A year and a half ago, I set a goal to blog once a week on an educational topic. These topics have ranged from instructional strategies, lesson plans, educational technology tutorials, and a variety of other resources. I am excited to say that this is a goal that I have achieved, as well as a goal that I do not plan on giving up anytime soon. To date, I have written 128 blogs posts on I-Heart-EDU and it has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. It has challenged me to continue to grow as an educator and think of ways to support teachers and impact student learning. It’s not always easy to find a new topic to write but the challenge has kept my mind fresh and engaged with current educational strategies and resources.

While this current goal is not going away, I’ve also found myself craving a new blogging goal. Something that would inspire me to continue writing but, more importantly, to continue learning. I absolutely love learning. Seriously. I enjoy learning about anything and everything. I was one of those kids that actually liked going to school. When I finished high school, I was ready for college. When I graduated college, I was ready for my masters. When I finish my masters, I….well, I actually needed a little bit of a break after that one. Anyways, my point is that I truly enjoy learning and discovering new things. Based on this idea, I have developed a new blogging goal:

The Name: #OneNewThing

The Goal: Every week, I will develop a blog post on one thing that I learned from the week.

The Details:

As a part of this goal, I will:

• Learn one new thing per week on anything – the topic does not have to be education-specific.
• Write a weekly post on the thing that I learned.
• Keep it simple – it does not have to be a long post or tutorial.
• Share the resources that I used to learn about the #OneNewThing.
• Attempt to tie it back to education.

If you’re keeping track, this means that I will now be writing two blog posts per week – yikes! While that completely intimidates me, I am hoping that this new challenge will be a fun and simple way to learn and share. Perhaps it will also teach me to be more short and concise in my writing, which I think we can all agree is a challenge for me!

Now, my challenge to my readers…Who wants to join me in sharing their #OneNewThing each week? It doesn’t have to be a blog post – it could be a simple tweet, post on Facebook, microblog, Periscope – the choice is yours! If you do decide to take this challenge, I encourage you to tag me in your tweets or blog posts so I can reshare it with others.

Are you ready to take the #OneNewThing challenge?