The Wall Street Journal RRS Feed

I am currently subscribed to several different news outlets, including Fox News, which is primarily a general news service covering Politics. In choosing The Wall Street Journal, I felt this was going to be useful for both the class, as well as my personal life.

The Wall Street Journal, one of America's largest Newspapers recently overtook USA Today in daily circulation with just over 2 million subscribers. With numbers like this, I want to better understand what these people are reading and I'm not. WSJ.com currently covers a variety of Business related topics which will prove relevant to this class in that we are covering.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467004575464081263817628.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business

I look forward to keeping more up to speed on daily topics, that will impact my life and ultimately the way I learn and process information.

Washington Post RSS

I have chosen to follow the Washington Post RSS. I grew up in Northern Virginia, which is more related to the news of Washington D.C. national politics and events. When I moved to Richmond, it was shocking to not receive the same amount of national politics as the D.C. area news. Richmond being the state capital, the news is understandably more focused on state politics. In my opinion, the Washington Post RSS offers great national news, local news, videos, blogs and breaking news. It gives me good points of view. I cannot speak for any biases that may be perceived, as everyone has an opinion of what is biased. I would recommend this site.
www.washingtonpost.com

RSS Feed

For my RSS Feed I chose NPR. NPR’s mission statement pretty much sums up my reasoning for picking this source. Their mission statement is:

“The mission of NPR is to work in partnership with member stations to create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures. To accomplish our mission, we produce, acquire, and distribute programming that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression; we represent our members in matters of their mutual interest; and we provide satellite interconnection for the entire public radio system.”

I wanted to pick a reputable and proven source that would bring me information with a global perspective. I appreciate the diversity of their programming. I also appreciate that NPR holds their journalists to high ethical standards and practices ensuring that we are brought the news in a credible, honest, and impartial fashion.

http://www.npr.org/

NPR offers several RSS feeds to subscribe to. They are broken into categories of News Feeds, Program Feeds, and Individual Feeds. I am currently working in the Health Care field, so I chose some feeds that are related to my current job, as well as feeds that would relate to this class. I also subscribed to feeds that I just found interesting and stimulating. The feeds that I have subscribed to are: education, race, science, children’s health, health, health care, religion, and digital culture.

RSS Selection

For the last several years I have been receiving Breaking News from CNN, not via RSS though, I get emails. It has been great to get updates throughout the day. I was able to obtain updates on the shooting at VA Tech and relay them to my daughter who was secured in a classroom on that campus during that time. To pick an RSS feed to monitor for the next seven weeks (or longer), I decided to get breaking news from WWBT12, our local NBC news station. Here’s the address to subscribe to the feed (http://www.nbc12.com/Global/category.asp?C=177464&nav=0RZF&clienttype=rss). Comes in as WAVE3.

One of the articles I read was about the Jefferson County Public School System in Kentucky suspending two elementary school principals over an opening day bus fiasco. Several hundred students were hours late getting home from school that 1st day. Some elementary school students did not get home until after 9pm. Ugh! I cannot imagine an elementary school student being on a bus for all those hours...and the poor parents. Apparently the issue resulted from the students not being placed on the proper bus.

I have been receiving the feed since Saturday and other than remembering to go into Google Reader, I enjoy the information. I was hoping the updates would be national, but so far it seems to primarily be local breaking headlines with an occasional national feed sneaking in. I like being kept abreast of current events, so for now, I will stay with the local feed and my CNN emails.

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

I found this on the TED site and thought it would be an interesting video to view because of the current controversy surrounding it. The subject of the video is WikiLeaks and its impact and implications derived from anonymous "whistleblowers" who contribute confidential information. It is an interview with WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The interview includes video clips of released confidential informtion. Assange focuses on the mission of utilizing WikiLeaks to provide light on closed-door subjects and documents. In addition, Julian Assange provides examples of the success stories and positive outcomes from the releases of leaked confidential information. www.ted.com/talks/Julian_Assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html

Great Topic Choices!

Looking at all the TED topics you've posted on -- it gives me even more for my "must read/watch" list -- well done on your first posts.

