Well, we have been successful for three years in our little 9x9x25 Challenge!
Along with over 100 wonderful posts about teaching and learning, we had our nice house plants from Justin Brereton and we added some nice ceramic pots from Tom Schumaker this year. And some cool shirts from Canvas and conference bags from ITC. We had cookies and ice cream. Not sure how that can be topped? Our lunch should be nice. We will have 20 great faculty all sharing some time together. That is good.
In reading the three reflections we have finished so far is is clear that what we are doing is a good thing. We are lucky.
I am excited to see how a two hour lunch goes at a local venue rather than the “green room” Sodexo catered events we have done the past two years. Will it be different? Just cost more? What will we learn? How might we improve the Challenge for next year?
We are using the $1000 bucks we were given from the foundation. Is this a wise use of that money? What might be?
So many questions.
Things I wish I would have pushed a bit more…
Submitting some of the writing to Faculty Focus or the League for Innovation in the Community College. I know some of the awesome writing would have been happily accepted.
Sending our weekly Newsflashes. I sent out a Newsflash almost every week, but not each Monday. I think it helps to be a little predictable and consistent. One the other hand, too many Newsflashes can just make people mad…
We only had one video submission. The amazing Laura Cline shared a post about making videos. We have much to learn about using video and the web. I think next year I can remind faculty that it is an option and push a bit more to help uncertain faculty use video in a post or two.
Overall, we are on a great path. I am happy that some faculty aded the 9x9x25 Challenge to their professional PD plan and hope more see it as valuable enough to do the same. I was talking with Tina Luffman this morning about trying to get more faculty to write for the Webletter throughout the year and more to develop habits or writing. There are ways to make that more likely to be possible. But we can’t continue to do the same things we do.
Mostly, I am humbled at the talent, energy, and amazing people I work with everyday and I am honored to be able to know all of you.