, at least from a Canadian perspective.
8:11
I wasn't actually in Canada in 2003. I think that maybe all of us are just that step behind where we weren't necessarily the early adopters. In blogging in 2003. I was in Korea, I was working in a university. I taught in an English department. But I wasn't like I wasn't teaching English language. I was teaching like English literature, that type of thing. And was fairly heavily involved in a networked community there. That was mostly x pots, although not entirely mostly English teachers, really. And there were a couple of folks, Jeff libo, was basically the fellow who had started this in the late 90s, when he had moved there as a teacher, and had built sites that cover different cities, and both covered some of the like social elements of what was happening as well as just kind of interest affinity stuff. There were some kind of teaching resources on these sites. There were pictures of parties people went to. So in 2003, Dave and I were the little hub that was a john Webb because we were sort of the people who had left the city where where this had started and moved to a different city in Korea. And so we started the little hub of de john Webb which which Dave mostly managed but I really my first blogging per sale there wasn't formally blogging was was writing for data and web I started when we're in z Vaughn died, I think in teeth I think that was 2003 and started doing a background like a backwards countdown of my favorite artists who I thought were cool. Starting with Steven moving through Neil Young, I think when Johnny Cash died He was x, I figured I might not get anywhere with x, I made it up to about like s. And then this was over a period of six months. And then I just kind of, you know, dwindled away like many early web experiments. But I was having a lot of fun writing that and we used to go, we would meet at the CO t soul conferences, which was the Korean, I don't know, Association for teachers, I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember what it was. But it was basically English teachers. And we would go to the conferences, armed with our little tape, video camera and microphones and basically, talk to the presenters talk to people in hallways talk to and do these kind of live. We thought of ourselves as I don't know, the Hunter S Thompson's Korean English teachers, and, and just kind of broadcast these things, we actually got banned in China, which was very exciting to us,
11:00
at times, Gonzo conducts,
11:01
I tell you, so. So we were we were having a great time, doing some kind of participatory media and digital work. But it wasn't formally in a blog sense, although really, it captured a lot of the spirit of what blogging was doing. And I was becoming nominally aware of educational blogs at that time, but I didn't think that I I saw them still through the lens of I had been raised very much as a print person, right, I'm very Gen X, I'm very still steeped in kind of the hierarchies of the gatekeeping of publishing. And so I saw people who had those educational blogs, as I don't know, I don't know who I thought had rubber stamp them to have the audacity to get out there and think out loud. But in 2003, the idea that I could do that was, was just not even on my radar. And then it took me going in through the back end of writing about parenting, and essentially coming up, like I said earlier, coming into my own voice to the point where I could think of myself as a writer. And then I only went back to do my PhD in 2010. And that was when I really pivoted into the educational blogging community. And by that time, I had all the audacity that I needed until my PhD broke me of it. And taught me that I didn't know anything, and really, I should shut up. And now I can't write at all
12:32
because I'm completely hampered by
12:35
academic writing and reviewer too. But that is a sad story. Blogging was great.
