Tag: blog

Follow bloggers for a deeper context

I have had at least one blog since 2002. Since that time, I have also had control of the server on which my blog and other content I created was stored. At the beginning of this period of time, I worked at a university and was able to run a server through the university network. This translates as I had a dedicated IP for my site and once someone found my content and bookmarked the site, the site would always be available at that address. I can’t remember the exact address, but it did indicate my server was identified as a part of the more general university network.

When I began to generate free content I intended to supplement the textbook my wife and I had written through what was originally Houghton-Mifflin, I decided it might appear that even though the content I was offering was free to any viewer, it might seem I was using university resources to benefit me financially and so I began renting server space. I have continued to host my content through Bluehost since that time. This company provides services at multiple levels. My blogs make use of WordPress, but I have a general account because I use Bluehost for content other than blogs. 

I spend about $200 a year for the server space and the cost of two domains (learningaloud and curmudgeonspeaks). I include this financial information because part of the issue of how you provide online content has a financial component. Among the financial issues are whether you want to make money and whether you want to minimize personal costs. None of the content on my server is behind a paywall and there are Google ads on some of my content. The income from ad clickthroughs is less than $25 a year. So, I must recognize that my site is a hobby and the inclusion of ads is pretty much a matter of personal curiosity. I follow the analytics my site generates as part of this hobby. The activity level the site generates is sufficient to maintain my interest, but has declined in this last decade. I attribute this decline to moving from having textbooks sold through a textbook company to self-publishing via Amazon. My motives for this transition have been documented in my blog posts and were related to my interest in investigating a different model for textbooks that combined a smaller and less expensive book with online resources. 

I am writing this post partly as an extension of a previous post that considered cross-posting my blog content to Medium and Substack. One way to look at the purpose of this post might be to explore the question of why with the availability of services such as Medium and Substack (and other outlets) would anyone want to continue to pay to host personal content. I am not alone in asking this question. My take is related to, but not equivalent to the concept of COPE (compose once publish everywhere), but focuses on different values and factors. 

I find that a core belief I have about having a location where you store and host your own content has considerable overlap with my beliefs concerning the value of books. I believe book authors and content providers bring a perspective and context to their creative work that is not maintained in pieces of content experienced in isolation. You might argue that this is fine because as a consumer you will build your own understanding based on the elements of information you pick up from multiple authors. I agree you might and probably should do this. However, models of understanding are transferable and can be used to build on and contrast with personal efforts to develop understanding.

Yes, this sounds pretty abstract and vague. Think of what I describe as a model as a way of understanding – how you see things working and what causes what to happen. Ways of understanding (models) can be general and specific and they can be complete or incomplete. Sometimes we have flawed ways of understanding that seem to work in some situations, but we may at some point find our way of understanding does not work in others. We can be convinced we have things figured out when this is really not the case and only when we try our models in actual situations or compare them to the models of others with different and perhaps more experience that we see a bigger picture. 

I have generated thousands of posts over the 20+ years I have been involved in blogging. I am certain some of my posts are naive and wrong and some may be inconsistent. Like a book, the collection does emphasize a limited set of ideas and provides connections among these ideas. These posts are tagged and organized so any interested party can explore related ideas to explore the broader context of my ideas. You just don’t get this with the selection of posts I add to Substack or Medium. 

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WordPress for design

I started blogging in 2002 using an early version of Blogger that I hosted on a server I ran myself. You may know that Blogger was purchased by Google and is still available as an outlet for the content creation of individuals. 

You are reading this on a WordPress blog. I switched to WordPress because I again could host it on a server I controlled. I switched to use a hosting option provided by BlueHost when I determined that I wanted to add Google ads to my blog and that I should probably not be doing this on a site I could control through the university where I worked. Just to be clear I have always paid far more for leasing part of a server than I ever generated in ad revenue. Running ads is kind of an experiment and a matter of principle. I believe content creators should be compensated for their efforts. Originally, I had to install and update WordPress myself, but BlueHost now offers a way to have the software installed and updated for you.

WordPress emerged in 2003 and has become more and more powerful since. There is still a simplified version of WordPress available at no cost and a more powerful version for $4 a month. If you have no other purpose for paying for space on a server you can use for multiple purposes and want a blog with more options, the $4 level is a good choice.

Blogging platforms have gradually become more and more powerful and can be used in other ways than offering the list of serial content posts familiar to all blog readers. The platforms allow both this familiar format (posts) and also pages that can be interlinked in much the same way as many web sites you may visit. The page approach starts from a home page and the connection among pages is changed by the effort of the content creator and not automatically by the addition of new material. 

A blog platform may be your most efficient approach to creating a web site. The flexible page-based blogger sites are also improving providing those wanting to offer content as a web site greater and greater control over appearance and function. The sites generated do not have to resemble cookie-cutter simplistic offerings based on a common theme. WordPress has moved to an approach based on what are called blocks. For old folks like me who remember Hypercard, the multimedia construction kit, you might use Hypercard as a reference. Hypercard allowed the creation of a stack (which might be considered pages) and the addition of elements some of which were preprogrammed. So there were arrows that could take a user to the next card, the previous card, and the first card in the stack, You would add images and text to the surface of the card. You could also make use of the hypertalk coding language to add your own actions to elements (cards, buttons,, etc.). 

