Completing the content module assignment has been a very eye opening experience and have highlighted some of the difficulties associated with teaching in an online or blended learning environment for me. As I was completing assignment 2 and setting up my WordPress site I had great ambitions of creating a very interactive environment where students could login and participate in a class that was set up more like a social media site with the use of certain plugins. I was also going to hopefully use this same plugin to run different discussion groups and auto assign projects and assignments. What I found when it actually came time to try out the plugins that I researched was that some of them had changed drastically since the description that I had found posted. The other thing that I found was that some plugins were not very user friendly and actually quite challenging to even begin to use. Even the forums and YouTube tutorials were not helpful in some instances and I had to abandon my great plan, other times I was able to make the plugin work, but not in the way I had initially imagined.
I suppose the problems I encountered creating an online learning environment aren’t that different from the challenges I face in my classroom as I design a new unit. Often times I think that there should be a plethora of valuable resources on a certain topic through my school library, district subscription sites or just found on a simple internet search and what I find is quite disappointing. My unit gets developed, and eventually taught, but maybe not in the way I initially envisioned it. Sometimes my units turn out better than anticipated and other times worse. Being able to adapt seems to be just as important when teaching online as it is when teaching in the classroom. Knowing when to abandon an idea or concept, and when to keep plugging away and finding a way to make it work were very important for me as I prepared the content module.