The waters are getting choppy and I'm having to paddle faster to keep my kayak moving.  I am happy to paddle with all the energy that I have as I am having a great time out on the water.  ETEC 565A was a fantastic course that required a lot of time and energy.  This heightened effort pushed me in a new direction.

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During the progression of this course, my instructional design skills went from 0 to infinity in a matter of weeks, which felt like a blink of an eye.  Truthfully, I had no idea what this course would entail, but I took it on with full gusto.  The first assignment was the most troublesome for me as I had no idea which area to hone in on to teach.  Coming up with a subject area to teach was the hardest choice I had to make.  It determined my success in being able to confidently teach a particular content area, in a mode that I was not confident in teaching.  There were a lot of skills and content needed to be learned.

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I believe that my instructional skills became broader, as I acquired new strategies that can be applied in various avenues of online teaching.  When I have the time, I would like to design a math challenge course for grade 5-7 BC students.  I am finding that teachers are overwhelmed with the new curriculum and are having to differentiate for many students from varying levels of ability.  If they had content for students who needed challenging tasks, then teachers would have more time to focus on students who need more face to face or one on one instruction. If I were to take ETEC 656a over again, I think the Math course is is what I would design in a Wordpress or Weebly platform as the ability to make pages more aesthetically appealing is important to me.  Although, the ability to create quizzes and assignments and to keep track of grades on the Moodle platform, are also great features.

 

I appreciate the space to explore and delve into the various LMS platforms as my only experience with a particular platform was with Blackboard at this time.  Because different platforms present positive and negative attributes depending on the nature of the course, various examples needed to be explored.  I didn't realize the many open accessed tools there were available on the Internet for assessment and communication purposes, and I would like to further explore options for my current teaching practice.

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The course readings  helped me purposefully think about various aspects of my course design, that I would not have thought of.  For example, the reading by Chickering and Ehrmann, discussed the importance of Social Emotional learning that is placed on the standards of learning.  Throughout the writing of my course, the social and emotional needs of the potential students, would need to be in the foreground when designing assignments, using tech tools, and displaying specific content.  As I read through the course content, and explored the various LMSs, I developed a greater appreciation for designers and instructors of online courses.