Hiya CU Students!

Things have been busy around the campus, as we get ready for the next lecture series. We considered several options for our items of the day in October, including the obvious choice of Halloween – but Penny made a good point that there are very few of you who want to be scared for a full thirty days. Instead, we are going with Rocktober!

Throughout the month of October, ConsumeU will feature items of the day from the world of Rock music. While I myself am not a fan of this “new sound”, I know many of you are, and I’ve agreed to refrain from my usual snarky comments for the next thirty days. Actually, my dog Plato is the one who convinced me that Rocktober was the right idea, because of his affinity for Fender guitars.

The photo of me above, taken by the lovely Penny Peterson, is actually a preview of my halloween costume. It’s my new alter ego – a rock and roll god, stage name of The Profexor. What do you think?

If you visit the Pop Quiz page every day this October around 8pm, we will be offering as our item of the day a little slice of rock music history. There will also be opportunities on Facebook this month for you to give us your feedback about Rocktober and a variety of other things.

Thanks for your continued support, and for helping us continue to build a better ConsumeU.

Are you Ready to Rock?

- The Profexor.

I am very excited to announce that the ConsumeU 2010 School Supply Drive was a huge success. Because everyone stepped up and answered lots of questions, we were able to donate 1,125 school supplies to A Gift For Teaching. This great organization provides the teachers of Central Florida with a free store to acquire the supplies they need for their classrooms. It helps ensure that all of the students have the tools that they need to create and learn.

The picture to the left was taken just after I delivered the supplies personally. The kids were very excited! I was happy to play the blank piece of paper for them – I just hope I can figure out how to get the fire breathing dinosaur off my jacket – after its been preserved for posterity, of course!

The two week school supply drive was a success because many of you signed up and rated items.  We are extremely proud of the ConsumeU Students for putting in the extra time rating (and hopefully having fun doing it)!  We were able to record over 25,000 item ratings within the two week period which was a huge win for a website as new as we are.

We were able to donate:

350 Notebooks
325 Boxes of Crayons (24 count)
230 Folders
110 Glue Sticks
80 Bottles of Glue
45 Boxes of colored pencils
And more!

This week we gathered all of the wonderful supplies for a picture.  As you can see in the video below the team got a little carried away having fun with crayons.  Thank you again for all of your support and a special thank you to Emily Hayes, Ryan Young and Mike Worthington and Andrea Hendry for helping create and organize this campaign!

Keep rating!

The Professor

Greetings, media lovers! I’m on the home campus this week, helping Penny and the gang plot and plan for our partnership with A Gift For Teaching. For every 25 item votes between August 22nd and September 4th, we will give away one school supply to their charity. The more you vote, the more we’ll give away! If you can spare the time check out the details on our promotion page.

I love school supplies. In fact, I once collected used ones. I had an idea for an invention that would clean the words off paper and rebind it into new notebooks – but Plato, my dog, grew hungry and ate the blueprints. Speaking of which, I think he’s getting hungry now!

Toodles!

The Professor

On June 8th 2010 ConsumeU was featured on the 5:00 news in an online segment called “Online with Erin”.  The intent of this segment is to educate the Central Wisconsin viewers on interesting things happening in the online community.  Erin Davisson, who has been with WFRV-TV for over 20 years, did a great job hosting this segment as well as explaining the website and it’s features.  Check out the video below of the segment featuring CEO Patrick Hayes.

To read the entire article click on the link provided below.

ConsumeU.com on WFRV-TV

Welcome to ConsumeU, the university helping you find your way in a world of infinite choices.  I am the Professor, and I am glad that you have joined us here at ConsumeU.   There is a lot to see and do around campus so I appreciate you taking the time to absorb the infinite wisdom I have to share.

ConsumeU was born from the simple idea that there will always be more consumer options tomorrow than there are today.   Whether it is books, movies, television, music, or the myriad of other categories that we will be adding, there are always  many more options than we have time to sort through.  We here at ConsumeU take your responses to items, along with the responses of the entire ConsumeU student body, and provide recommendations tailored just for you.  As with anything, the more you participate, the more rewarding your experience will be.

We at ConsumeU also believe that education should be shared amongst friends and family.  That is why you are encouraged to invite those that you know (and hopefully like) to join in the education with you.  There are many fun activities you can  share with your Classmates.  As you vote on items throughout the site, I will calculate a CU score between you and every other ConsumeU student.  This score calculates how similar your preferences are with each student.  What a great way to get to know your Classmates better!  Who knows, you might even find someone out there who has the exact same preferences as you!

I encourage each of you to return to The Professor’s Blog often, as there will be interesting articles on popular items, unusual item correlations, item trends, and many more topics that are sure to entertain and even educate.

Again I welcome you to ConsumeU.  Sorry I have to run, I lost my glasses again!