Remember -- for this coming week, in your Blog post -- share what RSS/email alert or list you've chosen to follow. Include the url and something about the type of information that you'll be following and what content is included on the site you've selected.

No more print OED?

(This might help you understand why we keep saying "Everything is related to Knowledge Management"!)

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard this on one of their 'bottom of the hour' light pieces:

Oxford University Press, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, said Sunday that it's uncertain whether the 126-year-old dictionary's next edition will be printed in book form. The publisher said many people prefer to look up words using its online product.

Here's the link from the UK's Telegraph newspaper, if you'd like to see the take from across the pond.

(But wait, there's more! Here's an example of the usefulness of a news outlet having good, updated web pages and blogs. It turns out that reports on the death of the print edition may have been premature, and this NPR news blog was quick to correct its own report.)

Happy Monday! Carrie.

Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

I stumbled upon this and was drawn to it because I'm interested in behavioral economics, but it's actually got a pretty inspiring twist at the end--worth checking out!

Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm

How could I pass this topic up? And not for the reasons you would think. One of my dream jobs in my perfect world, would be to be a sex therapist. I saw this and thought what could I have missed in my research on the topic. Mary Roach has opened my mind and eyes.

I am not going to list all ten items here; I want this blog to encourage you to take a look at her speech. One item listed the orgasm as the cure for hiccups. Another advised that the orgasm causes bad breath. You will be surprised about how much you can learn too.

It was amazing to hear how many individuals, especially in history, researched and experimented about the orgasm. Her talk is captivating, witty, and full of anecdotes. For the information being shared, this was an appropriate use of public speaking techniques. There are other TED talks given by Mary Roach, I am looking forward to viewing them soon.

Ted Topic

I found the Ted Topic – “Lisa Margonelli: The political chemistry of oil,” because it gave me a different prospective on what is happening with the oil in Deep Water Horizon Crises other than the prospective I am involved in at work. (Danyale)

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity.

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about nurturing creativity in the broader, even more spiritual sense of nurturing. She is the author of the international best seller, Eat, Pray, Love which has taken popular culture by storm, invoking personal quests of inner self all over the globe. She talks candidly about the creative but tortured soul of writers and artists, and references the ancient belief that genius, artistic inspiration and other creative outlets were attributed to other beings, gods, forces of nature--like a angel that whispers the great work into the ear of the person that is to be the vehicle, but not necessarily the creator and how she wishes that sort of belief of contribution should be more prominent. This would take away the burden of expectation for her, when she writes her next book! As with many writers, there are collected works but the most famous writing, especially when it comes early in a career, can be a downfall because it is the yard stick by which every other creation is measured to. Rather than have something stand alone by content or inspiration of the individual, there are these markers by which others judge any other work, and so she supports the notion that the soul becomes tortured because of this singular responsibility that is placed upon that soul. To return to the belief that the inspiration or actual work, writing, etc... is that of something more supernatural and that the person is only that vehicle of creation can release the responsibility from that person and allow them to focus more on the inspiration and less on the outcome which is perceived by others.

Jamie Oliver: Teach our children about food

As soon as this was talked about in the class, I knew this would be the Ted to watch. I had seen Jamie Oliver's T.V. show about trying to change the eating habits of a town in West Virginia. The show was eye opening to me and my family. The Ted video was great as it teaches that all bad food habits can be changed globally by individuals educating children about food and what is healthy to eat, and if this happens in the home then it will carry on to the next generations.I think that it is already taking place in some of the schools locally. My daughter's summer reading list included a book called Chew on This : by Charles Wilson and Eric Schlosser. This book is about the fast food companies and basically how awful and unhelathy the food is that comes from them. To me this a great foundation to build on in addition to what my wife and family try to instill in her of healthy eating habits. This video is definitly one you should watch.

Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School

Let me start off by saying that I had not previously heard of the TED talks before we viewed the video in class. It has now become an obsession of mine to watch at least a few of these videos daily. Naturally, I was excited to receive this assignment, as I'm sure everyone else was.

I wanted to pick something really good, something that I was going to be really interested in. I'm finding that on the TED website, almost everything looks appetizing to me - the method of delivery is so fascinating and stimulating, it is difficult to be disinterested in any of the videos.

Anyway, I was having a hard time the other day finding a suitable video by simply browsing the tags, so I decided to pay attention to who the speakers were. Then I stumbled across it - a TED talk by Dave Eggers. He is one of my favorite people I've never met; I've been a fan since "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", his poignant memoir from 2000. His talk, as it turns out, is something that greatly interests me also - helping students (underprivileged or otherwise) to get more out of their public school education.

From what I read, Eggers made this speech while receiving his TED award in 2008. If you watch this video (and I really, really hope that you do), you'll see why he was receiving the award. Not only is he a charming public speaker (he nervously stumbles through the talk, which only serves to be terribly endearing), but what he has done for his community and others around the country (and now expanding to other parts of the world) is astounding and inspirational.

I cannot do his talk too much justice, but I will give you the gist here -

Dave Eggers, if you don't know, founded a quarterly literary journal called McSweeney's. They also publish books and different magazines, and Eggers himself has written a few books. Dave explained that he was living in Brooklyn several years ago trying to finish his first book and began to notice that his teacher-friends were struggling with the task of keeping their students on their grade level of reading and writing due to public schools being understaffed. Their main complaint, he said, was that they needed more people, that the students needed more one-on-one attention. He realized at this time that he had a lot of friends who were writers or scholars of some sort interested in the English language - namely writing - who had flexible daily schedules.

Shortly after this, he moved back to San Francisco, where he's from, and rented out a small retail space to run McSweeney's. The building was going to shared with a tutoring center, and him and his staff decided that it would be nice to open up the space and make it all one center - the staff would tutor the children on the side after school hours.

There was a catch, though - since it was being rented as a retail space, McSweeney's had to sell something, had to make some sort of profit to stay in the space - 826 Valencia (which is what the center is now called). As a sort of joke, they made the front of the store a shop with all sorts of pirate memorabilia. Behind the shop area was the room that served as the tutoring center, and behind that was McSweeney's.

Once they finally got children to start coming in (with the help of some of his educator friends who hooked him up with particular teachers and schools who pointed the children in the direction of 826), amazing things began to happen. Dave pointed out that it's proven that if you just give a child 35-40 hours of one-on-one time per year, they will raise one grade level in that particular subject. Most of the children the McSweeney's staff were working with came from homes where English was not primarily spoken, and the kids started flocking to the center every day after school.

This is incredible to me - almost hard to believe. Dave said that the kids were actually excited to get all of their homework done at the center, that they were experiencing the satisfaction of completing something on time or before it needs to be done, a satisfaction I feel we don't really appreciate until we reach adulthood.

Eventually, 826 Valencia gained so much popularity that Dave had over 1400 volunteers that would not only tutor in the center (always one-on-one), but would go into schools during school hours and have writing centers set up there. At one school, Eggers' crew was even given a permanent classroom.

The odd thing is, and the part of the talk I find most fascinating, is that the silly pirate supply shop - the affront for the NPO being run in the back - actually ended up bringing more people in (not only to the shop, which makes enough money monthly to pay the rent and the full-time employee who runs it) to discover the great things these volunteers are doing. If I am recalling correctly, Eggers described it as a 'beautiful accident', and I think it was exactly that. It was so successful, in fact, that people have built models in Los Angeles, Massachusetts, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Austin and Dublin.

At the close of the talk, Dave Eggers recites his TED wish:

"I wish that you - you personally and every creative individual and organization you know - will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved, so that within a year we have 1,000 examples of transformative partnerships."

He, along with others, set up an organization to inspire others to continue on with his idea, his incredibly simple idea to help children, to give even one child your undivided attention for even just an hour a week, month, every few months. All I have ever wanted to do with my life is help other people, and now that I am growing into an adult, I realize that my focus is primarily on children and schools (public schools most specifically).

You don't need me to write a persuasive essay on why helping children is important, or how the children are our future, etc. Most of you have children, and hopefully you recognize how important this one-on-one time is.