12:41
Can I give a blog confession? You mentioned Gen X. My first blog was 2004. And it was called souvenirs of Canada with a hot tip to Douglas Copeland, and our favorite Canadian author, one of and it was for it was before travel, blogging was a thing, but I was moving and traveling and living in upstate New York than in France, and then in the UK. And I was kind of like you sharing with my community of friends when that along the way and family of what was going on. And just interesting things I'm finding and learning and it was kind of like not, it wasn't really a travel blog, but it was about my travels and documenting. And Bonnie and I both are PhDs at the same year, which I didn't think I ever knew, but I didn't know. And then I pivoted into education, but like you I was like, Who are these highfalutin people? Let's cut down those tall poppies. What are they talking about? And I agree with you, I was kinda like, maybe it's because I'm the ad Buster and kind of Rage Against machine kind of kid as well as the Gen X. I was like, Why do people think they're saying these things? And who, who gave them the permission to do it? And I was like, Oh, no one, you could just start your own thing and right, and just say things out there. Boom,
13:51
right, that that was that was really a big thing for me. And to realize that, then first First, there was a realization that you could write both in any sphere in even if you want to talk about your toenail. So I don't know, like toenail blogs could be could have been a thing. But whatever you wanted to put out, I assumed that people espousing their own expertise was automatically a bad thing, because I had been so deeply conditioned to see expertise as an external thing that was done to you. And it was getting into that world of narrative blogging and realizing like, these people are amazing writers. Really interesting thinkers wonderful. Like, oh, hey, maybe I've actually been the snob and nobody's doing anything to me. And maybe that desire to cut down the tall poppies is actually me being a jerk. I'm not them being a jerk. Whoa. Right. And then what does it take to contribute in ways that people will recognize and I was lucky in that like, you I got in a little later clearly, but just before everything monetized, particularly in the parenting blog world, because
15:06
I started and within two or three years, you started to see the the sponsorships, and all of those, those pieces begin which drastically drastically stratified that world changed that world and change the the prestige economy within it. But before that it was the people who could get readers and comments who were sort of the the top and everyone kind of knew who they were. But then there became this world where some people were getting TV contracts, and they were very different people than the people who had actually gotten the most comments or the most engagement because they served a different and more monetizable more corporate purpose or more corporate voice, usually, I didn't start because I lived in PDI. Right. When we moved back from Korea in 2005, we went to Prince Edward Island, we had no money. We had, you know, really precarious jobs, that we had a brand new infants, then I was in the hospital for a long time. All of those things meant that what grew up around early blogging was also a community of conferencing. But I it took me five years, I was blogging five years before I went to the conferences, because I simply they weren't anywhere near where I lived, and I couldn't afford it. So when I actually started to get to meet everybody in the blogging world, that was fascinating, because I had been engaging with these people really intimately. For four or five years, they were in a sense, my friend network at that point. And then so my first experiences of the conferences were amazing, because it was basically like, suddenly being with everybody that you love and love to hang out with. But I know that those people who went in to the conferences, in the early years, particularly in the parent blogging world, those conferences went from also a much more, perhaps democratic, or at least less stratified by monetization and expos and opportunities kind of space to, to what I eventually I only ever encountered the conferences when they'd already gotten to that point. Or right around the time that I was morphing into education and edtech conferences anyway. And so that was helpful to me, in the sense of it, at least, it allowed me to see some of the vendor relationship to conferences, perhaps differently than folks who were coming purely out of academia
17:46
that can bring, you know, talking about the conferences, and the the affinity of just being a blogger. I mean, Martin mentions that in, in his chapter when he talks about, especially in the early years, how just being a blogger was something that would would hold you together and be the commonality that would bind you. And I think his quote was something about those, those kinds of norms were more significant to people in blogging than necessarily academic disciplines. So you wouldn't necessarily get together with, you know, the chemistry bloggers, not that there were a lot of chemistry bloggers, but the fact that you were a blogger was enough to kind of pull you together, and to form its own affinity group not necessarily tied to an academic discipline. And that started to break down some of those barriers between disciplines. Because all of a sudden, you had people kind of mixing together that had this thing in common, which was blogging. And the extension of that is probably in the early days, those were the people who saw one of the affordances of what the web could do. So you kind of wanted to glob on to those people in the academy, who saw the web in the same way that you did, because it wasn't seen that way in the academy, like there are people in, you know, even in, you know, their early days that were kind of going this odd this internet thing, but even at this time, you know, blogging kind of changed that. And all of a sudden, you started having these connections with other people who saw the the internet in the same way that you saw the internet.
