'Free range' blogging

Free range eggs are (ideally, though not when produced on a commercial level) eggs laid by chicken that “roam freely instead of being contained in any manner”. It are eggs laid by chicken that can dustbath to their hearts’ desire, eat a worm, nest in their favorite tree, and steal all ripe tomatoes from the gardener’s favorite tomato plant. In short, they are laid by chicken doing chickenish stuff in a chicken-friendly environment.

Battery cage eggs are eggs laid by chicken that are not allowed to behave like chicken in a not-chicken friendly factory environment.

This metaphor can easily be adapted to blogging, or to blogging-assisted learning. There are many reasons why people blog: to express themselves, as part of their personal knowledge management, to build networks, to market themselves and their services or products. These are bloggers doing bloggish stuff and profiting from a blogging-friendly environment (where instead of worms and comfortable spots in trees you find comments, trackbacks, blogrolls, and other blogging-crowd-pleasers).

But there is a dark side to blogging. It’s using blogging software in an entirely unbloggish way. ‘Free range’ blog posts follow generic rules, just as comic books or soap advertising does. ‘Battery cage’ blogs also follow generic rules – just of the wrong genres. ‘Free range’ blog posts are written for real (micro-)audiences. ‘Battery cage’ blogs are written for the teacher. ‘Free range’ blogs discuss content that interests the blogger or his/her audience, while the content of ‘battery cage’ blogs might be of interest to neither blogger nor audience. ‘Free range’ blog posts can be written for all kinds of purposes, but fulfilling detailed assessment criteria is not one of them.

The comparison has one major weak spot. While there is absolutely nothing positive you can say about battery cage eggs, non-free range (or not entirely free range) blogging might sometimes be justified. We might want to reap some of the benefits of blogging while at the same time having to make careful allowances to the educational system within which we work, for example. Just, please, let’s not confuse the two, especially not in research. If a certain range of benefits has been demonstrated for free range blogging, we cannot assume that the very same benefits translate directly into more regulated forms of blogging. It might be – but we cannot assume it does without further research. And, as a practitioner: If in doubt, go as much free-range as you can. The more free range, the more worms.