You may have noticed from the trickle of posts this week and dearth of regular features that changes are afoot. I had planned for this TTFN post to go up when I finished my grading, but then I decided to wait and see if anything came out on the Reinvention proposals. Alas, though my sources on the Reinvention task  forces said they’d try to get the slides they used to present to the Chancellor released to the rest of us, there has been no word of a “communication strategy” for the proposals (except for one report that their was great annoyance at the top about the lack of one). More news on those when I have any.

So, here we are. The end of the term is upon us, and so the Lounge, like the rest of the building, will be quieter, though still open. You may be hearing from some of the regular contributors (and might even see the return of a regular feature or two under different leadership), you might be hearing from me on occasion, and you might just want to stay away until August. Feel free to post things you find in the comments or send them to me (drichardson2@ccc.edu; philodave@earthlink.net) and I’ll put them up.

It’s been a great year on the Lounge: we’ve had more views in the first five months of 2011 (39, 606) than in all of 2010 (35,802). The daily average has jumped up to around 300 views per day, and we are getting comments from faculty around the district. Good stuff all around. Best of all the discussions have been consistently interesting and thought provoking–a near daily reminder of how lucky I am to work with a bunch of smart and interesting people.

And a big THANK YOU to my fellow contributors, especially the regular feature writers Mathissexy and Matt U (and the Realist for the Midterm take0ver and breaking news updates). I think it’s really important for the Lounge to have a variety of voices leading the conversation. Hopefully, we’ll have still more next year. The more this becomes a collective thing, the better and more useful it will become for all of us (in my humble).

To that end, as much as I appreciate the (lurking and active) readership and the (frequent and infrequent) commentators, I really, really hope that all of you reading this will think about the possibility of becoming a contributor. Options include taking over some regular feature (either totally or alternating), taking over some occasional feature (like the Board Report Review) that occurs monthly or intermittently, coming up with your own feature (set your own schedule!), or just becoming a contributor so you can post if and when you feel like it. If you’re interested, drop me a line and we can talk through how we’ll get you started.

I am planning to have a meeting in August some time to talk about the Lounge, new possibilities, and what I’ve learned from it (maybe at one of the Faculty Development shin-digs), and I hope you’ll come there with ideas and possibilities (or post them here).

More than anything, though, I wish you a healthy and happy summer. You’ve earned it.

PS: If you missed them in the comments, consider checking out Art DiVito’s TEDX talk on Education (and try, if you can, to answer a sixth question that he poses indirectly through his talk–how can one man be wrong about so much?) and this article from Hector.

h/t to both of them for the pointers.