19:11
Interesting. You say that because I think of like Georgian roses study on like network, participatory practice. And I also think of Alice Bell, who's not mentioned this chapter, but a study out in 2012, around education bloggers, and she asked simple questions like, why do you blog or when did you start and how do you get started? And it was really deep qualitative study. And I think back to folks that just blog for academics in general, like the thesis whisperer, so Ingrid, Newbern, and others that are just sharing their practice on writing. And so the early 2010 to 2015. I think, Bonnie, you're absolutely right. People aren't blogging for a brand or themselves or the product. They're blogging to share, practice. Ask questions, put out ideas and I don't know, get feedback in some ways and get some sort of like proper peer review than not peer review or two. And it was just kind of a cool way to see what people were working on people pulling back the curtains of what they're doing, and just people getting real about things. And not just like, I'm putting up content like a blogger would do now. And that was the difference, I think in those days to getting started. And it's not to be in the stall trick to that because there's still people that were in that those spaces, hucksters and shucking there were to be a consultant and other bullshit. But there was also people just being real or being able to connect offline conference or not, I just tried to invite my friends to conferences, so I can meet y'all, just so we can have these other deeper connections. And I really do think some of these studies that came out in 2012, and 2013, if they were studied now, it would just look different in that space.
20:53
Yeah, I'm not even sure like, my, my blog, my blogging and my blog reading have both dwindled. Sadly, in the sense that I'm still excited when I see anybody who is blogging, but the the, the blurry line between blog and article, and I don't mean academic article, per se, but blog and like trade article, or whatever, has really shifted over the last few years. And I saw this again, it same parallel pattern that happened in the parent blog world, eventually came to the academic blogging world. But it happened first in the parent blogging world, and you started to see people who found it more valuable to post on a large kind of consortium site that had a greater readership than they could generate on their own. Right. And so it made more sense for them to publish for whatever, you know, that kind of big brand platform than it did to publish on their own site. And now, I'm doing it myself, right. I, this past summer did a survey of sort of faculty and folks teaching, I wanted to look in the summer of 2020, right before everything largely went online, particularly in Canada, but in the end in a lot of places in the world. I'm interested in data literacies. And what do we as educators know about the changing four walls of our so called classrooms? And how do we understand these extractive platforms that we work on? And my assumption was, we don't know much, because at least I don't know much. And I know that I don't know much. But I just did, it was a very, very simple kind of pilot survey, it's meant to eventually inform a larger project, couple of proxy questions. I wanted to put the results out openly, even before the preprints, just to say, look, here's some information. I see this as not discovery research. That's interesting in and of itself, but as a call for higher ed to talk about data and data ethics and all these things. Should I put this on my blog? No, I should probably put it in inside higher ed, or in the conversation, because more people will read it, and more people will see it. And it adds that legitimacy piece when it goes around on Twitter, and people see a brand that they recognize with it. And that's a tough call, right? I miss the the way that I used to blog and the ease with which I used to blog. And a lot of that's just on me, right? I have fallen out of the habit. But also I think I have huge respect for people like Martin who have continued to blog and just blog consistently and put things out because there is real value in the casual musings that go out. Not every blog needs to be an Opus. I went back to my old blog, my parenting blog yesterday, simply because somebody in my world professionally was going through something terrible that I remember going through, and I went back to look for a specific piece that I thought I might send to that person. And I ended up reading the musings of Bonnie from literally November 13 years ago. And wow, a lot of it was really one thing.
24:25
And I was like, Oh,
24:27
I really thought some of this was nicely written but it is not. It's not all our seven pieces of it. were writing I will be proud of till the day I die. Lots of it was me putting on my socks and commenting on it effectively. And I wish that I had stayed in the habit of commenting on more of simply my observations as an educator with my educational blog. And I am grateful to those who have continued to do so because I'd benefit as a reader from there. From their comments,
25:02
and there's something about that practice of just, you know, even if it is mundane things when you're blogging, I found, you know, when I was parenting, blogging, and then when I, you know, started doing ad tech, and, you know, I was putting out content, because I wanted to, and I was commenting on things almost every day, you know, and and, and I was those blog posts came quite easy to me, I didn't you know, stress about them, I just kind of like, oh, there's an article I read, oh, this is what I think boom. And off a blog post went like, literally 10 or 15 minutes, I could bang off a blog post nowadays, when I blog. It'll take me sometimes a day, two days, as I go through,
25:38
what's that? It's arduous?
25:40
Yeah, it feels and I don't know why that is, you know, I don't know if that's a change in, in me, or a change in the ecosystem, or, you know, maybe I'm more cautious. Maybe I know, you know, the audience is certainly wider now than it was in those early days, like something can get amplified really quickly. And so I tend to separate over a lot of what I write before I put it out. And so that's been a change, too, that's made blogging a little bit of a less enjoyable task than it was.
26:11
It's funny you say that, Clint, Bonnie and I talked about this before, like, we've done multiple studies on ourselves online and identities. And I honestly, in the last nine months, as I did this transition in my life, and work and career and where I live, I didn't want to talk about it, because some of what blogging is, is vulnerability and putting yourself out there and true bloggers that you both are. I noticed you now officially on the pod, I think it's being really intimate about things and being real real. On it's hard, and it's awkward. And I put things out. And it's funny, funny, I like you look back on my blog, and multiple blogs, I have an even photo blogs, and think about what was I thinking or who was I then and I think it's, it is a nice way to kind of catalog your experience in your life, but also dig into the archives of where you've grown from. And some of it's not pretty. And somewhat I, in my recent blog post, I actually probably wrote with a little body in mind, because I think talking about some real real stuff is important. And we don't see enough with it anymore. At least not everyone. I will say Martin gets honest, there are bloggers that really talk about things, but I don't want to just write about a thing that I did, or an article that came out or research project or a podcast. Sorry, Colin, but I want to like, like, but I want to share like the why about it and see what it means to me and how it was hard to do this thing or what I've learned and failed. That
27:44
is what I'm thinking about these days. We've also seen the environment, though become much more toxic overall, and you know, the words that we have can can be used against us. And for me it it happens. You know, I saw it and I experienced it not to the same extent that you know, people like Audrey waters have experienced it. But you know it in Victoria, where I live a number of years ago, there was a group that was trying to pull Wi Fi out of all the schools because they believed it was a health hazard to students. So I wrote some blogs about it. I made some presentations, you know, trying to to say, you know, Wi Fi is important in schools, the internet's important in schools, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I mean, it was vitriolic. You know, the comments that I would get the emails that I would get, it didn't get to death threats or anything. But you know, people were mean and angry. And, you know, we had, and it brought out this whole dark side of the internet for me that I had never seen before. You know, just because I was thinking that the internet in schools was important because my kids are in school. And I think the internet's important. And so then something about that incident, I think just made me go Okay, I need to be a little bit. I don't know, I need to think differently about how I
28:58
publish. Well, interesting. There's a there's Katie Jordan and Stuart character at the talks about in this chapter rampid, misogyny, racism and harassment came out. Obviously, I think the amplification and scale of these networks and blogging being one of them, has challenged me a bit and thinking about well who would respond or if you get out to more people just because the nature of us being online for like over 15 years, more people just follow and read and watch and know and look to you and I'm I'm not putting anyone I hate being put up on a pedestal. I'm putting others there, but people do. And there's a responsibility. And maybe that's what you're alluding to a bit, Bonnie.
