I am excited to share that I began a new journey today as Director of Academic Services at Academic Partnerships (AP).  After three years as an independent consultant, I've found a position that aligns with my passion for online teaching and student-centered learning!  For those of you who follow my work, this means I am no longer consulting with VoiceThread or teaching for @One -- but my passion for using social media and VoiceThread to support student learning lives on.  And you can bet both will remain prevalent in my work. :)  And ... I have a very helpful eBook that will be available in the next couple of months that is titled "How to Humanize Your Online Class with VoiceThread"... so stay tuned! Hopefully, you'll want to pick it up for your summer professional development plans!So, what is Academic Partnerships? AP provides assistance to public institutions of higher education to transition their traditional degree programs online.  I will be supporting faculty with their introductory online teaching experiences.  How cool is that? The Faculty eCommonsWhat's even better about my new position is that there will continue to be plenty of opportunities for us all to learn together!  One of the most exciting parts of my new role will be the work I will do in the Faculty eCommons. The Faculty eCommons is a social learning community for faculty in online university programs.  Add it to your RSS reader today or follow @APCommons on Twitter.  And stay tuned as it will evolve into something even better in the coming months! :)Micro-MOOCInstructional Design for Mobile Learning April 15-May 12 - register now!AP recently began offering free Micro-MOOCs designed to scaffold 21st century educators towards becoming empowered and confident users of technology and facilitators of online learning.  What's a Micro-MOOC, as opposed to a MOOC? AP explains the difference here.Registration for next Micro-MOOC, Instructional Design for Mobile Learning, is in progress and more than 600 motivated online educators are already signed up.  Join us!  The online course kicks off with a webinar on Tuesday, April 16 at 11:00:00 AM PDT led by David Metcalf from the University of Central Florida.  Then you will learn along with peers in asynchronous sessions and targeted synchronous sessions led by industry experts including myself (I will be presenting a session on the VoiceThread mobile app) and Jackie Gerstein. All kinds of participation is welcome -- so consider this your opportunity to jump in and explore!Register for the Kickoff Webinar with David Metcalf on April 16thRegister for the Micro-MOOC  April 15-May 12

Can Gameful Learning with Social Media Change the World? Today, May 21 at 11:30am Pacific/2:30pm Eastern!https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/chu0boai9td61aiv7mib0ujkiag?authkey=CI_i-_SC2Mr8ggEOnce upon a time, making change in the world was a lofty goal that, to a student, seemed achievable only to those with great power.  Today, anyone can use social media to sculpt their own network of influencers -- friends, celebrities, politicians, thought leaders, non-profit organizations -- without ever meeting any of these people face-to-face.  How are these new social realities affecting the way we teach our college classes?  What would a class look like that embraces social media at its core as a tool to empower students to change the world?Join me, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies, for a Google+ Hangout on Air with Jason Rosenblum  and Robert W Strong from St. Edward's University as they share their innovative approach to teaching their Global Social Problems course.  The course design uses a gameful approach, influenced by Jane McGonigal. In Fall 2011, professors Rosenblum and Strong challenged students to complete a series of missions to tackle global social problems: Research problems, take Action to deal with those problems, and Imagine potential solutions with those problems.In our Hangout on Air, we will discuss this course design, their plans to revise the design, the tools the students used, and the students’ responses and learning outcomes to this creative teaching approach. Click the link above for access to the live video stream of the Hangout on Air in Google+.

The archive of yesterday's fabulous Hangout with Jason Rosenblum and Dr. Bob Strong from St. Edward's University is available.  If you need a little inspiration or are intrigued about learning more about gameful learning, it will be an excellent way to spend 35 minutes!Click here to go to the Faculty eCommons post containing the video archive:http://facultyecommons.org/can-gameful-learning-with-social-media-change-the-world/

I'm putting my best learner foot forward and attempting to engage in an open online course that is filled with EdTech rockstars and exploring the dazzling topic of learning in the open web through peer interactions.  The course is called Connected Courses (#CCourses) and includes all of these amazing people as facilitators.I'm making this post to be able to connect my blog to the syndication feed for the course.  Want to join in?  Sign up today (yes, it's free and open to all who have an interest in joining together to explore the possibilities of connected learning in the open web.  The class officially begins on September 15th. The first unit will explore:What is, or should be, the future of higher education?  What do we stand to lose or gain in pursuing the possibilities opened up by the Web?  What are the underlying logics and effects of different approaches to teaching with technology/online?

