Conrad’s Ed Tech Blog – I wonder if I put a few words here?

The First of Many

September 21, 2020 / calscher / 0 Comments

Welcome to my first blog post! This is the first blog I’ve ever had so blogging is very new to me. Does that make me a blogger now? I am certainly lucky that my professor outlined 15 steps for setting up this blog, or else I would have never figured out how to get this going. I mean, I probably (definitely) would not have started a blog on my own without it being required for a course, but to be honest I am glad this is required. Being introverted, I feel that I don’t often get my ideas out into the world and they stay bottled up inside of my brain. It’s nice to have the feeling that I can write what I want and how I want in this blog, even if it is part of an assignment. To me, that is probably the most prominent aspect of blogging that would be useful to high school students. I feel that many students are either not heard or, like me, often do not speak their minds openly. Blogging feels (so far) like a way students can practice getting their thoughts outside of their brain and into the world. Since the vast majority of youth are already on computers for copious amounts of time daily doing everything from playing World of Warcraft (a passion of mine) to tweeting on Twitter (which I still have not explored but it seems like I will get the honour to do so in this course) to watching The Office for the 100th time (because let’s be honest, computers act as TVs now too), they will feel comfortable putting their ideas into this known medium.

Having a BIology background, I’ve been thinking how to encorporate a blog into a biology course and into sciences courses in general. I had never thought blogs belonged in science before. I think blogs seemed so informal to me in comparison to the instruction usually given in science courses. There is often a right answer in science without much room to be open ended, especially during tests. When you find yourself memorizing and regurgitating the same information over and over and over and over, you get into this pattern of just focusing on what is needed to pass the next test and forget that information right after it’s finished. Now, as I am a newly born blogger, I can see many uses that blogs can have in a science course. Blogs can be used for students to post about new scientific innovations that they have (or were required to) researched, share their thoughts on what is going on in science around the world, and express their own critiques, ideas and beliefs on scientific studies. There are many other uses for blogs as well but these are what immediate come to my mind.

Well this is the end of my first blog post, I did it! I initially intended to end the blog abruptly with a meme of Stanley from The Office saying “I’m done! Good Bye!” but I was unsure if I could use that since I just found it online and I am not sure who it belongs to. Instead, here is a picture of my two Chihuahuas Bella (pure black) and Kenzie (black and white). They’re looking up anxiously anticipating the next blog post.

image showing person walking in pre-painted footprints — Photo by Flickr user jfchenier under CC license: BY-NC 2.0

Welcome and Introduction

September 9, 2020 / edtech / 0 Comments

Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:

Do you want to be online vs. offline?
Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
Do you want to have your blog public vs. private? (Note, you can set individual blog posts private or password protected or have an entire blog set to private)
Have you considered whether you are posting within or outside of Canada? This blog on opened.ca is hosted within Canada. That said, any public blog posts can have its content aggregated/curated onto social networks outside of Canada.

First tasks you might explore with your new blog:

Go into its admin panel found by adding /wp-admin at the end of your blog’s URL
Add new category or tags to organize your blog posts – found under “Posts” (but do not remove the pre-existing “EdTech” category or sub-categories, Free Inquiry and EdTech Inquiry). We have also pre-loaded the Teacher Education competencies as categories should you wish to use them to document your learning. If you would like to add more course categories, please do so (e.g., add EDCI 306A with no space for Music Ed, etc.)
See if your blog posts are appearing on the course website (you must have the course categories assigned to a post first and have provided your instructor with your blog URL)
Add pages
Embed images or set featured images and embed video in blog posts and pages (can be your own media or that found on the internet, but consider free or creative commons licensed works)
Under Appearance,
- Select your preferred website theme and customize to your preferences (New title, etc.)
- Customize menus & navigation
- Use widgets to customize blog content and features
Delete this starter post (or switch it to draft status if you want to keep for reference)

Do consider creating categories for each course that you take should you wish to document your learning (or from professional learning activities outside of formal courses). Keep note, however, that you may wish to use the course topic as the category as opposed to the course number as those outside of your program would not be familiar with the number (e.g., we use “EdTech” instead of “edci336).

Lastly, as always, be aware of the FIPPA as it relates to privacy and share only those names/images that you have consent to use or are otherwise public figures. When in doubt, ask us.

Please also review the resources from our course website for getting started with blogging: