Welcome to the SLLO Blog

By: Tom Fritz

In the beginning, there were diaries. Short stout books, adorned with stickers and cheap locks that we hid with our most trusted secrets where nobody would find them, unless they spent more than ten seconds looking for it. Then we decided that others may want to read what we had written, surely we were funny enough in our own minds, and others would think the same. So we flooded the internet; LiveJournal, Blogger, GeoCities, all of these were the recipient of our writing, and just like that, online blogs were born.

What began as a way to talk about everyday life concerns and issues, over time, changed into a medium that was powerful and informative in its own right. Major news outlets began quoting authors, famous bloggers were given their own shows on TV, and landing book deals. Blogs began reporting on major news events before anyone else, and the comments became news on their own. Blogging was changing the way American’s searched for information. They became a tool to reach new audiences and bring knowledge to every computer in America.

With this digital discourse in mind, the Student Leader Learning Outcomes Create and Share Team is bringing you the SLLO blog (http://sllo.tamu.edu/blog). Our hope is that through regular reading, you will be able to keep SLLO in the forefront of your mind and receive little bits of information for your daily consumption. Think of it as the student learning Tapas to the daily meal of your job.

What can you expect from this blog? Well, we are glad you asked:
• Ways to utilize the SLLO resources in your job. There are times of the year where many of us are doing similar tasks, and SLLO has resources that can help you make sure your students are learning through them. These resources include ways to help with recruitment, selection, running meetings, community service, and many others.
• Interviews with your colleagues across the division using SLLO in their jobs. Sometimes it can seem like you are the only person struggling with how to introduce SLLO into your students’ lives. These interviews can talk to you about what worked, and sometimes more importantly, what didn’t.
• Relevant news stories on higher education, and how they are impacting student learning. We will talk about different legislation or stories from around the country and how they can affect our jobs. If there are resources that may be helpful in adapting to this new reality, we will provide those to you.
• Whatever else you can think of. The authors of this blog are your colleagues, and may be sitting in meetings with you every day. If there is something you would like to see covered, let us know, or send us an e-mail at sllo@tamu.edu with the subject line “Blog Idea”, and we may cover it in a future post.

Bottom line, we hope that this will be useful for you as you help us help you bring SLLO to all of our students. If we can all make a commitment to encourage and enhance student learning outside of the classroom, we will make Texas A&M University the premier place were students come to learn.
So how about it, what do you hope to see from this blog in the future?