February 2009 Archives

Today marks the end of the Blog-A-Day Challenge for February... well except that I owe one extra post for my missing earlier this week. All I can say is I'm really happy, yet have mixed feelings. I love blogging. It helps me sort through thoughts, lets others gain a glimpse of what I do and what interests me, and (maybe/hopefully) contributes to the greater good as far as advancing learning. That all said, I got to the point halfway through the month of not wanting to blog each day because it felt so forced. If I had a busy day at work, went to Civil Air Patrol, got home at 11 and was dead tired, the last thing that I would have done was blog. But I was forced... ok I forced myself. Those were the rules.

I'm excited because now when I have ideas I've been thinking, "OK this has potential for a good blog post." I just won't blog every day. Kudos to those of you that can do that. BIG KUDOS to the Schreyer Bloggers that stuck it out this month. Not only that, but they posted EVERY DAY. Even weekends! They are the true winners. Hopefully they take away the lesson that blogging doesn't have to be a huge deal or amount of time. Something simple to post and share can mean a lot.

I may challenge myself again sometime... just not in the near future. I feel refreshed knowing that I can post and it's not "required" per se. I'm more intrigued already. I hope all of you that took part had fun. I know I did.

Today's learners multitask all day, every day. They don't have time for subject matter that they don't think is relevant to what their goals are. Think instant gratification. Penn State takes this into account when creating courses and lessons throughout the University.

Real-life simulations are a great way to engage today's learners while helping them to understand the value of the material being presented. One great example of this is the Trading Room in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State. The Trading Room includes real-time ticker data and stock boards, as well as the computer systems and software needed for simulated trading. Many business majors find themselves managing portfolios throughout the semester and interacting in situations that are similar to those found on an active trading floor.

Another hands-on simulation takes place in many supply chain, business, and executive education courses at Penn State. The Beer Game, created by a group of professors at MIT in the 1960's, simulates the supply chain of beer through the factory, distributor, wholesaler, and retailer stages. Students typically work in pairs with 8-12 people per supply chain. The groups at each stage must make sure to keep beer in stock without crowding the warehouse. The bullwhip effect takes place when orders spike or drop creating instability of the overall system. A debrief occurs at the end for students to formalize understanding of supply chains, business decisions, and outside influences on their positions.

For more information:
Smeal Trading Room
The Beer Game Simulation

Matt Weiss (Graduate Assistant, English) and I used part of our weekly English 202C project meeting today to write up one of two (200-250 word) submissions for a paper on the top five challenges in teaching and learning with technology. Below is what we have so far. We'll add a simple "for more information" piece to the bottom once I get the sample project site squared away and I think we're close to done!

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Education Technology Services (ETS) at Penn State is working with the English department to redesign the upper-level composition courses that are required of all undergraduates. Students in these courses are asked to produce reports, resumes, and other professional documents that are relevant to their future professional careers.

Faculty who teach these courses realized that the current format was not preparing students for working in the Digital Age. Employers expect new employees to be able to do more than just submit paper reports. Stuart Selber, Director of Composition, charged ETS with "bringing composition at Penn State into the 21st Century."

Using the Blogs at Penn State platform and Digital Commons studios, students are creating online portfolios, using multimedia to enhance assignments, and reflecting on digital literacy through individual and course blogs. What was a paper resume is now an interactive professional Web space. What was a paper set of instructions is now an audio and/or video "how-to" guide. Where once students would have only limited interaction with each other, they now provide constant feedback, link to additional resources, and create a community of information that expands beyond the classroom.

Early reports from instructors indicate that while students require some training on the new technologies, they are more personally invested in the material produced, and the assignments are "much more rich than in the way the course was previously taught."

I failed yesterday. I didn't write a blog post. It's not that I gave up. I had a crazy busy day and just plain forgot. And I'm quite mad at myself for it. I'm taking Allan's suggestion and making up my missed post as well as writing an extra one. That'll teach me. I'm still mad though.

Yesterday I was contacted by Carie Page from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative to give some examples of what Penn State is doing to address the top five challenges in teaching and learning with technology. The challenges are:

1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation.
2. Developing 21st century literacies (information, digital, and visual) among students and faculty.
3. Reaching and engaging today's learner.
4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT.
5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning with technology in an era of budget cuts.

