These are the weekly recap emails from a four week course I took on teaching in WordPress. I have used WordPress to teach student success courses (eLearning 101) as well as Adult Basic Education courses (Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science). Much of my inspiration came from this course below:
Week 1
It’s been a great start to Teaching with WordPress from our perspective. Here’s a brief summary of this week’s activity on the blog hub and Twitter discussion:
- Opened the week with a presentation/conversation about Open Pedagogy including a matrix for brainstorming examples of course designs and where they fall on the continuum from open to closed/learner centered to teacher centered.
- Comment feeds by category: Tom posted a call out for help, TWPer’s responded and a post was submitted – for everyone’s benefit: http://bionicteaching.com/
wordpress-comment- subscriptions-by-category/ - Early sharing of projects, examples of course design and decisions/considerations involved: Alan on connected courses using FeedWP and a backstage look at a FeedWP powered connected course. Mariana’s post about her experience setting up a her own domain in WP. Tom sharing his design for a faculty development course called OLE including a potential link to #TWP15! Mo’s early plans for a course he’s designing with a student
- Alan built his first WP plug-in and shared the process!
- Viv opening the door to a conversation about ethics in the open.
- Jeffrey shares a summary post of curated readings on all things open
- Many more examples of us connnecting, sharing and figuring things out together on Twitter (#TWP15)
Please feel free to add your own summary – tag a post with twpweek1 (see all posts with this tag on our Week 1 discussions page), comment on this page (if you prefer) and (if you like) engage in a personal reflection.
Let’s keep the interactions going in comments on blogs, on Twitter, and here on our site as we move into week 2 soon!
Week 2
We are coming off an incredible week of connection and sharing about WordPress and open pedagogy. If you missed anything take a look at the Week 1 Summary. Last week the discussion was focused on open pedagogy and this week we will be exploring some of the affordances of WordPress in teaching and learning. How can the WordPress environment be used to support teaching and learning? What are the benefits and limitations for using WordPress for teaching in your context?
We will kick off the week with a webinar WordPress for Teaching, Monday June 8, 12-1pm Pacific (3pm Eastern, 19:00 UTC): with Christina Hendricks, Alan Levine, and Tannis Morgan where they will talk about various ways in which they use WordPress for teaching and learning. This will be on Google Hangouts, broadcast live on YouTube. Click here for information and how to sign up to join the discussion if you want, and share how you use WordPress for teaching (or just ask questions!).
Join us for the week to explore how WordPress can be used as a flexible, blank-slate tool in teaching and learning. Share your experiences and tips and tricks for using WordPress in open pedagogy and continue the conversation on twitter (#TWP15) and on your blog.
Read more about the week in the schedule, week 2, which includes:
- Share your work in progress with the network and receive feedback as you develop it
- Watch a short screencast on examples of WordPress for Teaching & Learning at UBC and share your own screencast or video of work at your institution/organization/
company. - One of the TWP15 participants has already shared a screencast on a “blogging bootcamp”about using WordPress for educational blogs
- Discuss the benefits and risks involved in open learning environments in the Weekly discussion area
- Explore blog posts from the group on the Blog Hub; “post one, comment on two,” as we are trying to encourage–do a blog post, and comment on (at least) two others!
We are looking foreword to another great week of discussion, sharing and connection.
Week 3
We have reached the end of Week 2 in Teaching in WordPress and looking foreword to another exciting week learning from the ever expanding #TWP15 community. Last week we dug a little deeper and started exploring some of the affordances of WordPress in teaching and learning. This week we will start putting it all together and thinking about cohesive course design and more advanced functionality in WordPress
This week we will have a virtual drop-in clinic. On June 18th 1:00 noon – 2:00 pm (PST) join UBC’s Richard Tape, WordPress developer and all around good guy, for a virtual “support clinic” on Google Hangout. Ask your questions about plug-ins, approaches and general functionality for WordPress features that are commonly used for teaching and learning. RSVP to join the discussion using the event page on Google. We’ll take it from there. On the specified date and time above, just click on the live feed to watch.
Join us for the week to explore how we can design cohesive and effective courses in WordPress. Share your experiences and tips and tricks for using WordPress in open pedagogy and continue the conversation on twitter (#TWP15) and on your blog.
Read more about the week in the schedule, week 3 & 4, which includes:
- Share your work in progress with the network and receive feedback as you develop it.
- We have a couple folks sharing their WIP, share some feedback with them
- One of the TWP15 participants has already shared a screencast on a “blogging bootcamp”about using WordPress for educational blog
- Discuss what are you learning about being a learner in the open in the Weekly discussion area
- Explore blog posts from the group on the Blog Hub; “post one, comment on two,” as we are trying to encourage–do a blog post, and comment on (at least) two others!
We are looking foreword to another great week of discussion, sharing and connection.
Week 4
This is our last official week of Teaching with WordPress (though see the end of this post–we don’t think of the course as fully “ending”). It’s been a quick four weeks!
Week 4 activities
If you haven’t done so already, please take a look at the learning activities for weeks 3 and 4, including the activity support notes on the same page, and consider doing one or two of these this week. Or, write a blog post about anything that is on your mind at the moment related to teaching with WordPress.
Two things we would really love to see, if you have the time and inclination:
- Please contribute to our Assignment Bank! This is a collection of assignments you might give to students (or have already given) that use WordPress in some way. We’re hoping to build up a bank of numerous kinds of assignments that can serve as inspiration for anyone coming to the TWP site this week or later.
- Please consider sharing your “Word in Progress,” something you’re working on for which you’d like feedback. You can of course just do that through the blog hub (which some are already doing), or you can contribute to the WIP section of the site, here.
We also invite you to tweet a question to #TWP15, something you’d like to hear others’ views about. Tweet using #quest and #TWP15.
If you feel so inclined, you could make a video or screen cast talking about how and why you use WordPress for teaching and learning, as two of our participants have done: Jim Luke: http://econproph.com/2015/06/
TWP15 Wrap-up event
We will also have a final synchronous meeting this week, during which we’ll ask you to share what you’ve been working on, ask for feedback, learn what others are doing, etc. It is scheduled for Friday, June 26, 12pm Pacific/3pm Eastern/19:00 UTC. It will be on Google Hangouts, and broadcast live on YouTube for those who just want to watch but not be in the hangout. It will also be recorded. Please see here for more information and to RSVP.
Not the end…
Though this is our last week of the “course” called Teaching with WordPress, we don’t think of this as the end–part of our idea with this course was to connect people who are using WordPress in teaching and learning so that we can continue to learn from each other. So though this is our last “official” week, we hope you will continue to connect with others from the course, add resources to the resource collection, and add assignments to the assignment bank. We hope the TWP site will continue to be a resource for many who are interested in teaching with WordPress, and we’d love it if you could add things to it now and then!
