Last month I reached out to my current and former students on Twitter for a little bit of help. Part of the academic process for me at this stage requires I submit a portfolio that accounts for my teaching, research, and service as a professor at Lehigh. I’m going through my two-year reappointment now, the first of two before I go up for tenure.

The teaching part of this portfolio is many things, but one of those is a statement on teaching that articulates my particular philosophy when it comes to teaching and then assesses how well I am doing in implementing that approach.

For whatever reason, I wanted was to model my own philosophy in a document that talks about my philosophy. I’m very much in the show-don’t-tell crowd. So I asked the students to weigh in. I came with my own ideas; I wanted to know if that matched their experience. Call it a road test.

The results were pretty interesting, and I ended up adding another point because it came through so often. So I learned from the audience and also saw that some of my methods were apparent to them. Win-win, I say, and I’m not sure I want to do it the normal way from now on.

The link I just gave you is the culmination of that effort, and I was really pleased with the results after wrestling with the actual writing part forever.

I don’t know if anyone has ever crowdsourced a teaching philosophy, which means it’s brilliant and forward-thinking or splendidly idiotic. A teaching philosophy is supposed to be a personal document that is yours and personal in nature, and I know of many academics who hold that pretty tightly. Me? Not so much. I’m wired to do things in community at this point.

Anyhow, the results were a lot of fun. Give it a read, and thanks to all who participated. Also, special credit to my wife for the kicksave on editing this thing, because it was rougher than the Mos Eisley cantina on first edit.

And a warning: it’s a document produced for academics, which means two sucky things: there are no hyperlinks, and it’s longer than it should be. The meat of what this post is about is in the first section. Aren’t I helpful?

My short version would have simply read: “Just come to class. It’s magic.”

ESPN recently launched a site devoted to sports fans’ travels to sporting events, and it’s pretty slick. In addition to offering travel guides for fans looking to attend faraway events such as spring training, ESPN Sports Travel also gives fans a chance to upload content and memories from their trip (such as photos) under the Passport menu.

It also gives fans back a little bit of power to rate many different aspects of the sports fan experience.

Better, the site is cross-branded using a sponsorship from Orbitz, giving the site a sponsorship that both makes sense and connects to the actual content. In addition to giving sponsorship for the site, Orbitz travel deals are prominent on the page and give fans a resource looking for travel deals. Read more