Then came faster connection speeds that allowed loading images that looked better than an 8-bit character at a thousand yards. I gravitated to ICQ (an instant messenger program) and the chat rooms (channels, some folks called them back in the day) and made some actual friends (Hey there, #hatrack). Because my daughter was at Penn State, I was an early adopter of Facebook (I skipped MySpace). Found other social havens, like Cafe Utne. Sometimes I would set up an account at a site and it would sit until I could figure out what to do with it (still haven't figured out Pinterest).
Social sites online come and go. There are problems that nobody has fully solved, like how to deal with people who simply want to kick things over and be an asshat, and yet still respect that whole freedom thing. There also seems to be a bit of an attention span thing; after a while, what seemed interesting and new in a site or online person gets old and predictable. I've watched my audience turn over fairly regularly. I don't think I'm pissing anyone off; it's just that if you've been reading me for ten years, I probably won't surprise you any time soon.
The old conventional wisdom was that a social site burns out in about two years. Facebook beat the odds by turning into something else, and Twitter... well, I'm not sure what it's done. I've been telling you for weeks that I've been warming up my Bluesky account, and this week, a whole lot of people made that jump. Millions of people, though still a drop in a Twitter-sized bucket. But my followers there have gone from about 100 to closing-in-on-700 in a week. Meanwhile, my Twitter numbers have been slowly dropping as many people leave completely.
There are lots of reasons to abandon Twitter, including its conversion as of 11/15 to an AI training source. I'm not leaving entirely (there's too much that I still want to see, and I don't deal with the level of abuse and crappery that some do) but I think it's fine and natural that folks do. Meanwhile, Bluesky has drawn enough people to become interesting, unlike certain failed attempts of the past (looking at you, Google+). Hard to know what comes next; the only thing I'm certain of is that it will be something different.
Sorry--that was a lot. Here's some reading from the week.
There were a zillion takes on Trump and the education department this week. Alyson Klein at EdWeek had a good look at one particular aspect of this looming question-- how does he enforce a woke prohibition?
Nancy Bailey looks at how Trumpy education policy may affect students with special needs.
The GOP hammered on trans athletes, and Democrats let them do it. Rachel Cohen digs into the issue, and the Democratic middle-ground proposal that everyone just sort of forgot about. At Vox.
A new study says that choice really helped education in Denver. Not so fast, says Thomas Ultican.
Nancy Flanagan suggests that Germany might have a thing or two to teach us about dealing with a problematic past.
Jan Resseger is asking the question and is, as usual, doing all her homework to come up with answers.
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider also consults the Trump tilted crystal ball.
More Florida shenanigans, explained by Sue Kingery Woltanski.
Come on, Ohio. Be better. Everyone else? Pay attention.
One Alabama school system responds to rise in immigration: ‘What they deserve’
Rebecca Griesbach reporting for AL.com tells the story of how one school district rises to meet the challenge of immigrant children in schools.
At Forbes.com this week, I also did a Trump take, pointing out that a contradiction in his plan means that he will not be able to do all the awful things he wants to. Also, Adam Laats has written a fabulous book about the first failed con-man driven education reform in this country.
I've been reviving my participation at Bluesky. If you're over there, look me up at @palan57.bsky.social
As always, I invite you to subscribe on substack. It will always be free and it makes it easy to get all my stuff in your inbox.
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