I met Carie at the EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference when I shared some examples of introducing real-life simulations as teaching tools for engaging 21st today's learners. Carie remembered and contacted me when she started writing a paper about the top five challenges and what various universities are doing to address each challenge.

In any case the top challenges are what we at ETS strive to address every day, so essentially we could answer all five. That doesn't make for well-rounded discussion though so we're hoping to publish under two (numbers two and three above). Even better, we'll be listed as co-authors if our submissions are used!

It's Week Three of the Blog-A-Day Challenge. This means we're 3/4 of the way done. My brother, Dan, Allan, Jeff, any other marathoner... call this time (mile 18-22) "The Wall." It's where you just don't think you can possibly go anymore. But, at the same time, you already have so much invested in the journey that there's no way you're going to give in. Five more posts. Four after this one. I can totally do this.

I spent last Wednesday night and all weekend at an Incident Command Course for Operational First Responders. The course discusses strategies and tactics for staffing the command post (where the decisions are made) for major incidents and natural disasters. The course is designed to include people from many response agencies rather than just provide an inside view. This helps us "play nice" and also understand the needs and goals of other responders. Fire departments are obviously interested in putting out the fire. EMS are the ones that want to help the victims. Police want to control a perimeter and manage traffic congestion. The Civil Air Patrol (the US Air Force Auxiliary that I volunteer for) wears many hats. If it's a plane crash, first we want to find it. If it's found, we need to secure the scene for the FAA/NTSB, etc. If the emergency location beacon is still on, we need to shut it off. If the situation calls for a ground team (for searching, filling sandbags during floods, etc) we want to know what equipment we need and where we're going.

Incidents require an incident command system, and a large incident requires all agencies to work together to solve the issues in the quickest, safest way possible. This is the reason for Unified Command. You put one person from each agency onto the decision-making team (3-7 people) and they make informed, collaborative decisions. Everyone has their specialty and everyone is needed. The mission will not flow (or survive) if this doesn't take place.

I think many of the basic principles taught in this course are very similar to basic principles we need to remember while doing our work. Faculty want to teach... the best way possible hopefully. Students want to learn and not have their time wasted. Designers want to improve courses. So are we all thinking of each other and taking other backgrounds and needs into account? 

Since I'm an instructional designer I'm going to keep my examples based on that. In a course redesign, designers may rush toward making changes without thinking of who the other players are and how the changes affect each person. For example, if we were adding a new technology, are the faculty ready to be the front man for the new teaching process? Are the students ready to learn what is needed to use the technology? What other groups could this trickle to? Training Services? Are they ready? How do we make it the best for all involved?

I'm not using this post to answer these questions. Just to merely get people to take a step to the "30,000ft level" of the situation. Notice everyone down there. Write down their names and draw lines connecting all players to the other people they will interact with. Almost like a cloud chart. You may think "ok dumb," but it works. Just try it. Visualize yourself looking down at everyone else. You'll be surprised at who you may see from above that you didn't notice over the heads of those standing next to you when you were among the group.  

A number of people in my office have been experimenting with 12seconds over the last week or two and were making some really cool video posts. 12seconds is very much like it sounds. You can log onto the site and make a 12-second video recording of yourself and post it to your Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you, like many in my office, own an iPhone you can download the iPhone App and upload from your phone. In this case you can take three photographs (either snap pics right then or choose from your photo library).

Here was the first attempt:

[iPhone] Untitled on 12seconds.tv

So that didn't go too terribly bad. Actually it was easy. Definitely a creative new take on your average blog post!

So Thursday night's are my Civil Air Patrol night. Civil Air Patrol is the auxiliary of the United States Air Force. The biggest part of my evening comes from working with the cadet program (kids ages 12-21). Tonight was PT (physical training) and emergency services (specifically learning how to put someone on a backboard, strap them down, and cart them out of any situation). Some of the cadets have started to struggle at their PT tests and, thanks to Allan, I had this thought in my head about a local triathlon this summer and suggested everyone enter. This will give us a goal to reach when training each week.

So I had just listened to one of the cadets talk about leadership and followership. You have to first be a good follower to then be a good leader. In one of my weak moments, thinking I should inspire these kids, I told them I'd do the triathlon with them if anyone was interested. Hands shot straight up, of course. And now I'm in trouble. I'm pretty sure the first ten laps in the pool will be fine. It's just the other 20 that worry me. Biking is fine. I will blow by those that left me to sink in the pool. But the run? I don't run unless being chased.

