February Blog-A-Day Challenge

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".