Despite the increasing popularity of things like Twitter and Facebook for connecting and sharing information, it is the blogosphere that helps us to anchor resources and more sustained discussion. Image credits: Caffeinehit
The Alex Case (which has yet to be solved by senior ELT investigators, despite some very interesting leads) recently raised the question about whether the TEFL blogging boom is coming to an end.
Alex is on the right track when he points the (questioning) finger at things like Twitter, as I did a little while ago (along with pointing out the surging role of Facebook for resource sharing and discussion). Undoubtedly, with multiple streams of social media now happening - a lot more of it on the fly - it makes sense that you can only split the ELT pie so many ways before information and discussion begin to slow down on one or more of the various platforms.
We also have to remember, of course, that a lot of the ELT blogosphere went on holiday over the summer, so it will be interesting to compare blogging output and reception from September - November this year to the relative explosion we saw this time last year.
However, the point I generally want to make here is that a Twitter or Facebook-like invasion of ELT resource sharing and topical discussion - at the expense of blog posts and comments - would most probably be a bad thing.
You see, without good blog posts to start with, a lot of what we see being passed around and discussed on the social networking sites would become a whole lot shallower. The activity on those platforms represents feathers shooting past in a strong wind, and they are close to useless if they aren't anchored in some way. I've had some great discussions about ELT on both Facebook and Twitter, but I'm buggered if I can remember a whole lot about them or where they went. I certainly can't relocate them in any sure way.
I made a similar case about the importance of blogging in my recent post Boomerangs: No blog post ever really goes to waste. One of the key points I made there was about the relative thirst search engines have for blog posts, which of course means that people out there looking for something a year after you post something could quite easily stumble on it with a targeted query on one of the major search engines.
And even if search engines allowed people to find relevant discussions on Facebook or Twitter, there is no guarantee (at all, really) that it will be all that legible or useful. When I experimented recently with removing the comments option on this blog (and then quite promptly turned them back on), the most common response from readers was that blogs are still the place for deeper, more reflective (and more useful) discussion that can be followed and learned from in a logical fashion.
So I dearly hope that the TEFL/ELT blogging boom continues. It is a better medium for advancing what we do and think as teachers, and it potentially contributes to a very rich resource base for future teachers as well.
Remembering, of course, that quality of content and value of discussion are very much in the screen of the beholder...
:-)