29:40
I think what where I particularly saw that happen was when blogging morphed into Twitter. And I, I think that part of what happened a few years back when I was doing my PhD in Twitter, I theorize some of this using old Walter ongs work from the 80s but where he had talked about Sort of super simple, super super simplifications here. But kind of oral cultures and literate cultures and the ways in which oral cultures are based in tension and conflict. Storytelling is based in tension and conflict, you have this agonistic, right, there's pattern and repetition, like means. And there's conflict. And like Twitter, you're you're just kind of things are meant they're thrown in around the campfire, to engage. But everybody kind of knows the story that you're playing. And the thing about writing is that you can do this much deeper level of analysis, you can slowly work people through to perhaps a more complex idea. But blogging, because it was mostly long form writing, it was, there were certainly people who got flamed and people whose visibility was such that they then got treated like tall poppies. But for the most part, if somebody particularly is writing in an expository or vulnerable way, where they're really working through something, it is difficult to read a whole blog in good faith, and then just flame somebody. Whereas it's very, very easy to take a tweet that is copied write three lines from that blog, or three lines from that print piece and treat it as if it is everything that person ever said and kind of throw it around the fire to fight about. And so part of what I think happened when Twitter became the dominant circulation of when RSS died, Twitter became the way that blogs went around, basically, particularly in the tech community, and the parenting community, whatever. And so things that were written as long thought process processes became quick sound bites, that then were circulating in very, very different ways that people related to in different ways. And that capacity to treat what is basically a written form, as an oral form is part of what makes Twitter amazing, but it is also where a lot of the vulnerability to be amplified beyond the audience that you were intending exists, there's been a lot that's good in that I would say, the capacity to be amplified has taught me as a white person that you know what, there is a whole lot that I don't know about the world, and maybe nobody needs to hear my thoughts on X. Without me taking the time to explore, listen to others, etc. For more deeply than I would have been doing. 10 years ago, Twitter has given me access to conversations that I particularly when I was living in Prince Edward Island, really just did not have two thinkers and people whose life experiences are deeply deeply shaped by factors different from my own, and that I don't need to talk on, right that this is my time to sit down and listen, at the same time. Um, some of the learning that I think comes from the awareness that Oh, look, I don't know, everything and therefore need to be mindful, cautious, considerate, about the things that I say, does have both a dampening effect. And also, I think a reflexive effect. I've chosen to take that as as a good as a net good. But probably there is an element of that in why I don't just throw off ideas as easily as I did back in the day, because I am more considerate about who they might impact who they might be seen how they reflect on me and what my responsibility is to that idea of audience. really sure blogging still bunny.
34:02
This is what I want to hear and what I miss the others. The other aspect of this chapter is not just about the academics or higher ed instructors or staff, or faculty, but this tool is for education in learning. And it's something early days, I loved having my students reflect and share with their community and across courses, and with professionals. But it this larger scale and the architecture of where blogging is in a public sphere. I stopped doing it in my last couple years of teaching, because it's just so many more concerns with privacy with data with trolls, and also just digital dragging that we've been alluding to, as it says flaming like flaming digital dragging on the internet is it's been a concern. And so I guess it's something that's lost now or looks different and I don't know how you either you've been thinking about As you teach the next generation on these digital literacies, and I think blogging was a big piece of that for me, but what does it mean for your work in practice these days,
35:10
I still use blogs with my students in my, my, my Rhodes course, I still ask them to blog and I asked them to blog reflectively and ask them to share things. And most of it is just the community of the students, but it is, you know, their WordPress sites, they are out in the open and, and what I like to do with the blog is I like to be able to use my reach to be able to amplify some of the work that they're doing. If I think that they've done something quite well. It's like, I think this is valuable for the rest of the community. Can I can I share it? Can I can I tweet about it? And you know, usually there Yeah. And maybe they'll get a comment from someone in the field on it, which is always like a big aha moment for them. And like, oh, wow, I can use this to really connect with people. So I still think there's value in having students blog, but you have to be intentional and very linked. And he said there are there are issues that we need to be concerned about and aware of, and prepare our students for.
