Reflection #1: Creating a WordPress blog on OpenEd.ca

As an older student, it’s often easy to dismiss myself as a luddite. I can’t be expected to adapt to new technology because I’m just too old! Of course, this is a ridiculous excuse. Plenty of people a lot older than myself have blogs, know how to code, etc. It’s always good to challenge one’s self, and stretch in new directions, even if it’s uncomfortable at first. There may be no more useful or relevant way to challenge my skill set than to explore and become comfortable with new technologies such as WordPress and OpenEd.

To quote directly from opened.ca, “The OpenETC is a community of educators, technologists, and designers sharing their expertise to foster and support open infrastructure for the BC post-secondary sector.” “But what is WordPress?” you may be wondering. As Wikipedia tells us, “WordPress is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, mailing lists and Internet forum, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems and online stores.“

When I say ‘new technologies,’ I of course mean they are new to me. As a first-time blogger, I get the sense that learning to create a blog and add posts to it is perhaps a bit like learning to sail without any wind, or snowboard without having the momentum to turn from toe to heel edge. In order to really get into the rhythm, first some very basic skills in site navigation have to be established. I am in the thick of that stage in my learning, currently. For example, when I made my first inquiry post, I didn’t notice that I had to hit ‘publish’ first! So, to my dismay, I had to rewrite it.

In short, I find the experience of navigating and exploring WordPress through OpenEd to be a slow, exhausting and at times, overwhelming experience. As a result, I’m experiencing significant fatigue after a short period of exploration. I can only take about 20-30 minutes of working before I feel that I’ve hit a wall. Fortunately, a short Google search allowed me to find a resource that delineated, clarified and explained some of the issues I’m having. For example, one thing that I realized was contributing to my sense of being overwhelmed was that I need to learn a lot of terminology related to the tech. Some of these terms include ‘plug-ins, widgets, posts-vs-pages, and permalinks.’ Here below is a link to this article.

It’s taking me a lot more time to learn these technologies than I had anticipated. None the less, I’m hopeful that as I continue to practice and refine my blog, I’ll get into the swing of things and it will become more intuitive for me. As I become more fluent with using this tool, I’m hopeful that I can begin to think more creatively in terms of how I can best use this kind of tool in my own, future classroom. I’m excited to be learning something new that’s related to technology, and I hope that developing/curating this blog will prove to be a useful resource to me and to others in the future.

I welcome any and all feedback to my blog. We are all on this journey together and the more feedback we give each other, the stronger we will all be! I hope to hear from you soon in the comments section. Thank you!