On the homepage of the website for the organization, Once Upon a School, there is a quote from Dave:

"There's something different and incredibly powerful about engaging directly with real teachers and real kids." I couldn't agree more.

I hope you guys visit this site! onceuponaschool.org

Diane J. Savino: The case for same-sex marriage

It was impossible for me NOT to watch at least one video on this site and I knew that I had to limit myself to one. For times’ sake, I forced myself to browse topics until I found one with a bit of controversy.

Even though the New York state politicians voted down support for same-sex marriage, this speech hails Diane Savino as a hero. In this intelligent, thought provoking seven and a half minutes, Diane mentions how our society is currently defining the sanctity of marriage. Did you know there was a reality show where women competed to marry a dwarf? I didn’t. Diane is a wonderful speaker that brings up reasonable points to ponder. No matter how you feel about the topic, it’s worth watching.

http://www.ted.com/talks/diane_j_savino_the_case_for_same_sex_marriage.html

Aditi Shankardass: A second opinion on learning disorders

The TED.com site is generally very fascinating, not because they pick individuals based on their abilities to speak and entertain the audience, but because of the real life topics that are discussed. When searching the TED site this afternoon, I couldn't help but listen to Aditi Shankardass' “A second opinion on learning disorders."

Having a younger sister who is faced with a learning disorder, I wanted to learn about what new discoveries have been made to possibly help her as she copes with one of her biggest challenges. Brooke, now a fourth year Nurse at MCV, was misdiagnosed three times in her life because of the general misunderstanding of learning disorders and ultimately the misdiagnoses.

After listening to Aditi, it is clear the world is becoming more aware that simple diagnoses gone wrong can severely impact and limit a person and their future.

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die.

I am fascinated by the fact that I have found a website so intriguing as Ted.com. Thanks to our teachers in Knowledge Management. This website will be a bookmark for as long as it's around. After scanning the website for one of its speakers, I chose the one that I found most inspiring. Inspiration is always a great feeling. I chose Steve Jobs: How to live before you die. Steve Jobs has a story. Without that story, he would be an ordinary man. What I mean by that is that he went down a path with obstacles and without obstacles the path may not have lead him anywhere. Some obstacles he chose, and some he did not. From an early age he has taken the road less traveled. It truly has lead him to success. There are many success stories out there and a lot of people say that his story like Bill Gates is unusual. That being said, I feel his success came from not taking the easy path. I would also agree that success also comes from taking other paths as well. Most people in society choose to take the easy path. There would be an argument to that from some, but I would challenge what people tend to say. Although, Mr. Jobs quit college, which sounds like the easy thing to do, in hindsight it was a difficult decision based on trying to figure out what he was going to do. At least when you are attending an institution you are on a schedule, know what your itinerary is, where you are going to lay your head at night, etc. Most of us think of getting a college education is to better oneself. No matter what we sign up for in life, I believe as Mr. Jobs stated, "Don't lose faith". Whether your in college, sitting behind a desk at a job or caring for a family at home, I too, believe you should love what you do. If you don't, as Mr. Jobs stated, "keep looking, don't settle". We (SCS students) must have that common theme in our heads or none of us would be making the commitment and sacrifice to better ourselves and spend the next 2 years on weekends to do so. I learned a valuable vocabulary word while listening to Mr. Jobs, "dogma". I had never heard anyone reference that word ever. I listened carefully the second time I watched his speech and he said, "living with results of other people's thinking". Wow, I will be advising my friends not to live in dogma. Sometimes coming from a small town and not stepping outside of the box causes people to live in dogma.

Richard St. John's 8 Secrets of Success

When I saw this Ted Talk topic I was immediately drawn to it. The title made me think that I was going to be let in on a special secret. The talk is 3:33 and consists of 8 secrets. St. John interviewed 500 successful people, including Bill Gates and Goldie Hawn, over 7 years. Since we weekend college students are embarking on this amazing but gruelling journey I figured we all want to be successful. That's why we're giving up our weekends for 2 years to go to college. Anyway, these are the 8 secrets to success according to Richard St. John.
PASSION - Do it for love, not money
WORK - Work Hard
GOOD - Get good at whatever it is
FOCUS -Self explanatory
PUSH - Push yourself
SERVE - Serve others
IDEAS - have ideas, be curious, listen and observe
PERSISTENCE - #1 and most important

These aren't exactly new ideas but they are certainly worth repeating. We need to be reminded of them from time to time. St. John's Ted Talk reiterated what we all need to be successful.

Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off.

I never heard of the TED talks before our first knowledge management class. I enjoyed the video we watched in class so much, I tried to recite Sheena Lyengar's discussion on the art of choosing to my husband when I got home.

When looking for a TED talk to discuss on the blog post, I scanned through many video names for the one I found most interesting. I discovered one by Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off. This title sang to be because....I could use some time off. The video was very inspiring as it discussed taking a sabbatical from your job or career. Stefan Sagmeister works as a designer and has a studio in NYC. He takes every seventh year off as "time to think" and become creative again. He feels this one year is an opportunity to gain new experience and perspective. It's a chance to make his work fresh again.

Three great quotes that he incorporated in his art, really stuck with me. The quotes are; "Self confidence produces great results", "Obsessions make my life worse and my work better" and "So many dogs, so few recipes". :-)

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

As I scrolled through all of the TED talk topics, this one stood out to me. This video was of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and Pixar Animation, giving a commencement speech to recent Stanford University graduates. Thinking ahead to my upcoming graduation, I felt listening to his speech could be inspiring.

In his speech, Steve gives three important points of advice, or as he says "three stories from his life":

1. Connecting the dots
2. Love and loss
3. Death

These three stories translated into great advice to live by. This advice was trust, have faith, love what you do, don't settle, and follow your heart. All great points to consider as I prepare to complete my educational goals.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

Sheryl WuDunn - Our century's greatest injustice

While browsing for a TED talk that intrigued me, I was halted when I stumbled across Sheryl WuDunn’s lecture titled “Our Century’s Greatest Injustice”. After skimming the description of the talk and learning it was about the oppression of women globally I had to hear more. Women in the United States take for granted that we won the lottery in our birthplace. WuDunn calls it our “great fortune”.

I must admit that prior to listening to the WuDunn I was aware of oppression of women but I thought it only existed in Third World countries; quite the contrary. In China babies that are female are often aborted. What a misfortune that the sex of an unborn child can warrant such prejudice. Even if a girl is lucky enough to be born, in many countries, they do not receive the same treatment as boys. I was saddened by the accompanying slides shown during WuDunn’s talk of young girls that were emaciated and she spoke of their brothers being completely healthy and of average weight.

Education is the key to diminishing this injustice. Research proves that educated women marry later, therefore have children later, which results in fewer children. Education could eventually reduce the overpopulation that sparks injustice towards women.

This is worth watching!!!

http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_wudunn_our_century_s_greatest_injustice.html

Seth Priebatsch: The Game Layer on Top of the World

There are so many options on the TED site to choose from I was wondering where to start. I figured looking at the home page TV screens was a good place to start since they were probably the most recent post. I checked out the titles under each caption and the one I chose was Seth Priebatsch, the reason for my choice you may find funny or should I say no relation to academics. My sons name is Seth and he plays his Xbox for hours a day so not only the name but the title caught my attention as well.

I really enjoyed listening to this Princeton drop out. He was telling us how the last decade was about social networking and websites like Twitter and Facebook have become a staple in day to day living. His outlook on the new decade is going to be about games. Not the traditional games we think of but games that drive us to keep appointments or visit or favorite coffee shop. He categorized the games into four categories: Appointment Dynamic, Influence-Status, Progression Dynamics, and Communal Discovery. With each one he mentions there is a ultimate goal we need to achieve to to the top layer. He mentions for instance Happy Hour if you want to get the special drink prices you need to be at the right place at the right time. Or if you want that free cup of coffee you need to purchase so many to get it first, so that brings you back to the same coffee shop time and time again. I kept thinking "Wow" he is right I do give repeat business to my favorite deli because I want that free ice tea.