It's been quite awhile since I've read an article that has inspired me to write a post on a Sunday afternoon. But today, I saw a link to an article in my Nuzzel feed titled "Is the lecture unfair?" and it piqued my interest. This recent article from the New York Times discusses findings from recent studies that show how lectures privilege students who come from privileged backgrounds. The author, Annie Murphy Paul, explains, "...a growing body of evidence suggests that the lecture is not generic or neutral, but a specific cultural form that favors some people while discriminating against others, including women, minorities and low-income and first-generation college students. This is not a matter of instructor bias; it is the lecture format itself — when used on its own without other instructional supports — that offers unfair advantages to an already privileged population." The idea that lectures create a biased learning environment that privileges certain students is not surprising to me -- and it may not be surprising to you either. If you are familiar with my work, you've likely read other posts where I examine this notion. However, to see studies that excavate the lecture as a method of teaching that reinforces social inequities is worthy of discussion. The article reminded me of a video presentation I made back in 2011 titled "Expanding the Funnel," which connected the flipped classroom model (a form of active learning) as a strategy for increasing degree attainment rates in community colleges (which saw an enrollment explosion in 2010-11, the time of the U.S. economic downturn). Community colleges have an open access policy, which means everyone one is welcome. They are the gateway to higher education in the United States and, as such, community college students are the most diverse group of learners in higher education. It is not uncommon for a single community college class to include students from multiple generations, ethnic minorities, first generation college students, ESL learners, students with cognitive differences (dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc.), and students with physical disabilities. This diversity creates a powerful, fertile soil for students to learn from each others' experiences. However, not all instructors use active-learning strategies in their classes and, as such, the learning environments that students confront while in college are not as inclusive as the open-access mission of CCs.  Often, when I've discussed this topic with my peers, I've heard professors note that active learning does students who wish to transfer to a 4-year a "disservice," because it doesn't provide them with the skills needed to excel in the lecture environment.Let's keep this conversation going. It's time to start examining the broader, social implications of pedagogy on degree attainment in higher education. All students are capable of learning and obtaining a college degree. Let's support all of them.Finally, we must not cast blame on faculty. We need to support faculty to understand how the way they teach a class impacts the percentage of students who experience deep learning.  Active learning is one step towards a more inclusive classroom.

Straddling The Chasm: Rethinking Faculty Support from Michelle Pacansky-Brock Today I had the honor and pleasure to share a keynote presentation at the NUTN Annual Conference (#NUTN15) in Savannah, GA. NUTN (National University Technology Network) originally started in 1982 as a group of representatives from institutions delivering distance learning through tele-courses. This was my first time attending a NUTN conference and it was a fantastic experience! There were a few familiar faces in my audience (Alex Pickett, John Sener, Christi Ford, Deb Adair) and I have enjoyed making many new connections.Prior to my session, I attended a presentation by MJ Bishop and Anne Keehn, who shared the results of a national survey about the impact of Teaching and Learning Centers. Their findings show a significant trend underway in higher education organizations that connects Centers of Teaching and Learning with efforts to bring about organizational change. In short, the findings underscore the pertinent role that the intersection of learning and technology play in organizational transformation.While the findings weren't surprising to me, it was refreshing to see this trend highlighted and recognized as a significant shift. During the presentation, I recalled a memory from one of my previous positions in which I suggested renaming the faculty support group I was a part of to a name that included "learning" and "innovations." My idea was returned with a cold, blank stare and the comment, "That sounds like a group that would get eliminated in the next budget cut." It's good to see times are changing in higher education.But the changes that Teaching and Learning Centers are tasked with are deep-rooted organizational changes, which conflict with organizational cultures and histories. The most talented TLC staff cannot bring about this type of change on their own.  In her presentation Dr. Keehn shared that organizations spend $9B annually on organizational change consultants.  