Start your new year with a new challenge...

Rope Climbing, Santa Monica flickr photo by Boss Tweed shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

A new year brings an educator fresh opportunities.

If you have a blog that's been gathering dust, or you feel intrigued by the idea of starting one, this post is for you.  Join over twenty teachers across seven countries who have signed on for the five month portfolio challenge.  If you join this August, you will be joining us for the fourth round (but don't worry, we will have new challenges coming soon).

Why should you consider this challenge?

George Couros has written about the why extensively, check out his blog here. For a snapshot of his rationale keep reading:

 Sometimes, for my own clarification, I go back and read my own blog to look at what I have done and how I can continuously work on it to improve. This transparent way of learning is something that I believe can not only improve the teaching profession as a whole (for example, take a look at the conversation on this Pernille Ripp post from today), but is something that could really improve learning for our students.

Each month we use a different set of 'thought-bait'

The prompts for your post are all included (but please, rebels are welcome too-go ahead and blog to the beat of your own drummer.) Here are our seven prompts for August:

Once your post is ready...

You are asked to kindly drop it off here by August 27th.  The posts are then bundled into reading and commenting teams (see here for an example from June).

If you have any questions about joining, please leave a comment below. If you aren't ready to compose your own post, but you'd like to join as a reader, we'd welcome that with open arms--please leave a comment and I'll be sure to get you the bundle of posts at the end of the month.

June Round Up: The Networked Educator Challenge

"The biggest difference I found was this way in which people are aware of one another while they are learning, and the way in which they connect and build and improve."

Lights flickr photo by Jule'Kill shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

We have made it to month two of our five-month educator-portfolio challenge.

This month we welcome a few new educators to the group (so if you are reading this, and you are keen to join, please leave a comment below and we will be sure to include you in updates for month three). For this month, the optional prompts were posted here.  Every month we will have prompts, and every month they are merely suggested ways to frame your post.  For July, our participants have helped to suggest prompts, and you can find those here (feel free to tell us about your suggestion for a prompt in the comment section).

If you are looking for added support with Wordpress, this playlist has a wonderful collection of resource to browse.

Without further ado, here are the June bundles.

Sharing flickr photo by Andrii Zymohliad shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license 

May Round Up: The Networked Teacher Learner

Our five-month challenge started here, and now we are lucky to have our first rotation of what Silvia Tolisano refers to as 'Mulling it Over.' 

...an online learning community is a manifestation of connectivism as knowledge is distributed throughout the community of people and devices. A blog would serve as a connectivist tool as it facilitates interaction between peer and social communities of learners, continuity of conversations and allows for anytime, anyplace, anywhere learning (Garcia et al., 2015). Other tenets of connectivism addressed through a blog include the ability to involve external experts, control of the environment by the learner as they make and maintain their own connections, and the shift in the role of the teacher as students become accountable to one another (Garcia, Brown, & Elbeltagi, 2012).From CONNECTIVISM AND BLOGGING by Madeleine Brookes

So before we dig into our first cycle of reading and commenting, please pause and consider the words of the recent student speaker, Kavya, in her address at the Class of 2017 graduation:

"A legacy is not always just about you leave behind, but is also about what other people carry away from you."

With this in mind, here are our first blog-bundles for May.