Year in Review: Goodbye, 2024

 It's time once again for the year in review! This'll be a short one, as this year was a fallow one for lessons spotted that were recorded in the blog (though certainly never short on lessons for me). 

Plug and Play Miniseries Lesson Spotting with AI: Designing Prompts (but not like that) Take My Advice: If You Have Trouble With Tech

What have I been doing other than (slowly, slowly) writing these posts? Well, it's hard to believe, but early last year, I got an eagerly sought but unanticipatedly early promotion, going from "Associate Director of Faculty Engagement" to "Associate Director of Faculty Engagement-- and also Faculty Engagement Principal," essentially taking on a leadership role for our small but mighty Faculty Engagement functional team at Everspring. Looking back from the turn of the year, it feels like an incredibly long amount of time to be accomplished in such a short time, if that makes any sense. I've gone from awaiting the chance to be certified in things to running the certification process, which is a cool thing to think about. 

It's also been a challenging year personally and politically. From where I sit right now, the coming year looks incredibly long, and full of uncertainty. So, I've been trying to find my way back to the small and helpful-- the small lessons that we can give and receive, and the small actions that may have ripple effects. If I spot any worth sharing, you'll hear it here first. 

Year in Review: Goodbye, 2023!

It's time once again for the year in review! This has been a strange year for the blog (and for me!) 

Flashback Post: Embracing Options 

I took a bit of a hiatus early in 2023 to focus on other projects (like Winnie!) and to recover some steam while doing a lot of work-related writing. During that period, I featured a post that has always been helpful for me to return to when trying to write or teach writing. 

Plug and Play Miniseries: Lesson Spotting with AI

Introduction

Think Pair Share

Talking to Write

Like about a thousand others this year, AI was a pretty common theme for the blog this year. In Fall, I returned with an ongoing miniseries on incorporating AI into teaching with my usual focus on flexibility and ease of use.
 

More to come in this series in the new year! I hope 2024 allows us all to spot all the lessons we can handle. 

Year In Review: Goodbye, 2022!

This year brought a lot of excitement and growth! A key theme of this year's work on the blog was technological curiosity and a willingness to experiment. I focused on fewer posts and more continuity between them, particularly the introduction of and support for the Source Analysis Template. I celebrated my first anniversary in my current position. And, I finally wrote about rubrics after teasing it for roughly three years. Below, find the lessons spotted this year:

Take My Advice: Four Tech-Fueled Efficiency Tips I Wish I'd Known Four Years Earlier

Plug and Play: My Much-Anticipated Proclamation of Love for Rubrics

Flashback Post: Celebrating One Year at Everspring

Source Analysis Template Series

Plug and Play: Source Analysis Template

Enough About Me: Source Analysis Template Walkthrough 

Enough About Me: Putting Your Source Analysis Template to Work

Looking forward to more in the new year! As always, if you'd like to reach out for more support with anything mentioned on the site, don't hesitate to schedule time on my Calendly. 

Year in Review: Goodbye, 2021!

It's time once again for my new yearly tradition, the Year in Review! An excuse to look back on what lessons have been spotted in the past twelve months. 

• Flashback Post: My Approach to the Lesson Plan - in preparation for a CITL workshop on Lesson Planning for Discussion Sections (a topic that everyone running a discusion section seems to want help with but which is rarely treated), I revisited an old post about lesson planning. 
  

• Pedagogical Possibilities: Quick Accessibility Tips for Text- After taking several online courses in accessibility in teaching and web design, I realized that that the tips offered tended not to be a part of the curriculum for developing teachers that I knew. This post set out to give some easy, quick pointers about making text a little more accessible, based on what I had most often observed in history courses. 

• Current Project: Portfolio Page- As I geared up job searching in earnest, I wanted to find a way to bring some of my work that was publicly available together in one convenient place, so that I might be able to showcase various pieces without suggesting employers look through the entire history of my blog or click links in my resume. The portfolio page I created here became a standard page on Lesson Spotted that I update periodically.

• Current Project: History SoTL and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion- My final piece of work as a graduate student, this post is a reflection on how scholarship on history teaching and learning treats DEI issues and suggests paths that could be fruitfully explored in the field. Submitted as part of my application for the Teacher Scholar Certificate at CITL.  

• Pedagogical Possibilities: If You're Drawing a Blank on Canvas- Just as my time at UIUC was winding down, the campus announced a switch to Canvas as the predominant LMS for university courses. This post aimed to set out some basics of Canvas for those apprehensive about the switch.   

• Current Project: Life Updates- Perhaps the most dramatic post of 2021, I talked about my new position as a Faculty Engagement Specialist, starting a new phase of my life and career. 

• Enough About Me: Deformalizing and Deformatting- As my interests and my daily activities changed, I have become more and more fascinated by using ways of communicating ideas that change my perspective simply by forcing me to reckon with medium rather than just a message. This post was an experiment in following that idea to a logical end: what if instead of writing a post about doing that, I made a post that was that? 

• Current Project: A Post That Took Seven Years (Kinda)- My dissertation became available for digital reading, a fact I reflected on here. 

• Current Project: Taking, Talking, and Thinking Through Career Development- An invitation to chat with folks in the UIUC History Department about career diversity prompted my to reflect on three mindsets that helped me in my career shift: taking, talking, and thinking. 

Fewer posts this year than last, but decidedly more upheaval; overall, a list of posts I think encapsulates the year gone by. Many posts center on life and career events, with only two posts I would characterize as outside of that dynamic. Looking ahead, I'd love to make an interactive year in review for next year. Here's to seeing what Lessons are there to be Spotted in the year to come!  

Year in Review: So Long, 2020!

Like many people, I'm feeling unusually reflective as the year winds down. Perhaps because of the stark differences between the first two months of the year and the last ten, everything seems exceptionally memorable. I thought I'd take the occasion to institute a new end of year tradition for Lesson Spotted and round up the posts of the past year.

 

You can also access this list as a document. 

P.S. I made this page of links with some rudimentary HTML/CSS experimentation, which I am still very new at-- so, if you are a screenreader user or HTML expert, I'm happy to hear about anything broken, messy, or incomprehensible.