I have never even heard of TED.com but I think now I will be a viewer just like others might go out to YouTube everyday to see the latest post.

Interesting TED Topic

Jim Toomey: Learning from Sherman the shark

It took me only a moment for the video selection of Jim Toomey to catch my eye. The video block was a larger size than some of the other new releases on the Ted.com home page and had a cartoon image in the background. Our class day was spent discussing learning (actually, knowledge and information), I felt this title fit right in with the theme of the day. And, though it was not required to watch, I am so glad that I did.

Jim Toomey created the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon; featuring Sherman the talking shark. Jim’s presentation reviewed his cartooning choice of Sherman and all his friends from his fascination with the ocean. It was really a quick and entertaining lesson in the ocean inhabitants, environmental impacts to the ocean and shark finning. For me, the added bonus was Jim’s quick computer sketching of some of his favorite sea creatures.

I recommend it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_toomey_learning_from_sherman_the_shark.html

Headset that reads your brainwaves

Since I am trying to make a connection to my Knowledge Management course and everyday life, I decided to take a look at the category of technology under the TED Talks. I stumbled across a topic of "A Headset that reads your brainwaves"; The topic seemed interesting because not only at this point is my brain fried from all the information I have received in the last 24hours I only wondered how much a wireless headset could do. Tan Le who is the engineer of this piece of genius, explains how this piece of equipment can read your brain waves and ultimately you can control anything with this headset from turning off your lights to controlling a automatic wheelchair hands free by just smiling or winking your eyes. Wow you may say, I had the exact sentiment. Not only now is the Internet overloading our brains but now there's a headset invading our brains. What's next for technology? You have to see this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

In this video, Steve Jobs gives a very inspirational commencement speech at Stanford University. He keeps his speech simple by telling three stories that changed his life. I learned several things about Steve Jobs that I was not aware of; he was adopted at birth, he never graduated from college and was fired from the company he started, Apple, and later rehired. He mentioned that after officially dropping out of college his intuition led him to “drop-in” at a calligraphy course. Had it not been for that class he would have never created the typography in the first Macintosh computer. If you need an inspirational speech to add a little “pep in your step”, check it out.

Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

Ted Talk

Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile

I listened to this as a podcast via iPod instead of watching it. Chip Conley has found a way to measure some intangible things, for one happiness, in our everyday lives, and in the corporate world. He talks about being happy with what we have instead of trying to constantly find things that make us happy. Mick Jagger still said it best I think, “You can't always get what you want, And if you try sometime you find, You get what you need”.

Interesting TED topic

I found one that applied to how we study and how we absorb knowledge. "David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization." While this applies to huge world problems (SARS, world hunger, etc.) McCandless also translates trivial data into visual charts to illustrate the meaningless as well as the weight of the world problems.
It seemed applicable to visual learners vs. reading and/or audio. You can watch it at
http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/DavidMcCandless_2010G.mp4

For your "Christmas" reading lists...

Reading the OED : one man, one year, 21,730 pages - Ammon Shea
PE1617.O94 S54 2008

This is the book I recommended when we worked on definitions. It is laugh-out-loud funny; the author walks through his reading of the OED, week by week, and then pulls out his favorite definitions from a particular letter of the alphabet. For instance: Abluvion: (n.) Substance or things that are washed away. "Chances are you have never stared at the dirty bathwater washing down the drain and wondered, Is there a word for that? but now you will forever be cursed with the knowledge that indeed there is. also see: illutible.

Here are a few others you might want to read (over your Christmas break, perhaps?)

• The professor and the madman : a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary PE1617.O94 W56 1998
• Lost for words : the hidden history of the Oxford English dictionary PE1617.O94 M84 2005
• Caught in the web of words : James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English dictionary PE64.M8 M78

Enjoy!
Carrie

Welcome to Knowledge Management - Fall 2010

Hello everyone. This is the class blog used in Knowledge Management for the cohort groups in Richmond and Danville.

Each week, everyone should post at least one item, based on instructions in class as to topic for the week.

I've left posts from last year from Carrie and me so you can see a range of topics that we posted on.

We'll explain more in class during the first week.

Carol