36:06
I tried the let me model to my students, the wonderful network world of blogging, Hey, be like me, early on, when I went back to teaching in a faculty about about 10 years ago. And I didn't find that it was hugely successful, because I think there are people who want to blog and people who don't want to block. And so what I was trying to do was kind of say, hey, there's this whole world out here. Come Come on in and do it the way that I do it, hoping that they would build, you know, the the joy in that practice and the network in that practice. And instead, I got, does this have to be 350 words? And I went, Okay, I can do it. To the students point, fair, great, an imposed assignment is, in my mind, not the same as an invitation to join. There. Were there, I think one or two students that I taught 910 years ago, who actually did take up the practice for their own purposes. Fabulous, wonderful. I hope that scaffolding that in, in our class had some part in, you know, shaping positive things for them. But what I started doing was seeing it more as an assignment, what am I trying to get students to take out of this experience, and treating it more as a proof of concept, so I don't get them to do their own blogs. But rather, I do still do. And when I moved to Windsor, I built into the course that I'm teaching, although we're doing a much more minimized version of it this year, because people just have too much. We have a WordPress blog, that is a class blog, there are two or three assignments throughout the year where everyone contributes. And I teach three or four sections of these classes. And all the sections are contributing together because I actually want them reading each other's posts, and posting into the same space. And they are basically making digital artifacts like infographics or whatever, about a particular reading or a particular concept or a particular resource. So we're interpreting this in a visual way of thinking about the attention economy, then posting this and to give them the chance to write, partly to mitigate for the fact that some of them haven't done a lot of visual assignments, and so feel very intimidated by their capacity to do well per se, on something that is in a different modality, then they, they blog about it, they they they write a short blog post to introduce this artifact. And then they have to comment in meaningful ways on at least two or three other people's piece. So I'm sort of scaffolding or proof of concept thing. This is what the participatory interactive networked world of public communication is you want to put something out that you don't mind a principal, my students are Bachelor of Education students that you don't mind a principal who wants to hire you finding or make sure that you were identifying name, right, because they have some control over the they get signed up under their student IDs. But then they can choose how what whether their name is actually attached to it. So you don't have to put your name publicly on that. Or you can write and you can make it a footprint that you're leaving. And so I'm getting them to think about those pieces. But it's much more from a teaching the concept than from a building the practice piece. And I feel sad about that. But I also feel like I know that anytime that somebody has tried to teach me how to do some amazing thing that I am not ready for. All I do is push back and so I didn't want to die on that hill
39:49
any longer. Like your right to choose. I think I'm challenging and having our learners kind of self direct is kind of where I took blogging to say what do I like? Think about blogging, oh, it's the stories and the narratives. And the, as you said, artifacts and reflections, and I think I did give him the right to choose. And it's funny because this chapter that Martin wrote is between the LMS. And oh er. So open education resources and the learning management system. And the blogging became kind of a grayish area of, I think, where narrative goes, and I maybe have shifted to the oral projects, maybe given by some options to say, you can write a paper, you can do some interactive activity in a video, you can do an audio project. And so given them the challenge by choice and where they want to put it, and opting it to be private or public is what I was thinking about these days, because there's less anonymity on the, on the web. This earlier chapter or earlier between the chapters I had with Alan Levine talked, he talked about giving voice, I just think about the power of voice with our learners. And those who aren't always heard are at the table. And now the virtual table. I always think of a way to empower people, but I think it's not always safe for everyone. So I do like that Martin, touched upon this in the chapter and will you to go back to blogging, candidly ever, Would you ever consider that again,
41:16
I was tempted yesterday when I was kind of hanging out in my ancient ancient blog and being like, I kind of miss just sitting down to write what I feel like, I don't think that I will probably ever get back into the every day or two days kind of practice that I had. But I would I think one of the reasons that I don't blog right now is that that candidness is a habit I've gotten out of, and I miss it and would still like to find my way back to it.