Maybe this is my call for a chaser.

In any case, being a leader isn't easy. It is meant to be a challenge. But challenging yourself isn't all there is. Challenging others to improve is what make us better. So yes, I may be worried that I'm going to start to sink in the pool. But I know the back stroke and have determined that it is a solid back-up plan. I'll be a follower. The bike, love. I will lead. The run, my challenge. Their challenge. Our challenge. We will learn together. 

Before I post actual rubrics that can be followed for grading blog posts I thought I'd share a unique way to aid in determining what qualities to grade on. I got permission from one of the English 202C pilot instructors to share her post asking students to comment on the different types of blogs and how to go about grading them.

Visit the helpful Web site she lists and then go through the comments that the students left. Most of them are very good quality and quite insightful. The best part about this? The instructor now has a rubric to go by while the students feel that they had some control in course content/assessment. A win-win for all involved!

This may not be a traditional blog post but I think it's important and am intrigued nonetheless. I'm wondering how people in the education sector are assessing blog posts (for classes using blogs for blogging, online resumes, etc.). Are rubrics really different from traditional paper assignments?

I'm working with a couple of different courses that are using blogs in different ways so I already have a bit of an idea. What's interesting so far is that blogs are not really treated differently from normal coursework. I'm waiting for permission to use their cases and words and I'll post more info. I promise.

But until then, what do you think? Keep in mind, you don't have to be using blogs in a classroom to answer this question. Just think about it and share your thoughts!

I was asked twice today if the blogs platform can be used for anything useful in high-enrollment courses. Surprisingly, yes. The first thought that comes to mind is, "How can blogs possibly be useful when you have say 200 people in a course and only an instructor and maybe a TA?" Well I happen to have the answer (and 1.5 semesters worth of trial) in my Comm 180 project.

Comm 180 is a course on the survey of mass communications. Only one section is offered per semester, leading to an enrollment between 200 and 350 students. The instructor wanted to make his course more open and find creative ways to use new technologies to enhance learning. So what did we do? The first semester we introduced blogs as extra credit. It was a very simple "opt-in" for us to gauge interest in the blogs system as well as a test for us to understand if and how we could make the project manageable. Roughly 65% of the 350 students chose to take part in the extra-credit blogging and did a wonderful job. The posts were very meaningful and insightful. We surveyed the students at the end of the semester and the blogs were an overwhelming success.

This semester, based on the success of blogs as extra credit, the instructor wanted to make blogging mandatory. The instructor is doing something unheard of in a class of 200. Giving a participation grade. Students are giving ten topics (one per week throughout the semester) as prompts and have the week to add their thoughts and comments. Each week is worth up to five points with a maximum of 30 that can be earned. Basically, if the student gives meaningful answers to six posts, they have maximum participation points.

So I can hear the crowd asking again (maybe yelling now), "But how can we truly manage this?" Our tag aggregation tool is the trick. Have students use a common class tag (for the Comm 180 class last semester we used Comm180Fall08 as a tag on all posts). The give out a tag for each weekly topic (say B1 for week 1, B2 for week 2, etc.). Now plug these into the tag aggregation tool and voila! You get back all posts that were written for a specific week by that class. Since the instructor and TA only has to look in one place (instead of 200) for the information, it was very easy to check posts and give credit.

I hope this helps someone out there. Let me know if you have any questions!

So I went to a workshop this afternoon called, "Love Teaching Generation NeXT: Discovering Teaching Strategies that Play to our Students' Strengths and Interests." It was cosponsored by The Center for Excellence in Writing and The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence and I thought, "Hey I wonder what type of audience shows up for these things." And second, "Hey this will be good blog topic!"

In any case I'm really glad I went. It was only supposed to be an hour but everyone was having such a good time it went over by 30 minutes! A lot of what was said was stuff I already know about how the current generation prefers to learn, but it was interesting listening to all of the faculty present talk about what they notice, what their biggest issues are, and what their questions are. We work with (and for) faculty so often but a lot of times it is just a select few in a select department that you really interact with. Hearing from so many different colleges and views was very refreshing. I want to keep going to these workshops now for sure.