The block approach in blog platforms is beginning to approach the flexibility of hypercard in the online world, You can use preprogrammed blocks and for those who want the flexibility program your own blocks. Blocks can now be used to shape the appearance of the site in addition to controlling the content added to a page or post. 

Just to be clear. I don’t spend a lot of time on design. I consider myself mostly a writer.

Blogging platforms have evolved to meet the requirements of a “low floor and high ceiling” environments encouraged by edtech visionaries. The platforms can serve as a basic outlet for student writing or a creative environment for students interested in multimedia design options. There is now little need for expensive computer-based multimedia design software. Allow students who want to do more than write to become proficient with the advanced features of modern blogging (web design) platforms. 

This post was motivated by a State of the Word online presentation from Matt Mullenweg the founder of WordPress. The presentation has been archived on YouTube and offers an extended description of the present version of WordPress.

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SeeSaw Class Blogs

I encourage teachers I work with to write, read, and make use of blogs in their classrooms. Typically, my recommended platforms are Blogger or WordPress. I recently became aware that SeeSaw includes an embedded class blog tool. This tool allows control of public access, teacher moderation, and control of commenting. The video that follows provides a simple description of this tool.

The public face of such a blog appears below.

Visit a SeeSaw blog.

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Resurgence of RSS

I admit that I am old and perhaps subject to becoming set in my ways. I even have a blog entitled Curmudgeon Speaks which possibly explains a lot. I try to keep up on the newest thinking on technology in education and the newest relevant tools, but I still employ a workflow based in RSS and social bookmarking. The young and innovative may not even know what these services are and promote Twitter, Snapchat, etc. to keep themselves informed. Bah……

Or, maybe not. I found hope in a recent post, discovered on my RSS reader, entitled “It’s time for an RSS revival“. I am guessing this writer is half my age, but he thinks like me. Actually, his slant is a little different. In this nice review of what RSS is, he offers RSS as an alternative to social sources and algorithms. He positions RSS and the RSS reader as a way to control what you want to read.

A quick review. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way to track updates to designated sites. In other words, what additions have been created since I last checked? You specify the sources – mostly blog sites for me. Software referred to as an RSS reader periodically checks these sites and identifies when something changes. The URL (web address) for the new content and some content from the change (the amount depends on what the author allows) appears in a list returned when you use the RSS reader. The reader keeps track of what you have looked at and typically removes this content from the list. Depending on the reader, there may be ways to keep the links to content you find useful. I typically keep what I find useful using another service (Evernote for me). So, to summarize – you identify websites you want the RSS reader to follow, the reader software identifies new content as it appears on these sites and creates a list for you to review, and typically when you review this list you decide to keep or ignore items from this list. Each entry on the list can be used to link to the full content from the original source.

My previous posts about RSS and RSS readers.

My recommendation – I would try Feedly. The article I link to in the body of this post contains some other recommendations.

One of the challenges in using RSS is finding good content. You select the original sources rather than follow what others recommend. This is a challenge to which each user likely has an ideal personal solution. Perhaps you have little idea what blogs relevant to your interests exist. I can offer my recommendations, but others who follow blogs probably differ in what they would recommend. It is possible to get greedy and identify far more content than you want to review. A RSS reader at least reduces this challenge to scanning post titles and snippets of content.

Here is my suggestion if you have no other idea about how you would get started. I use a personal RSS aggregator on my server. You can scroll through recent entries to see the titles of the blogs I follow and connect to these blogs. You cannot use this aggregator as your own reader because that would defeat the purpose of allowing me to eliminate the content I have viewed. You can generate a list of blogs you might find useful to add to the RSS reader you adopt.

My YouTube description of RSS and Feedly

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Blogger iOS fix

Blogger was once my goto blog tool (and then service). Google seems to have lost interest in Blogger, but I still want to use it for special purposes. I have a travel blog I use to post images and comments on recent trips I want to keep separate from this and other more general-purpose blogs I maintain. I usually write blog posts from a computer to speed text input, but when I travel I often want to use my iPad. There used to be an iPad Blogger app. This was discontinued. Then, there were other blog tools (some specific to younger users that would allow an educator to moderate before posting to a Blogger account) and these stopped working and were discontinued. You could kind of make due if you used Blogger adding content using a browser. However, this approach had the annoying problem that you could not access your iPad photo library. What good is a travel blog without photos?

I have found a fix that works. The iOS app App for Blogger or App for Blogspot (these are really the names) still works. The cost is $3 and the app seems a little crude and is missing features I would prefer (I can add images, but I cannot align them as I want). I use a combination of browser access and this app to generate the posts, but for the time being this works fine.

