So last week marked 10 years since our first blog post, a full decade of writing and sharing online. As we’ve said many times before, it’s been an amazing journey. We don’t think we could have imagined the many ways that blogging was going to change our lives, in a learning sense, in a professional sense, and in a personal sense. We still find all of it strangely bizarre, like we’ve been pulled along on this most excellent ride that has simply been a privilege to experience. We’re so very fortunate to be doing something that we love, something that constantly challenges us and keeps us on the edge of our brains, and something that connects us to such passionate and smart people both online and offline on a regular basis. We are, in a word, humbled. Thanks to all of you who have supported our learning these last 10 years.

That said, we’ve been thinking for quite a while now that we need to change things up a bit in terms of the way we’re sharing with the world. It’s become a struggle to blog in long form here. Yet we’ve not found the short form of Twitter to be anywhere close to a substitute for the extended conversations that take place here. (And to be honest, Twitter is a totally crappy archive of reading and thinking.) While we’ve tried to like it, Facebook just is not a place that we find ourselves wanting to spend much if any of our time. (We have a theory as to why, but we’ll share that in another post.) More and more as we think about “curating” our learning world, we find ourselves wanting to stow all the good stuff in one place, all the blog posts, quotes, pictures, graphics, photos, bookmarks, videos and other snips that we find interesting. We know we could do that here. But here’s the other thing…we’re also in constant need of fresh voices and perspectives. We’ve been pretty much connected to the same fairly small group for a long time now. Not that there’s anything wrong with those folks, but we need, we want to branch out.

So, we’ve decided to pretty much bring our run here at Weblogg-ed to a close. We’re not taking the site down, but for all of those reasons and more, we’re moving our writing over to a new space on Tumblr that feels like, to us at least, a better space for the kinds of writing and curating and linking that we want to do. We’ve been playing there for the last month or so, connecting with some of the people in that community, and we’re looking forward to connecting even more. We’re feeling a sense of energy that really appeals to us, and while there are some drawbacks (lack of RSS feeds for individual tags, for instance) it just seems like the space we want to be at the moment. We know there is some danger in the all eggs in one basket model…but we’ve got a post brewing about that as well. And we’re not ignorant of the effects the switch may have on our “findability” in the larger webspace. But we’re also not so worried about that. We sincerely hope you’ll follow us there and continue to engage in these conversations around change.

And finally, another new book.

Before you say it, we completely understand the irony of a book of collected blog posts, which is exactly what Corwin Press is publishing in August with about 40 or so of the most commented on pieces found here in this space over the last 10 years. The idea for doing the book was broached by our editor at ISTE last year, and at first, we blanched at the prospect. But we came around for three main reasons. First, while it may seem kind of strange to those who have read this blog in the past, there are still lots of people out there who have yet to entertain the notion of change that this collection argues for. It’s the kind of “meet them where they are” strategy, and if this book can help do that, great. Second, it will give us a chance to help some schools that might be in need of technology or infrastructure to make those changes happen. We’ve decided that all of the after tax profits that this book may generate will be used to fund learning initiatives at deserving schools or organizations. We’re not talking Bill Gates dollars here, obviously, but we’ll report out next April or May what the totals are and what the projects look like. (If you have any suggestions on how that giving might be structured, let us know.) And finally, on a personal note, as much as we talk and write about the future of the written form, we find great honor in being asked to put this book together. It may be an anachronism by the time our grandkids are around to see it, and we know there is little or no real reason to print it out, but there’s still a piece of us that finds a printed book inspiring. Maybe it will spark some conversations about the grandparents down the road.

To all of you who have stopped by here over the last decade, we can’t thank you enough for reading and sharing with us. Here’s to new beginnings and even more powerful conversations ahead. Keep changing the world.