Medium is a newer blogging service that I tried earlier this summer when it was in a closed beta. Last week Medium opened to everyone who has a Twitter account and an email address. The simplest explanation of Medium is that it is like Tumblr without the re-blogging feature and without themes. Medium provides a simple interface for writing your blog posts. You cannot change the theme or template for your blog. All posts appear in large, easy-to-read text on a white background. You can add pictures and links to your posts, but you cannot add any widgets or other customizations to your posts.

Medium allows you to follow categories of blog posts. Each of your own posts can be sent to a different category based upon its topic. One of the nice aspects of Medium posts is that when you’re browsing a category you can see an average read time on each post before you open it.

Applications for Education
Because Medium is an open platform students can explore any of the blog post categories on the site. This is similar to students clicking “next blog” on Blogger or clicking “Stumble” on Stumble Upon. For that reason I would hesitate to use it with students younger than sixteen. But for older students it could be a good, simple platform on which they write reflections about learning or respond to other blogging prompts that you give to them.