She wanted to break that statistic out for her study to understand how much of that spending occurs in higher education -- but, apparently, data is not collected for higher education because no money is spent on it (citation needed). This leaves me with a far greater understanding and appreciation of the conflict and tensions experienced by so many who are in roles that connect learning and technology.The presentation I shared today was a new for me. It was an exciting opportunity to try to bring together several ideas I've been contemplating with findings from my dissertation study and another recent study I conducted with Jill Leafstedt and Jaimie Hoffman. The title of my presentation was Straddling the Chasm: Rethinking Faculty Support (slide deck also embedded above) and its focus was on investigating the gap between the support needs of higher education faculty and the types and formats of support that are provided today. For example, 80% of higher education faculty are contingent employees (part-time or graduate assistants); yet, at 9 out of 10 institutions faculty who teach online are required to come to campus for online professional development. Sitting in a room with peers listening to a conversation about effective online teaching strategies does not immerse faculty in the online learning experience, which is the only way to have a person learn the potential and power of an excellent online class. But that is not the only problem with this model. Many faculty who are part-time teach at multiple institutions, some which may be located hundreds or thousands of miles from campus. This is just one disconnect in motion today with faculty support. Our models of faculty support are out-dated remnants of machine-age thinking and we are missing rich opportunities for collaborative solutions. We must begin to understand each higher education institutions as members of a complex ecosystem. Each is an organic system that is in a continuous state of change and very much affected by its exterior situation.  Another of my goals for the presentation was to encourage my audience members to relate to how it feels to a faculty member at the various stages in the diffusion of innovation. I showed the great graphic from Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein that illustrates faculty on both sides of ed tech chasm and had each person in the room identify themselves with one of the groups illustrated in the image. Then we discussed how it feels to "straddle the chasm." And to support this experience, I referenced the powerful comment George Station shared with me on Google+ about his own experience straddling the chasm (see slide 3 of my prez). There were many nods shared during the presentation.This is an ongoing conversation and research topic for me and it's one I feel very committed to. I truly believe that our social era is rich with opportunities to transform the traditional model of faculty support and, I also believe, that faculty who are early adopters and innovators are those who will lead this change and encourage others to jump across the chasm.  I feel proud and excited about the my team at CSU Channel Islands is doing as we strive to support both sides of the chasm with online professional development and CI Keys. Many thanks to the NUTN Board for inviting me to speak in beautiful Savannah today! I will enjoy my evening ghost tour before I head back to California. Brooohahahaha!!

Last week, I attended the Digital Learning Resource Network conference #DLRN15 at Stanford University with my colleague, Jill Leafstedt. It was a very worthy experience and I'm processing a lot of ideas right now. With a couple of days of distance, I am now sensing what my most important takeaways are -- at least for the moment.The Hidden Curriculum"the student who better understands the student role & tacit expectations does better. does NOT mean they're brighter" @MarciaDevlin #dLRN15— Bonnie Stewart (@bonstewart) October 17, 2015We still use the term "non-traditional student" to refer to individuals enrolled in higher education who do not fit the classic "student" model:  full-time student, residential status, 18-24 years old. Looking out over the higher education enrollment demographics, these students are now the minority. Not earth shattering news. However, each of us must examine what this means within our own institution. A professor at Stanford, for example, and an instructor at a community college will have different relationships with the needs of non-traditional students, because the proportion of them in their classes will be different.Sociocultural incongruence. Replaces deficit thinking. Important @MarciaDevlin— Lee Skallerup (@readywriting) October 16, 2015At DLRN, Marcia Devlin shared an exceptional presentation that uncovered the ways higher education incorporates invisible barriers that interfere with the success of non-traditional students. These barriers are constructed through the gaps between students' and faculty cultural currency (the skills they arrive with, which are informed by their socio-economic status). In other words, a first-generation college student from a working class background may feel prepared for a class and be ready to apply herself, but not have the same access to criteria for completing work successfully.  