Once upon a time there was a blogosphere ruled by a sweet and beautiful man...

Fine. On August 6, Sam Shah shared his wonderful idea of a New Blogger Initiation. Sam asked anyone interested to make a pledge to write one post a week for 4 weeks. Those who pledged received an email with several prompts to choose from. At midnight tonight (August 21), that first post is due, and I'm honored to be on the "Initiation Team" to share 8 of these blogs with you.

I'm including a hyperlinked heading from each site, person's name and twitter ID (if available), a hyperlinked post title, and the author's favorite sentence from post, along with a summary of post.

Here they are, in no particular order...

Valerie Higgins, @Valerie1121
Classroom Decòr
"One of the activities we did was to make this delicious pi chain."
My students created a paper chain representing the first...so many...digits of pi on Pi Day last year. My plan is to somehow add to it each year we celebrate.

Lea Ann Smith, @SmithTeach
New Blogger Initiative, Post 1
"One thing I plan on doing differently is putting more of my Algebra 1 content online."
I'm transitioning to a blended Algebra 1 classroom.  I am making more content available online and I am hoping this helps me to reach more students in different ways.  I would like to find other like minded teachers to share ideas with.

Sue Jones, @geonz
twitterblogosphere
"I also appreciate a choice of prompts, some geared towards K-12 schoolteachers and other more vague ones that folks like me wouldn't have to adapt."
My humble yet daunting goal for the first week - to start habits of Using Time The Way I Want To!

"I also just checked my e-mail in the middle of this blog post and received something from the “Blogging Initiation Team”–a group of great teachers who are also great bloggers, and are trying to get other teachers involved in blogging."
"Link sheets" are an idea I found at a conference which help students make connections between various representations (think of "Rule of Four").  I enjoy thought experiments and love sharing them with my class.

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Thank you, Sam, for seeing this great idea to its first fruition. Thank you, Julie @jreulbach, for your tireless work with the Google docs also. We rock. New Bloggers rock. We all rock!!!

And if you haven't signed up for this Initiation, then just start blogging anyway — Dan even made a video to get you going!

Updated 08/27/12:
Please check out the rest of Week ONE posts featured at: Julie, Anne, Megan, Bowman, Sam, Lisa, John, @druinok, Tina, Kate, Sue.