Dix Ans
Last Friday, we noted the 5-year anniversary of Creative Commons. Today, the 10-year anniversary of the blog.
It was back in 1997 that I was in graduate school. I started my first webpage. Friends were telling me I ought to write a book of stories. (I had the uncanny ability to raise hilarity with my storytelling, not unlike the style in which my father can tell a story.) Instead, wanting instant gratification, I started a website to share my creative interests.
Soon after, and I use the year 1998, I naturally evolved my writing into a post-like format, mimicking other sites on the web. I wasn’t yet aware of the term weblog, but that’s what I had going. Soon enough, I had a Blogger account and it all went downhill (or up) from there.
I’m sad I haven’t had a continual, non-stop blog since 1998. That would have been interesting.
Currently, I (mis)manage to author five blogs. Among them are a music blog, my work blog, and a food blog. So, yes, I’ve been doing a lot of this since the dawn of the blog. It’s not surprising, perhaps, that I think blogging has a place in education.
Tonight I taught a class in blogging to some of our teachers. We call it “PowerBlogging,” as it teaches them how to go beyond mere text entries, and do links, pictures, podcasts, and whatever else we can cram-into a 2-hour session. I long for the more power-ful blogging platforms (like Wordpress, used here), so that the “power” is more evenly distributed, and available to all (without so much training). It seems hard to believe the HTML codes I was putting up on the interactive whiteboard have been a part of my active vocabulary for some 10 years.
Do I expect such rapid change in the future? I am not sure we’ll see it. I think in the next five years to be trends will be:
- anytime, anywhere writing (cell phones, ubiquitous Internet access)
- vlogging and videocasting
- (even more) use of tags
- shorter and shorter posts (i.e., a proliferation of what I call microblogging)
Hopefully, Hendron’s Digest will continue-on for at least another 5, to see if I’m right.