41:50
Yeah, I think I wrote my, my, what I would say would be my last really personal blog post was probably three years ago, and I actually shifted my digital identity a little bit. You know, I used to blog, my name sites, and that was like my central digital identity hub. But then about three years ago, I switched off, and I still had that site for archival purposes. But I moved over much of my edtech stuff to this new identity of edtech factotum. And I've done mostly ad tech and open education blogging there. And that's, you know, I don't write a lot of very personal stuff on there. But a couple of years ago, you know, I was writing a little bit about, you know, the experience of my dad, and, you know, my dad has dementia, and, you know, discovering that, and I wrote a little bit about that. And, you know, and then I just kind of stopped, you know, now I've found other other avenues to kind of do that. And I don't know, there's still there's something about getting that personal. I really admire people who can write about deeply personal and moving experiences in a very real and authentic way. But I think because I, you know, going back to what Bonnie said about the commodification and commercial commercialization that happened in the the parent blogging space, I was part of that when it started. And it kind of turned me off quite a bit from dad blogging, and that's part of the reason why I stopped doing it is because it just became like, a business. And people were treating it like a business and the store and it really tainted, what the stories were. And I don't know, there's something about that feeling. Whenever I write something personal when I put it out there, I'm like, I don't know. And the other thing is, is like, I don't know, if these are my stories to tell all the time. You know, especially if I'm, you know, even the fact that I've just talked about my dad and the fact that he has dementia, you know, it's like, should I be sharing that content, but I want to share that content, like I want to I want to do and it's not content, it's like, these are connections, that these are the ways that you connect with people is by talking about these real stories that you're going through. But you know, part of it can get kind of perverted. I don't know, I'm not really making sense here. But
44:01
I feel like you were cleanse. I think that the medium itself, the fact that the medium has more from just a sharing medium, to a medium where we're aware of the attention economy, there are metrics that measure success, there are all kinds of different concepts of what counts as success, and it doesn't have to be monetized. But still, I never monetize my parenting blog, but I stopped in 2012, partly because I realized that I was having huge success every time that I dragged out to work through trauma, right, and sadness, and I could become a very successful merchant of sad stories. And I didn't want to do that anymore. Um, that that was not why I was doing it. And so I felt like I had worked through that place in my life. And I needed to leave it and close it to respect And I think that given the medium, there are things you can do and things that you can't, and maybe, you know, maybe there is a shift, hopefully yet to come where some of our awareness of metrics and money and all those pieces doesn't take as much priority as it does. But even if you try to operate outside of that you still never fully outside of it. You are,
45:31
I don't know, it'd be like trying to sing folk songs in a club or something like you're just, you're just not a fit for
45:37
me. You see, listeners, this is what's happened on I'm really grateful for your candid conversations. And I think what I'm hearing for both of you is we can't always be as nuanced and who we are in these spaces anymore, because they don't belong to us, some of them. Like sometimes we do own our own domain. Thanks, Jim, groom, and Tim. And but sometimes we don't really because we're in this bigger ecosystem on mine these days. And so I'm really grateful for like, your honest, like reflections and sharing. And it's, it's not it's not easy being a blogger out there. And it looks very different from when we all started, it sounds like, before we wrap up, are there anything that you want to put out to either Martin to ask about or the community to reflect on, on from this kind of chapter that was mentioned or not mentioned today?
46:39
The only thing that I would want to say to Martin is, is actually thank you for keeping going and reminding me that there are different ways to live the identity of blogger. And that just because things shift doesn't mean that they are entirely done. And Martin has done an amazing job of Case in point, this whole book, this whole podcast series, continuing to bring forth quality work through something that I'm sitting here going yeah,
47:11
I've heard now.
47:12
And it was Martin just so thanks, Martin hats off.
47:16
Yeah, I would, I would echo that too. I mean, I love I still love you know, people like alan alan Levine and Jim groom, people who are still able to kind of continue doing this, and doing it on a on a regular basis and showing, you know, still kind of charting the path. I'm eternally grateful to the work that Alan Levine does, where he uses his blog to really talk through process and how he solves problems. And he's one of the bloggers I really admire, because he's very transparent and how he's going about doing things. And I learn a lot from that blog. And I really appreciate that style of blogging. And that's something I've tried to get back to with my own blog, too. It's like, how am I actually doing things? I think there's some real value there and making that kind of piece transparent to others. And Alan does it really well.
48:08
It's his shutting up loggers. I want to be grateful to anger Newbern. And I also think caples just says an amazing brilliant things on their blogs. And those are people that I follow. And I'm forever grateful of following their way. Alec couros is back in the day, the person got me connected to some of these things. And I don't know, there's just been some fun community out there bloggers that I'm still indebted to. And you too, are some of them. And that's why you're on the pod. So thank you so much for your time and chatting today about blogs, we might write again, maybe one day, might
48:43
having this was really fun. It's great to have you too. Thank you. You've been listening to between the chapters with your host, Laura pasquini. For more information or to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of edtech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca