Mark Marino’s blog post Teaching Writing in the Post-Blogging Era is a tough read. The layout is chaotic and his commentary is sprinkled in amongst crudely formatted visuals. However, it seems more like a schtick than a dated attempt at digital publishing. Once I figured out how to read between the lines (or graphics) the article provides great insight into the evolution of blogs, online posting, and why it’s still a useful practice.
I remember the days of Blogger and the frustrations of trying to personalize the visual elements of your page without much technical ability. If I recall, tumblr solved that with their wide range of available templates. Even so, as Marino points out, you had to publish consistently in order for your blog to be noticed and engaging. Many people can create blogs, few can keep them up-to-date.
It seems logical when you connect that dots backwards that microblogs like Facebook and Twitter, and photoblogs like Instagram rose to prominence over more traditionally formatted blogs. These three spaces each have a singular visual identity regardless of whose page you’re viewing. Taking away the need to uniquely design your pages frees time and space to put into the creativity of your content. In fact, I believe that it pushes users to be even more considerate of their voice and individuality so as to stand out from the rest of the crowd.
Looking back, the evolution of blogging platforms and content types makes sense. However, I’ve never grasped how to see what’s next. Is there a commonality in the approach of early adopters of the next big digital thing, regardless of their content? The question I still have is how do we as creators get one step ahead?
A Domain of One’s Own puts forth an example of one of those early adopters in the University of Mary Washington. There, students are taught to create a cyber-infrastructure which not only documents their learning, but also carries on their digital lives beyond graduation. A frustration I hold to this day is that I completed my undergraduate education without learning how to create a portfolio of my work. My school actually attempted a similar effort to UMW, but abandoned it after a couple of years because it was too much effort to enforce upon every student. The difference was the context in which it was presented. I think students are less receptive to something that appears to be one more assignment, one more requirement for graduation. Instead, when it’s engrained in the culture and presented as a best practice for organizing one’s work and their personal brand, I think students are much more apt to follow.
I am appreciative that building a personal website to document my learning is core to the curriculum of this program.
Bibliography
Marino, M. C. (2019, August 23). Teaching Writing in the Post-Blogging Era. Medium. https://markcmarino.medium.com/teaching-writing-in-the-post-blogging-era-ab7848247e33
A Domain of One’s Own. (2012, July 27). Wired. https://www.wired.com/insights/2012/07/a-domain-of-ones-own/
