Demise of the Blog?

A senior colleague often ranted years ago about the death of blogs- (he was always one to bury something when a new fad bit) Andrew Keen and Alan Levines recent comments on blogs, suggest  personal blogs might be dying- like Alan I’m struggling to keep the momentum (or is it work burn out?). Commercial blogs (esp. media organisations) are thriving. I think using the blog as an aggregation point is worthwile but so are many other social networking tools which do this. Roger Pryor comments there is ” a base of lateral connectivity between us and others and adds another layer to a laminate of learning which sustains us all”. And there are many ways to do this-blogs are evolving to suit niche needs-the micro blog being most successful in recognising the need for immeadiacy (or are our attention spans shortening). The DETs BlogED tool however might fall into the same category as a commercial blog- that representing institutionalised interests-giving another channel to voice a ‘personalised’ representation. BlogEd allows the student/teachers voice to be expressed within the confines of DETs policy and educational  culture. So has the blog now become a more potent tool for reinforcing  the ‘hidden’ values of an institution? Maybe thats not a bad thing. It will be interesting to see how many teachers and students participate in this newest form of ‘personalised’ publishing-but after all its what schooling is all about- set responses -learning to articulate ideas within certain boundaries and expectations.

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