A new classification of articles and an invitation to readers to write guest articles.

Having been writing this blog for a little over a year, I thought it might be a good time to review progress and make any course corrections that might be required.

Over the year, I have tended to write increasingly long articles of 5,000 to 12,000 words. What I am really writing here is not so much a blog as a book—and I make no apology for that because I think the subject merits this kind of extensive discussion. At the same time, I am aware that this extensive writing might not always be the most digestible of formats and might get in the way of the more continuous, interactive comment that makes blogs more of a topical and discursive—and less of a a weighty, expositive—medium.

In order to address this issue, I am proposing to differentiate my posts, creating three categories as follows.

Substantive articles will still provide the main backbone of the blog, containing an original and thorough argument, generally of between 5,000 and 10,000 words.

Topical asides will provide a much shorter and more reflection, often in response to an event or to someone else’s blog.

Guest posts will introduce original content written for this blog by other people.

If you would like to submit such a guest article, have a look at these submission requirements. Guest posts do not have to support my point of view—on the contrary, I welcome people who want to challenge my point of view—but they do have to contain a proper argument and they do have to address the sort of issues that are being addressed elsewhere on the blog.

By supplementing my own longer articles with a more regular diet of topical comments and guest posts, I hope that we can take the debate about education technology that we so badly need to have, up to another level. If you have views on anything in this blog which you cannot do justice to in a simple comment, please do consider writing a guest article.