What type of blog am I? – The Ed Techie

I took part in a Reclaim Hosting session as part of the blogging community yesterday. Maren ran the session on How to Get Your Blogging Mojo Back and Lee Skallerup Bessette gave a fascinating talk on her blogging history. One topic she raised was a thorny one that many of us have wrestled with in the blogging area. And that is, whether to have specialised blogs or an all-encompassing one. Lee talked about how she had established different blogs for swimming, knitting as well as ed tech. Jim Groom stated that he made a decision early on that his blog would be a big messy bucket for everything he was interested in (I paraphrase).

Maren and I made a quick podcast after this session, reflecting on some of these issues (she withheld apple pie until I participated). The specialist vs universal blog nature is one I am wrestling with currently, as I transition from being a full time Open University ed tech professor, to a semi-retired person who has different unrelated projects and ideas on the go. For some of these, such as hockey analytics, I have created a distinct blog as I think that is the best route to explore that topic in detail. And in the past I have created separate blogs for film reviews, walking and photography.

This blog was originally focused on educational technology (hence the name), open education and digital scholarship. When I was running courses, getting research projects, attending conferences and publishing books, maintaining this general focus was not difficult. But now I am not as engaged on a daily basis with those subjects. Also, I just don’t want to have to blog about effing AI every week, and that seems to be the only game in town at the moment. It makes me nostalgic for MOOCs. So, if you started reading this blog for insight (or bad takes) on those subjects, the return on investment will be dwindling now.

The blog is my online identity though, so while it was ostensibly about ed tech, it was also about me. I am reluctant to abandon it therefore just because the ed tech focus has diminished. The name may be a bit of an anomaly now, but it’s the ‘brand’ so I’ll stick with it. My experience with creating topic specific blogs is that they often run out of steam. I get tired of the subject, the effort to stay current in it becomes too great with other demands, or there isn’t much more I want to say on it. However, the one subject you are always an expert in is your own life. In the podcast Maren emphasises the point that blogging is about the process, not about having a blog. It is how you think through subjects. This is why blogging should be an AI free zone (apart from fun images if you want). Getting AI to create your blog content is like sending your driverless car on holiday without you. It kinda misses the point.

All of which is to say that I intend to continue with this blog, but I beg your indulgence if the topics seem increasingly random and less ed tech focused. My hope is that while only one in ten posts may be relevant to you, that one is well worth reading.

12 Comments

Paul

March 20, 2025 at 12:56 pm Reply

I appreciate the big messy buckets because they show the interconnectedness of things. All those metaphors you’ve brought up over the years help to make complexity understandable. They spring from your varied interests and willingness to bring them together and share them with us. If nothing else, bloggers like you and Jim will never need a bigger boat.

mweller

March 20, 2025 at 2:26 pm Reply

Hi Paul, thanks for this, yes, I think I’m a range rather than depth kinda guy. Both are good, but I guess my blog should reflect that dabbling across genres also.

Jim Groom

March 20, 2025 at 1:49 pm Reply

I second Paul’ notion you will never need a bigger boat, and this is the point that stuck out for me from yesterday’s meeting. How does the axis for blogging shift from theme or topic to person? I think you can easily reframe edtechie as your ongoing education viz-a-viz tech (this blog), so not hard for you the king of metaphor and analogy. But also i think this sense of the interconnectedness and the whole person, rather than the persona, may be wishful thinking, but for me is the promise and magic of such a space of your own.

mweller

March 20, 2025 at 2:27 pm Reply

Hi Jim, I like the idea of my blog developing with me over time and different stages in my life, like a person you are in a ling term relationship with, so maybe that’s how I view it now

Jim Groom

March 20, 2025 at 1:50 pm Reply

Also, clean up that comment, would ya? 🙂

mweller

March 20, 2025 at 2:28 pm Reply

what typos? 🙂

Alan Levine

March 20, 2025 at 6:50 pm Reply

Typos? Did someone call my name?

In the movie Sybil the poor gal needed 17 blogs.

The first thing is we have this range of choices, but for me I don’t buy into the compartmentalizing who were are into separate personailities. I pretty much talk and write the same in whatever space I am in.

We are but one entity. So I think less of your blog as the name or URL, but its all Martin, I come for the way you write and uyse metaphor, not for a specific theme. Who cares if you write about different things than you once did? Don’t go changing a thing.

Yet there are times (e.g. projects) where you end up writing somewhere else. For a while, I rand FeedWordPress on my blog to pull in posts form sites I wrote on elsewhere- I’d only bring them in as drafts and then decided whether it was worth clicking the publish on the home.

Type of blog? mffffffffffff

I am my blog, my blog is me.