My public writing tends to be mostly about education technology, and the craft of nonfiction writing. My interests are more varied than that brief description would suggest, but to avoid muddying the waters I either attempt to skew an article so that it fits into one of those categories, or not publish it at all.
Therefore, after a year of weighing up the pros and cons I decided to start a couple of publications on Substack. One is about literature and life in general, and the other one is focused on education more generally, not specifically education technology. Here is some more information on each of them.
Eclecticism
So far I've published articles on there about McCarthyism, National Introverts Week, The Bartleby Response, a (very) short story, a teacher who inspired me to go into teaching, self-respect, my worst date ever and others.
What now?
This is the education-related one, where I’ve posted articles about teacher retention, the value of artefacts in teaching, book reviews and others.
There is also a sub-section called Head of Department in which I have published, and will continue to publish, articles about, erm, being a head of department. The Head of Department articles published so far include a generic job description, an article about helping staff move on, one on the various types of toxic leadership and one about financial control which includes a sample spreadsheet (for paying subscribers only).
Some aspects of these publications, like being able to comment on all articles, and extras like spreadsheets, are available only to paying subscribers, but most of the articles published so far are free.
Although it probably reduces the number of subscriptions a bit, I've set it up as a double opt-in, because I believe that to be good practice. What that means is, if you enter your email address into the Subscribe button, you will receive an email asking you to confirm it.
I do hope you will check it out. I have a number of articles planned. Some of them are about education, but more general than education technology, some are about being an effective Head of Department, and others are more wide-ranging.
And that is where the title of this article comes in. I derive much of my personal philosophy from blues, disco and rock songs (I’m a simple soul). In this case, I have been inspired by one entitled, 'If it don't fit, don't force it'. I've decided that I no longer want to try and make a general article about education (or anything else) somehow relevant to education technology, or the craft of nonfiction writing, just so that I have an excuse for publishing it on one of my blogs!
Here are those links again: