Kayleigh's Education Blog

When this project was first introduced I was feeling both excited and nervous for the opportunity to create my own learning process. I have grown up in an education system that is full of set guidelines and rubrics. I have always been a perfectionist, and although this system gave me a lot of anxiety, it also gave me a lot of structure, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Having so many classes this semester with inquiry based projects has proven to be a challenge, as I am not the most self motivated person. In addition to the struggle of multiple projects and assignments to keep track of, I am not even close to being a technologically savvy person. We have been assigned multiple TedTalks, documentaries, and YouTube videos to watch about the growth mindset, and how inquiry based projects are wonderful ways for children to learn, I am definitely trying to keep an open mind about how I will succeed this semester.

I have had a lot of difficulty coming to a decision of what I want to do for this assignment. Although I am passionate about photography, I only have access to a film camera. The process of buying and developing film takes both a lot of time, and money. I was trying to think of something that would be interesting and also make a positive impact in my life, and I have settled on cooking. I am not the best cook, and if I am cooking for myself my plate is typically a brown buffet: pasta with butter, rice with soy sauce… you get the gist. My partner on the other hand is an incredible cook and very creative in the kitchen. Given the fact that she is always the one cooking, I end up with the task of doing the dishes. I thought that for a change I would like to learn how to cook for her, as well as get out of doing the dishes multiple times a day. Though cooking is something I get a lot of anxiety doing (I don’t like being bad at things), I am excited to try and see what I can learn and bring to the kitchen.

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 “Music Ed” with space for EDCI 306A, 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.

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