For example, when she receives an assignment in a general education course to write an essay in APA format that is written in a scholarly voice, will she understand how to apply these criteria in the same way other students may?Devlin termed these barriers "hidden curriculum," which was a new term for me. Honestly, I found myself reflecting deeply on my own experience as a student in higher education. My first memory was from a Romanesque to Gothic art history course in graduate school. As a grad student, I felt like I should be achieving at a higher level than the undergraduates in the class with me. I was keeping up with my reading but found myself sitting through my professor's lectures with complete confusion about what he was talking about. I recall him referencing a person named "Soojay," which I kept writing down in my notes (by this point, I learned that without taking prolific notes during lecture, I would not retain a thing -- another gap).  I would go home and pour over my book to locate any reference to this "Soojay" figure.  Then -- literally after about a week of time -- it hit me. He was referring to "Suger" (an important character in the historical development of Gothic architecture in France) but was using the French pronunciation. Ugh. I felt utterly stupid. This gap derailed me quite a bit and the fact that this memory from nearly twenty years ago came back to me instantly (along with lots of other memories too) as I listened to Devlin, says a lot about the imprint it left on me.Critiquing the assumption that students are students first, that doesn't fit students who are parents and employees. @marciadevlin #dlrn15— Kate Bowles (@KateMfD) October 17, 2015When we teach online, Devlin pointed out, these barriers may be even more difficult for learners to resolve, as students are less able to lean over to a fellow student and ask, "Hey, are you getting what she means by that?"  And as we know from our own experiences, most students are not willing to ask for clarification in a classroom setting either.Social and Affective Aspects of LearningThe other theme that I'm reflecting on is the number of research projects shared at DLRN15 that were examining the social and affective aspects of student learning. This was also refreshing to me, as I've been exploring a similar thread in my Learning Out Loud research (about how participating in asynchronous voice conversations impacts students on a cognitive, affective, and social level).  What I was not happy about, however, was the strict reliance upon textual data to examine affective and social dimensions of learning. I understand text is more "accessible" than voice when it comes to data analysis; however, how can we rely upon textual cues to determine when students are feeling confused, stressed, disconnected, anxious, frustrated? I look forward to seeing data in the form of voice and video be integrated into the future studies of the social and affective aspects of learning.Including Community CollegesIt feels very good to have the CA Comm College Online Education Initiative included here at #DLRN15. @PatJamesHanz @joryhadsell @DrBSI— M Pacansky-Brock (@brocansky) October 16, 2015Last, but not least, I felt a sense of community at this conference that I don't normally feel at events that incorporate an international audience from higher education. This time, representatives from the California Community College Online Education Initiative (OEI) were in attendance. The CCC system serves just over 2 million students and is the largest system of higher education in the country. Nearly 27% of these students enroll in at least one distance education course, up from 12.5% in 2005-2006. Yet, it's rare to bump into my CCC colleagues at conferences that aren't specifically set up for that system.Pat James, Executive Director of the OEI, participated in several presentations to showcase the work of the OEI team, which is focused on creating a way for CCC students to locate and complete the bottle-necked courses online that they need, in a streamlined fashion.  The OEI team has developed new online student support resources and shared them with a CC-license for others to easily re-use, and is integrating professional development (via @ONE) and instructional design support for faculty (which is lacking from the faculty support services offered at individual colleges the system).Hey @diglibarts check out http://t.co/BoyuzYvnV3 amazing resources that our transfer Ss will be familiar with soon. #dlrn15— Andrea Rehn #TvsZ (@Profrehn) October 16, 2015Here, here, @PatJamesHanz speaking to the near absence of Instructional Design support in CA's Comm Colleges. Faculty #DoItAll. #DLRN15— M Pacansky-Brock (@brocansky) October 16, 2015"Higher education" events really need to be more focused on bringing together representatives from 2-year and 4-year colleges. Local/regional/statewide systems, especially, need to be crafting ways to connect, share, and learn from one another. While 52% of students who graduate from the CSU system started at a CA Community College, I am dismayed at the lack of collaboration between the CCC and CSU systems and as I return to my day-to-day work, I am reflecting deeply on this gap and what effects it has on our state and on our students -- because they are all our students.  Not ours and theirs -- just ours.DLRN15 provided opportunities to address tensions and conflict within higher education. I can only speak for myself, but I believe this is not only important but essential to "make sense of higher education." Thank you to the wonderful coordinators of DLRN15 (who I will not list, as I will miss someone important) and thank you to Laura Pasquini for encouraging me to attend.

