On blogging (again) — from by Martin Weller
I also pondered what functions blogging has provided for me over the years.
- Continuity – as an individual you persist across multiple organisations, roles and jobs. Although I stayed in one institution, I had many roles and the blog wasn’t associated with one specific project. Now I have left it continues.
- Holistic – you can blog about one topic, but over time I think some personality will creep in. You are not just one thing, you have a personal life, tastes, interests etc which will all feed into what you do. A blog allows this more rounded representation.
- Experimentation – there is relatively low cost and risk for much of it (this may not be the case for many people online, we need to acknowledge), so you can try things, and if they don’t work, so what? Also you can try formats that conventional outlets might not be appropriate for.
- Development – the blog has been both an intentional and unintentional vehicle for working up ideas, documenting the process and getting feedback, which have led to more substantial outputs, such as books, project proposals and papers. Most importantly though it has been the means through which I have continually developed writing.
- Connecting – particularly in those halcyon early days, it was a good way of finding others, working on ideas together, sharing something of yourself. A lot of my career related personal friendships have resulted from blogging.
- Publicity – I became at one point (the OU crisis of 2018) something of a public voice of the OU, and have often used the blog for projects such as GO-GN
That’s not a bad return for a lil’ ol’ blog. I couldn’t say the same for academic journals.