Hello everyone--We would like for people to identify a project that they have been working on during Covid-19. It could be anything from landscaping, to art projects, improvements made around the house, music written--you get the idea. Would you please send Nathanael Gough a picture of their Covid-19 project along with a paragraph of explanation? It will be fun to find out what our colleagues have been doing with their home time.

Margaret Annunziata starts us out with what she insists is a "work in progress." Griffey ( "The name was chosen for our love of baseball and the fact that my husband wouldn't accept Ripkin and my son wouldn't accept Jeter!") is her new 4 and a half month old family member. He came to live with the Annunziatas when he was 7 weeks old. "This is the first puppy my children and I have ever had and it is definitely a new experience. He is growing fast and at this point, it feels a lot like having a toddler only with a much greater reach!"

Promoting engagement in online discussion forums can be a challenge in online courses. One of the common approaches is for students to post one response to an instructor’s prompt and then two responses to peers. Perhaps because this is such a widely adopted approach, instructors are often in search of more creative alternatives. One option to consider is an “Extending the Knowledge” approach where students do three things: (1) identify one thing they really like about a peer’s post and providing a minimum of one supporting reason, (2) identifying one thing that was a little fuzzy or confusing to them and would like a little more clarification on by calling attention to specific details of that peer’s post and (3) then building on that peer’s post by providing a link to a related website, news article, podcast or video.