Click here to view a full-size version of this VoiceThread or to open it in the mobile app.  The long wait is over...and the irony of the Voice"Thread" name has been put to rest! VoiceThread has released the following new commenting options.Direct reply. This feature enables only the owner of a VoiceThread to leave a direct reply to any comment left in that VoiceThread. A direct reply appears as a regular comment, but is inserted directly after the selected comment. This eliminates the need for an instructor to "move" a comment into proper sequence. Students do not have the ability to leave direct replies. Click here for more information about Direct Replies. Private reply. All users with access to a VoiceThread may leave private replies in response to a comment. This will be particularly useful for sharing important feedback to students that isn't appropriate for a group setting. Click here for more information about Private Replies. Threaded comments. This feature is turned off by default. It can be enabled in a VoiceThread in the playback settings.  To leave a Threaded comment, click the comment to which you want to reply and click the threaded icon. Threaded comments are represented by a circle instead of the usual rounded rectangle. Threads cannot be built off of threads. Click here to learn more about Threaded Comments.These are new to me too, so I created a VoiceThread so we can try them out together. Feel free to participate in the VoiceThread above (this will require you to log-in to your existing VT account or create a free one).

I wrote this post as a guest contribution for Digital Writing Month. I hope it will inspire you to to reach back in time, learn a new story about yourself, write, and share. "Each photograph is read as the private appearance of its referent: the age of Photography corresponds rather precisely to the explosion of the private into the public, or rather into the creation of new social value, which is the publicity of the private: the private is consumed as such, publicly."      - Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 98When I was a little girl, my mother often shared her old family photographs with me. The photographs were stored in a tin trunk under my parents’ bed. Kneeling on the floor, pulling out that trunk, cracking it open, and unleashing the musty scent contained inside became our ritual for initiating our travel through time. My mom, a first-generation born American who was born to two German immigrants, would share stories about her family members. Photographs were especially important to my mom, as she experienced the tragic loss of her sister and only sibling at the age of 39 and the sudden passing of her mother just two years later. Looking at and sharing stories about the images imprinted on the old torn piece of paper was — and still is — her way of visiting her loved ones. There was a palpable connection between my mom and the time and space of the fading figures portrayed in the images, it was as if the photographs had a magical ability to collapse time for her.We repeated this tradition numerous times throughout my childhood, often with my two sisters. I also ventured into the tin box on my own sometimes, gazing into the fading eyes of relatives who I had never met. Over time, the photographs became familiar to me; yet, there was one that I secretly treasured more than the others. It was a small, sepia-toned image printed on cardstock (known as a carte de visite). It measured about 2" by 3". The corners were torn and the surface of the image was heavily scratched. On the back, my mother had written the name of my maternal great grandmother in pen, but aside from that there were no identifying marks on the print.Despite the ambiguity of the photograph’s context, this image resonated with me. "You are my great grandmother," I used to think to myself, as if she were there in the room with me. My great grandmother lived in Germany until the age of 99 and passed away when I was quite young. I never met her. I would scour the surface of that image with my eyes, in a desperate quest to know her. I wanted so much to find that "something" that would transport me from the floor of my parents’ bedroom to that moment she stood in front of the camera’s lens.Through this search, I recall admiring her appearance. I wondered if I’d be fortunate enough to grow into the beautiful woman she was. I would gaze at her dress and imagine what the fabric felt like and what color it was. I resented the scratches that removed the details of her face, as I believed that’s where her essence would be revealed to me. Yet, I never found what I searched for in that photograph.A photograph's punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me). -Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, pp. 26-27 At some point through the years, however, my mother shared more about my great grandmother that transformed how I related to that photograph and, ultimately, how I understood myself. There was an old postcard mixed in with the photos in the trunk that had a message composed in hand-written script on the back, which I could not read — and neither could my mother. She explained that it was a postcard my great grandmother wrote to her husband (my great grandfather) during World War I, sometime after he left for battle. It was postmarked August 16, 1915. My mother also pointed out a phrase, written more rigidly in red ink in the blank space near the postmark stamp. One word was decipherable: "gefallen" with the date August 25, 1915 just below. Gefallen. The German word for "killed in action."I imagined my great grandmother writing that postcard by candlelight, after getting her five young daughters settled into bed for the night.  I imagined the care it took to write in such detailed, beautiful German script (known as Sütterlin). I imagined her taking the time to be sure the ink had dried. And I imagined her slipping the postcard into a cloth mailbag, picturing it arriving in her husband’s warm hands. While I don’t know the details of how the situation actually occurred, I also imagined how she must have felt upon receiving the returned postcard, a love letter transformed into a death notice. I imagine how she went about her life after that moment. How that experience transformed her, made her reach inside and embrace the strength she didn’t know she had. I imagine how that strength was transferred to her five young daughters, now fatherless, in war-torn Germany. "War hero" meant something very different to me from that moment on.After learning of that story, I never looked at the photograph of my great grandmother the same again. Her body, once a graceful representation of female beauty, conveyed power and pride. The scratches on the surface and the torn corners were less of a nuisance from that point. Instead, I related to them as footprints tracing a long, arduous journey. I wondered where the photograph had been and who had held it. I wondered about photographs that I didn’t have access to and others that were never taken. But that wasn’t all that changed for me. I also began to relate to myself differently. As I grew up, I felt the strength of my great grandmother inside myself. Knowing her story and imagining what her life experiences were like empowered me to know I too was strong. I wasn’t just a "pretty little girl;" I was her great granddaughter. And my mother was her granddaughter. And my grandmother was one of those little girls tucked in bed as she wrote that postcard. While I have had many empowering experiences in my lifetime, this story opened a new way of understanding where I came from, who I was, and what I could do.  Personal photographs are like treasures. They document our past and connect us with those who lived before us. However, the stories we associate with a photograph construct the way we relate to it and the way we remember and value the subject(s) rendered upon its surface.In our digital age, any photograph — no matter how old — can become a liquid photograph, enabling us to share stories with the world through blog posts, like this one. This is an ideal strategy for engaging students in the process of writing, because the process of writing fades away and becomes invisible when our efforts are focused on sharing a story. Last year, I sent my online community college students on a "Photo Quest." One of the topics from which they chose was titled, "Who am I?" This topic’s task was to excavate a story from their past through a conversation with a family member about an old photograph (an alternative topic was provided for students who did not have access to family photographs and/or family members). One of my students shared this story about a photograph of him and his sister, each clutching a toy. The photograph led to a conversation with his mom, which unearthed a story about his first day of kindergarten in Tijuana, Mexico. Before that Photo Quest, he had no memory of attending kindergarten in Mexico. That event was, as he wrote, "something that was just swept under the rug, not really a secret, but just never mentioned and eventually just forgotten." Connecting our formalized curriculum with our students’ real-world experiences is fundamental to ensure learning is relevant. Using old photographs to connect students with the past is not only a great strategy for engaging students, it’s also way to excavate the marginalized stories from the past that will otherwise be forgotten.An Inspiration: Make Writing … DigitalSearch around those old boxes or file cabinets, and dig out some old photographs. What stories simmer beneath the surface of the visual? What stories do they tell? What stories can you tell about the stories they tell? Consider perusing the United States Library of Congress collections of historical photographs, or find out if your own country of origin has its own collection. What do photos say about the country?We hope you will share your work across the various Digital Writing Month spaces that you inhabit. That could be right here at the Digital Writing Month blog; at your own blog or writing space; on Twitter with the #DigiWriMo hashtag; in the DigiWriMo Google Plus Community; at the DigiWriMo Facebook page; or wherever you find yourself writing digitally.

