Cue the folk music, Pete…
Long time passing.
Where have all the bloggers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the bloggers gone?
Spammers have picked them ev’ry one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?
My RSS reader stays pretty grey these days. Many of the past everyday reads of edubloggers seems to have sputtered out.
The Davids’s, Carter-Tod, Davies, and Wiley are rather infrequent, maybe off chasing Goliaths. James is on “hiatus.” Even my buddies D’Arcy and Brian seem to be busy off doing non-blogging.
Maybe they have moved on to Wiki-ville.
To be honest, it takes a major sort of OCD behavior to keep at this (unless one wins on blogging for dollars blogging activity. Unless you have the energy and reach of Stephan, the sheer volume of links as Bruce, the internal drive of Will, or the meglomania of Dave the Magnificent, how long can you keep the pace of blogging before imploding?
It appears, with some rough guestimation, that it takes about a year before a regular eduBlogger reaches the burn-out point…. which means I have about 3 months left in the gas gauge before I start to f-a-d-e away.
Seriously, it calls into question how the practice of blogging will sustain, or is the norm that there will be waves of new passionate bloggers on the speed curve, and the waning decline of the seasoned writers? What will become of this litter of un-maintained blogs, proliferating Google-dom?
Does it mean we get more echo blogging (direct regurgitation of news from elsewhere) and less original writing?
What can it mean for educators who have high hopes of students keeping up a regular blog pace?
What does it mean the blogging is now a staple of schlock marketing outfits???
I have no idea except my blog clock is ticking.
Now for the refrain..
Long time writing.
Where have all the bloggers gone?
Long time Pyra.
Where have all the bloggers gone?
They’ve gone and got a real life.
Oh, when will I ever learn?
Oh, when will I ever learn?
Haven’t burned out, just in a doing-other-things cycle, and haven’t had much to say…
you know, I was thinking the same thing myself the other day… everyone seems really quiet…
Well, yeah. That, and Alan is prolific enough to make up for an edublogger deficit all by himself… The man is unstoppable!
Alan,
I’ve been at it pretty consistently since 1998, so you may well have a few more years in you. Some bloggers do just come and go. I still miss the Curmudgeon who teaches Statistics – http://cuwu.editthispage.com/.
My reasons are related to other passions that have occupied me, and frankly, the need to keep my head down in what has become a hostile work environment.
I do worry about my lack of things to say occasionally. I don’t have many spare cycles to devote to serious thinking, and don’t take that much pleasure in dutiful IT linking.
David
Hi Alan, still here tho definitely quieter. I’ve been pursuing that other form of writing, the one that pays my wages. I hope to pick up the blog again though I think Seb’s right, sometimes other things just take over. Also know wotcha mean about news regurgitation vs original writing. It’s a slippery slope and a slope many blogs slide down.
Blogging is a lot like rock music (ahem). Everybody loves the first album, so new, so fresh. The second album tries to repeat the glory of the first but the song is starting to sound familiar. After the hiatus the difficult third album sees a change of artistic direction and is less compromising. Daring even. Maybe it’s more true to the artist but the fans don’t like the new material. Then it’s either quit while you’re wining or be consigned to a lifetime of comeback tours and reunions, a greatest hits album and given the current time of year, the obligatory naff Xmas record. Ok, stretching the point a bit but hey, this is my first post for a while 🙂 Long live rock ‘n’ roll ‘n’ blogging.
David.
David,
It is nice to hear fmro you, and I was less complaining than saying your voice is missed out here. I respected the work and ideas you had done early on with trackback, learning objects, etc, and hope you are still at it.
Got a good chuckle at the rock music metaphor, there must be a way to stretch it to Spinal Tap (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/ “And on this weblog, you can turn the volume to 11” 😉
Well, I think one of us should rename their blog ‘Smell the Glove’ and use the original artwork as a CSS of course 🙂
For those about to blog, we salute you!