I spoke up on a few things that I'm well-versed on from my master's research and also mentioned my project work with the English 202C redesign that I spend much of my time on. It still amazes me when I realize how highly our department is looked up when it comes to instructional design and cutting-edge technology use. The program finished and I had four people surround me asking me how to get involved with us for instructional design, for more information on the blogs project, for implementing new technology into courses, and even one that wanted to tell me they know about my work with the Schreyer Honors College blogging project being more than he'd ever hoped for.

What I got from the workshop was 1) a total boost in ego for a Friday and (2) reaffirmation that the work we do affects A LOT of people... in a great way. It's situations like these that remind you who you are working for (students, faculty, staff), why you have a job, and why that job is amazing. You sometimes lose sight of that in the middle of a project when you're busy working on day-to-day operations to keep the project moving forward.

So my Friday advice: Take a step back. Remember what a great opportunity we have to help others. Not everyone has this opportunity. Remember that.

11:52pm. I just made it. Thursdays are crazy. And when you aren't feeling 100% it makes it even worse. I haven't caught the full blow of whatever is going around but I'm tired. Totally drained. And it makes focusing quite the challenge. I start at work (obviously), go to class 2:30-5:30, and then Civil Air Patrol 6:30-9:30 or 10.

My biggest issue with being tired today was class. We have a paper due next week that I thought the topic was totally clear last week and am now all but totally confused this week. I found myself unable to stay focused on the conversations being had and left at 5:45 thinking, "So wait. What was I supposed to learn today?" This is probably going to be a rough weekend hashing that all out. Oh well. Really looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday.

Not sure that this post actually counts because it makes no sense and adds no value other than me realizing that learning is probably useless when you're tired. It's 12:05am and that officially makes it my birthday. So we're playing by my rules today and I say this counts!

We had our monthly (give or take a month or so) staff meeting today and Cole started out by thanking Allan for getting us into this Blog-A-Day mess again. I wanted to first add my thanks to Allan (in the most sarcastic way possible), and second, ask why we like to torture ourselves. I lasted a week and a half in August when I tried this. That to me is failure. If you know me, I don't like failure. Things that are rewarding are not easy.

The funny thing is that once the month is over I'll thank Allan (without the sarcasm). This challenge is so hard I just want to stop. But I can't. Because if I do I'll have to try it again... and I'm already 1/3 of the way through and refuse to repeat!

I don't mean for this to be a rant. I want to get across that while blogging every day is rough, it is extremely rewarding. I'm a lot more reflective when I blog. Granted being forced to blog every day makes it seem like a chore, but once the month is over I think I'll have better blogging and reflection habits. Not to mention I feel more connected and contributing to community thought.

I'm in a class this semester that has me questioning academic terms that I took for granted: learning, experience, education, etc. I posted my frustration/excitement about it and Cole and Elizabeth both responded that they are now thinking about it also... and Cole might even ask the community to respond with their thoughts in video form. Amazing how community (and a simple chore for a month) contribute to our overall gain.

So anyway, that all said, I'm continuing with the challenge... even though I don't like it anymore. But it'll make me better in the end. So thanks, Allan (I'll let individuals decide on the sarcasm there).

So I came to the realization today that I'm a pretty good "BS'er." That's not meant in a bad way. I just taught two classes today how to set up their professional Web sites as online resumes/portfolios. The problem is that the back end of the system was experience some degradation issues and I found myself with about four to five minutes between each step. There are some people that that would totally throw off track and they'd have a horrible time. I became consciously aware today that it didn't bother me at all. Ok so what I wanted to happen didn't. Well that sucks. What else useful can I share with my audience while we wait? I had no shortage of topics.

I think that this reflection has a lot to do with some of the classes I've taken and volunteer work I do. You learn quickly that what is supposed to happen in an ideal situation is not what happens in real life. That's why we adapt. I train a lot in Civil Air Patrol for missions involving search and rescue, disaster relief, etc. I coach 62 college girls rugby. I can tell you that no matter how many times we run a tabletop mission training exercise, or execute a new play in practice, when you get to real life it doesn't play out that way.

The best thing that we can do is look for our next best option. This "thinking on your feet" is something you learn through repetition. It's almost like chess players looking five moves ahead of where they are now. "Ok. If this happens I'll do this. But if this happens I'll have to do this and watch for this."