I am thrilled to share this very special guest post from eleven year old Mallory; sixth grader and world-change agent. You will be amazed and inspired as you hear her describe the day she made the decion to change the world. In October 2011 I sat down to write my Christmas list for my parents, I looked around my room and I realized there was nothing I needed, nothing I wanted. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about the children in Africa, and how they weren’t going to get Christmas presents, and there was a lot of things that they needed. So, I sent my mom an email with my Christmas list, one thing on it, to help Africa. See, in August of 2010 the Ugandan Orphan Children’s Choir came to my church to perform, and I got to meet the children, and they were amazing. They were so loving, and just wanted to hug me and hold my hand. My mom had also started doing work for a couple of organizations that helped in Uganda, so she had taught me about the children there. The day after I sent the email my Mom and I sat down and talked about what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to help. I contacted Amazima Ministries and Project Have Hope and I told them what I wanted to do, and I asked them how I could best help them. That is how Project Yesu was born. My goals at first were simple, I wanted to raise $600 to sponsor 2 children, one from Amazima and one from Project Have Hope. When you sponsor a child, it pays for food, medicine and sends them to school. I also decided I wanted to send Christmas cards to the children in Uganda, I mean who doesn’t like to get a card, it makes you smile. So I drew two different card designs and I contacted a local printing company and asked them if they would donate the printing of 650 cards, they did. So I started to tell people about Project Yesu, and my mom helped me start a blog so people could read about it. I met with my Children’s pastor and asked if our youth group could help me with the cards, because I wanted them to be personal, so I needed a lot of help to write out 650 cards. I also spoke to my youth group, and told them about Project Yesu and about the children in Uganda and asked them to help me raise money. Every week I set up a booth at my church to tell people about my project, and the word spread.   In only 8 weeks I raised over $2,400 and I was able to sponsor 7 children. It was way more then I had originally planned on and it was great. I got to meet some wonderful people, and tell them my story. I was invited to go to WAYFM a Christian radio station because they learned about my project, and I was even on TV. The NBC station out of Nasvhille did a story on Project Yesu. I read a quote one day from Mahatma Ghandi that said, "Be the change you want to see in the world". That’s what I want to do, I want to be the change, I want to make a difference, I want to help people. Everyone thinks kids are selfish or that we’re just kids and we can’t do anything like this. I want to show people what a difference one person can make. If someone, because they heard about me, or met me, decides that they can be a change too, then it will spread from me, to that person, to another person and so on. Kids have good ideas, and you know what? We don’t know all the reasons why it won’t work, we just know we what we want to do.  I know with Project Yesu, I am making a difference, not only in the lives of the seven children in Uganda who now have food, medicine and can go to school. But I am making a difference in the lives of my family, my friends, my teachers and even people I have never met before. I want Project Yesu to continue to spread and grow, and to do that I need people like you, who are reading this post to spread the word and to help me. My goals for 2012 is to raise $4,500 - who knows maybe I’ll double that this year or even triple that and be able to help more and more children in Uganda. I plan to travel to Uganda in December of 2012 to hand deliver the Christmas cards to the children, to meet my sponsored children and to love on the children of Uganda who have changed my life. If you want to know more about Project Yesu, or how you can help you can find me on  Facebook www.facebook.com/projectyesu  My sitewww.projectyesu.org. I am selling T-shirts and wristbands to raise funds, and I am also looking for families, groups, classrooms or anyone to be a part of the "Be The Change" campaign by collecting coins to donate towards Project Yesu. So I have accepted the challenge to be the change….will you?