So it sounds like to me that you should only do the activities that are meaningful for you. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with self-selecting. In fact, I would almost expect you not to waste your time on something that doesn’t further your learning. Maybe for you the challenge takes a different form and the activities can be seen as support for those who need it (in the differentiation sense) not as mandatory assignments.

(Makes me sympathize with my students when I give them a task and they think to themselves, “but why do I need to do this?”)

To be honest with you, as one of the co-creators of the challenge, the idea is probably the farthest thing from contrived I could imagine. For me it took off because I was/am a bad commenter. Not because I thought other people needed direction, or because we can’t all figure it out on our own, but because I needed a focus/timeline/reason to do better. Sue and I had lots of talks about the value of commenting and I genuinely felt I was missing out on the conversation (in favor of posting on my own blog).

Perhaps for you commenting was never a challenge, which is why it feels contrived. But I can guarantee, at least from my end, that the whole thing was more spontaneous than it may appear, and always coming from the perspective (at least on my end) of contributing more to conversations and being a part of the connected learning that’s going on every day.

@christine @sue

I totally agree that a huge part of the value in this experience is seeing how others react, what they’re learning, and how their changing their practice. It’s always interesting to see how others perceive something, especially something that is important to you. I’m also really appreciating seeing the different paths each participant is taking to improving their blogging/commenting. For me this had to be a timelined, themed, event, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Clearly for others, it may not be quite so necessary. Interesting!

@Ben

I think we’re talking about quality and quantity. From all of the activities so far, the focus has been on quality commenting, but leaving quality comments on a few more blogs than you normally would. I definitely would say that the challenge isn’t about leaving as many comments as possible, but being an active participant in as many meaningful conversations that help propel your learning as possible. Is that coming through to you from the activities? Or do we need to change it up?

At times, the whole challenge feels slightly contrived, I have to admit. I understand the purpose, but there are times — including when I read other participants’ reflections, and my own! — when I think to myself, “For real? Do we need to think about how to interact with others? Aren’t we all professionals here?” But then again perhaps I am just being cynical. Though I will admit that I never thought of the video / audio commenting side of things much, and that is a very cool new direction for me.

For me, my greatest learning from the Challenge at the moment is coming from not doing the tasks but reading the participants reflections on their daily tasks and comments in response to their posts because makes me reflect on my views often challenging my preconceived ideas. I’ve also enjoyed the varying directions it has taken people like the videos and video commenting.