In a curious progression of blog posts earlier this month (and late last month), various ELT bloggers raised the prospect that ELT blogging might have peaked and was on the downslide. A fad, perhaps. A bit of a play with something new, which eased off when the players realised they still had real jobs to do...
I daresay those thoughts were a little premature (though to be honest I was one of the ones pondering the prospect as well!). I don't think the sun went down on ELT blogging over the past 3-4 months. It was more like a phase of the moon, waxing and then waning, but part of a cycle.
In essence, I think it was just a seasonal thing. Teachers went away or tried new things over the summer (in the Northern Hemisphere).
Stats on the Onestopblogs site seem to show the dip in activity has rounded out and is on the way back up:
And in terms of visitation (not just active posting), through the period July - September this year, my own blog shows a similar trend (remembering that I was posting consistently throughout that period):
So I think the signs of a healthy and growing ELT blogosphere are still there, and I really hope so (as I explained in a recent post about Why ELT needs us to keep blogging).
And for what it's worth, I find myself in fierce agreement with Shaun Wilden, who earlier this year expressed his opinion that (for him) it was now more a matter of reading blogs than reading or referring to books when it comes to staying up to date and finding new things to think about and explore.
:-)
