I’ve seen a lot of teachers on Twitter, or X, or whatever we’re supposed to call it, wondering what we are going to do now that Twitter’s demise seems inevitable. Twitter has been a wonderful place for educators to gather over the years. I’ve made so many friends through Twitter. I’ve also learned so much from teachers willing to share their expertise on Twitter. Believe me, no one is sadder than I am at the state of things. I don’t know the actual statistics, but I know I’m leeching followers weekly, and most have deactivated their accounts (or potentially been suspended). It feels like a different place. Remember the halcyon days of #EngChat?
I’ve been blogging at this site longer than Twitter has existed. I started this blog in June 2005. In a couple of years, it will be 20 years old. It’s difficult to fathom. When Twitter took off, education blogging almost disappeared. I wonder—could education blogging help us recapture what we have lost?
Twitter threads became a popular way for people to share thoughts that a tweet can’t capture, but aren’t threads just blogs broken down over a series of tweets? So why not return to blogs? If we can get a good RSS reader (Google Reader’s demise seriously impacted blogging), we could follow all our educator friends again. Blogging allows for conversation.
I remember starting a book club with Lisa Huff (no relation) when Penny Kittle’s book Write Beside Them came out. I remember starting the UbD Educators Wiki (and later receiving Grant Wiggins’s blessing). I remember the conversations we had about education issues. Twitter was never really a good substitute for the Edublogosphere, but it was where everybody went. Part of me wishes we could recapture what we lost.
It’s probably just wishful thinking, but then again, I think the popularity of Substack demonstrates that blogging is not quite dead yet.