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On blogging

I have had an active blog since 2003. This must place me among the old-timers committing to this form of public writing. In this time, I have not really taken the time to comment on why I have made this a personal priority. The back to school season has prompted others to explain why blogging is a worthwhile activity for education. After reading a few of these posts or podcasts and after making a blog an assignment for my own grad class, I thought I would offer some comments based on my own experiences.

I try to personally explore social media recommendations for educators and their students. I do this as a matter of developing my own credibility. I cannot try everything I read about, but I have probably registered for and tried out a couple dozen “production” services. A few of these services have stuck. I wonder why I have persisted in some of these services for so many years. For example, why do I blog and not podcast. I lectured to hundreds of students at a time for nearly 40 years so recording audio and video might seem natural. I guess for me I find more personal benefit and satisfaction in writing. Writing (planning) can be an important initial step in real-time presenting and I think I enjoy this discovery and externalization process more than the presentation itself. I would rather write and discuss than present and discuss.

I enjoy the challenge of sitting down with only a vague idea and trying to create something concrete. There is some magic in this process. I am not usually certain where what I write will end up. The process itself interests me. I know others do not write in this fashion and my approach may violate certain tenants of planning. Blogging allows exploration in a way that other products I write do not. Blogging is likely a productive first step that shapes my position on things and provides a background for other things I do.

The concept of “externalization” has become important in my thinking about learning. Writing is a form of externalization. So is teaching. My work investigating the role of metacognition in reading comprehension and studying have convinced me that the evaluation of personal understanding tends to be lazy. We tend to be satisfied with a certain level of vagueness and can easily gloss over blank spots in understanding. Having to put knowledge into action reveals the limitations of vagueness. I know educators like to promote “reflection” as a way to test and build personal understanding. Reflection is one of those educational terms that should be made more concrete. I recognize that reflection can be accomplished without externalization, but I find it more personally productive to make such processes more concrete. Your written product is pretty concrete – it either exists or it does not.

Is blogging worth the time required? This is difficult to know. I have engaged in the activity while I was working and also now that I am retired. Blogging is a by-product of things I do anyway. I still spend a lot of time reading and considering the value of content for my teaching or writing. The time I spend blogging is usually related to these exploratory activities so the additional time to generate a post is not completely independent.

What blogging for me is not.

Blogging is not a daily ritual. While there is a great deal of inertia once you have made a multi-year commitment to a process, I blog when I have an idea I want to explore and when I have the time. I once made a commitment to a 365 photo project (take and post a photo each day). I completed the personal commitment because I tend to be very stubborn when I make a commitment. I did not make the commitment to do another 365 project.

I do not look at blogging as a way to generate income. Google ads do appear on my blogs. I do this more for reasons of curiosity and principle. I am curious about the return on public scholarship and whether ad revenue is a credible way for professional educators to generate income. For me, it is not a meaningful way to generate revenue. I might do better if I spent more of my time focusing on tutorials and ideas for the classroom. I write about a wide variety of things because I have a wide variety of interests. Strangely, my youtube efforts while few do generate more income. Most of these are tutorials.

Some blog as a way to promote a secondary way to generate income. Many educational speakers fall into this category. In the early days of my blogging, I did look at blogging as a way to supplement our textbook. This was more an effort to offer updates than to generate revenue by way of promotion. We no longer write for a big major textbook provider and have more independence in how we think about the connection between a textbook and related resources. Blogging has little to do with the online connection to the textbook because we provide free resources in other ways.

My antagonism toward those who use ad blockers is an example of what I mean by principle. I believe there is a certain agreement between those who generate content and those who voluntarily consume this content. Those who make the effort to generate the content should be allowed to establish the conditions for the consumption of the content. Unless viewing of specific content is required (as it might be if assigned in a course), blocking ads seems a selfish act that I believe will have long-term consequences.

So, I am a fan of blogging. I find it a reasonable way to explore ideas and I offer these ideas with the hope I can stimulate thinking (and perhaps writing) in others.

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Accidental Historian

I started this blog in 2002 and this is my 1611th post. I am certain there are blogs with a longer history out there, but these would be a very, very small proportion of those that still exist. I started blogging to explore the software itself because blogging offered an alternative to my experience creating web pages. Once the exploration phase was over I guess I continued because I have a compulsive streak and find it difficult to abandon projects. I now have several blogs, but this is the original.

I never kept a diary and my writing has always been mainly a professional activity. I seldom blog about what was my professional life as a university professor, but I have focused mostly on educational technology and issues that impact K-12 education. The accumulated content has now reached the point at which there seems to be some historical value. It is true that this is a history from my perspective, but this is pretty much the way history works. Historians present accounts based on their interpretations of primary source information. I suppose historians attempt to take a neutral stance.

Whatever arguments I have made for the value of blogging, generating primary source historical content is a new insights. My experiences with educational technology go back to the mid 1980s but daily recorded observations are likely less biased than the stories I might tell about the old days. Those of us who have lived the experience of the personal computer and the Internet may have accidentally recorded observations that chronicle the changes that we all experience but most seldom fail to recognize.

If you are curious, use the archive list to read some early posts. Use the search tool to see if I had anything to say about a topic that interests you.

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