As I was working through this assignment it became quite clear to me the daunting task that some teachers have when they set out to set up an online course. This is quite an ambitious task. What I really appreciated about this assignment were the guiding questions that directed me through the process of thinking about the elements that I would need to include in my course in order for it to be a meaningful course. I found it most effective to start working with bullet points under the outline I copied from the assignment description. It took quite a lot of time to work through these points making sure that I had all the components of the course set out.
As I was trying to set up my WordPress site through UBC’s blogs I quickly realized that I needed more freedom to customize my site in order for it to work in the way I wanted. I chatted with one of the Technology helping teachers within my district and he suggested hosting the WordPress site through our district. This way he could leave the site open for me to customize the theme and add the plugins that I needed to make this work for me. Had it not been for my ability to host the WordPress site on the district intranet, I would have either had to change the platform to something other than WordPress, or I would have had to change the design and vision of my course.
Once I had my platform issues figured out, I decided that I would take a look at BC’s new curriculum and start to set up a course that I would actually be required to teach and rework within the next year when the curriculum changes. This assignment provide the perfect opportunity to really dive into the curriculum and see where the changes lie and where I have some existing material that will need to be tweaked. Normally when developing a course or restructuring units I work with a colleague or two and we split the work in ways that play to our strengths. I chose to do this all on my own for various reasons, and even through the process of working through the layout, I can see that I have my work cut out for me. At the end of this course, I will have a good start on a new unit that I can teach when BC’s new curriculum is implemented in the fall.