Don't worry about being perfect. Nobody is. Be confident. That's what matters. Don't freak out if there's an error or something's taking longer than expected. Act like you knew that was going to happen... or that it was a surprise but you were ready for it. The confident attitude is 3/4 of the battle. Become a good BS'er. In a good way.

The Blog-A-Day Challenge is rough. It's meant to be. It forces me to think. The hardest part of the challenge is coming up with something meaningful to write about. I don't just want to re-cap my work day. I want to add to the learning of others.

That said, I worked on my online resume again today. I added links on the Education page back to the College of Education and College of Communications. On the Experience page I added links to the departments I've worked for. On the contact page I added a professional head shot. Finally, I added a Work Samples page and embedded and linked to things I've written, created, or helped to create. I'm going to use the front "home" area to write an objectives section like I'm trying to get the job I have now. These changes are simple but I think (hope) that the changes show students how innovative they can get with their online space.

I'm not sure my additions/changes to my new resume blog really count but in my head they do. I'm taking the time to determine how best to use the platform, and am sharing it with the students of our pilot English 202C sections (an anyone else interested or stumbling upon). I hope this inspires others. I will continue to post updates throughout the month.

So I was intrigued with Allan's post yesterday about his Crucial Conversations training. Just in case Allan stops reading after three sentences I'll put a nudge nudge, hint hint in here that I'd like to go this training to experience it for myself (pretty pretty please). Now that that's taken care of I should state first of all that I have a M.Ed and am back to working toward my PhD in education as well. Maybe we people are just nuts and like to think things through but I consider myself a pretty logical thinker.

From Allan's post I take that the Crucial Conversations training he went to basically provided a model for collaboration with an audience that (could possibly) have differing objectives, view points, personalities, etc. I always want to know more about this because I work with a wide audience (students, faculty, and other staff in my day job; parents, kids, and even Air Force officers in my volunteer work). Communication, understanding, and collaboration are vital in all aspects.

Now I want to get really personal with Allan's post. He said, "the trainer said (paraphrasing) "education doesn't work, you have to put what you've learned into practice"." I fully agree with Allan's response (and I don't have to... we both value differing views... in fact we enjoy them because we usually learn more). Allan said, "...I disagree with this statement in that my idea of education includes putting what you have heard, seen, tried, discovered, etc... into practice."

So that statement brings me to the title of this entry. Did, perhaps, the instructor mean instruction and not education? I can understand if you don't learn something from simple classroom instruction. You can learn basic concepts... the "how things will be in an ideal situation." But can that instruction even come close to preparing you for a real-world experience? Education seems much broader. I may have learned something in the classroom, but I don't consider myself fully educated on the subject until I'm able to take everything and put it into practice for myself.

I know maybe I'm going to come across nitpicky but my class this semester is on adult learning theory and in three weeks I've had to question what "learning" is, what "experience" is and how giving someone the facts is not necessarily telling someone the truth.

I've just added "education" to my questionable list. This should be fun. 

So this many be a smaller blog post but today I was working creating a whole new blog! To be more specific I started moving my paper resume to an online format to use as a sample for the English 202 pilot section students.

The "blog" tab is not working yet (well it's working but has zero content) so just ignore that. I created Education, Experience, and Skills tabs as well as added my contact information. I want to add a head shot and some background information as well. I think the students would benefit from an "Objective" tab suggesting what they want to find as a job, but since I'm not looking for a job I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that yet. Maybe I'll have to just stick something there as an example ...with some sort of disclaimer noting it's fake so that I don't totally freak out half of the universe. Any suggestions would be helpful.

In any case this online resume is supposed to be pretty straightforward and easy for an undergraduate to view, understand the concepts of, and use as a model for creating their own portfolio. Hopefully it helps!

We've had a lot of interest over the new "professional Web site" template available through the Blogs@Penn State. The biggest question, however, is "what can it do for me?" One of the biggest potential uses is that of an e-portfolio or resume.

My current work with the English 202C course redesign has lead me to explore ways that the students can incorporate the blogs platform (using the professional template) into the course in order to give them a "portfolio" of their work to show to potential employers. I visited the pilot sections and gave them an hour-long "setting up your blogs" class and sent them on their way. Their instructors were then tasking them with posting their assignments to the platform throughout the semester to build an e-portfolio.

The second assignment of the semester in English 202C is creating resumes and cover letters for potential job applications and interviews. The students had such a great (and easy) time creating their first course blog that we suggested creating a second blog specifically as an online resume. The tabs across the top could then be the sections of a resume (for example Objective, Education, Experience, Course Work, References, About Me, etc).

Here's a great sample that one of the instructors has already created!

In any case I love this idea! I think it has huge potential. I'll be creating my own personal version in the coming days for a few reasons. 1) To use as another sample when I go out to promote this, and 2) selfishly for myself to be able to keep my growing knowledge in a place that I can reflect upon it and share/get thoughts from others.

Stay tuned!

So I've been asked over and over in the last few weeks if there was a way to embed audio/video files without having to sign-up for a YouTube account or another similar service. There's still not a totally seamless way to do this, but for small files... there's a workaround if you can do a bit of coding.

It took a colleague asking again today for more info, and, while I don't pretend to be a coder, my husband does. So five minutes later he's got a sample code off of a file posted to his personal space.

More info on the embed tags can be found here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/embed2.html

Here's a promotional video for the Blogs@Penn State posted to my personal space. I used a file named blogs.mov inside my main www folder.  The code snippet looks like this:

<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" scale="tofit" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab" height="365" width="640">
<param name="qtsrc" value="rtsp://www.personal.psu.edu/elc134/blogs.mov" />
<param name="SRC" value="www.personal.psu.edu/elc134/blogs.mov" />
<param name="AUTOPLAY" value="false" />
<param name="CONTROLLER" value="true" />
<embed src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/elc134/blogs.mov" qtsrc="http://www.personal.psu.edu/elc134/blogs.mov" scale="tofit" autoplay="false" controller="true" href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime" height="365" width="640">
</object>

And here's the video:



Note that the class id and code base above are for QuickTime. You can Google the proper info for other forms fairly easily. Here's one for Flash as an example.

Keep in mind that there are reasons we suggest using YouTube or another service for your videos. 1) You only have so much personal space. When you fill it up, you're done. 2) There are many types of video files and not all of them will easily play for everyone. Just remember who your audience is.

Today marks the beginning of the February Blog-A-Day Challenge! I attempted this once before last August and made it a mere seven posts in before realizing it was a little harder than I thought to manage making meaningful posts while working on putting the finishing touches on two major redesign projects before the start of the semester. I've been talking with Allan Gyorke and the Schreyer Bloggers since then and think we're all ready for this next installment. We chose February because it's the shortest month and somehow that makes us feel better. In reality it'll only be one less post than August required.

I was new to my position in August and had a number of things spinning in every direction that I think make a lot more sense to me now. I've also had a lot more experience writing, reflecting, using the blog platform, etc. so I feel more comfortable and able to complete the challenge. That and I refuse failure.

My favorite game to play is "I Win." It has very simple rules. I win. Generally a lot. It's not meant to be competitive with others. It's to make me competitive with myself. I find that I accomplish more and continue to set myself to higher standards this way. In any case I'm still sore at myself for not accomplishing the blog-a-day in August and there's no way I'm going to let it happen again. I hope that others will decide that playing "I Win" for themselves will be an inspiration.

So what do I hope to write about? As a general rule these posts need to be meaningful. This means a simple description of what I did that day or a link to an outside source do not count. I need to write about what something meant to me, something new I learned, something I'm working on that I'm having trouble with, etc. Thoughts. Plain and simple. 
 
Here are my other rules for posting (stolen and modified from Cole and Allan).

• At least one post on this blog, every work day in February -- this means Monday - Friday. Do the math and you'll see I've just committed to 20 posts! 
  
• I can make more than one post here or additional posts on other sites, but those don't count toward anything.
• I'm not planning on missing a day, but if I do, then I plan to keep going with the challenge and making up the missed post (and beating myself up over it for days).
• Posts have to be more substantial than "check this out [link]".  Links, videos, images, and other embedded objects are fine, but they need to have some original commentary.
• I hope to stick to posts about education technology or education in general. I don't have many thoughts yet but I will keep the Red Sox and rugby out of it no matter how "meaningful" I feel they could be. I want the posts to be meaningful to my work with Penn State or the adult learning theory course I'm taking.
  
• As Cole mentions in his post, invitations are not required.  If you want to join in, then just start writing.  If you don't want to participate, don't.  If you want to start your own challenge or make your own rules, go ahead.  No one owns the Web.
• My tag on all my posts will be "one post a day".