blogging – Critical Digital Literacy

The Happy Student’s Guide to 3910 CDL

I’m excited that we are soon kicking off this course and wanted to share a video message that I’ve used before, in both online and face-to-face settings. There may be moments when you doubt your ability to complete this course, but I believe YOU CAN DO IT! There may be times you’ll forget and feel like you’re falling behind, but I believe YOU CAN DO IT! Planning and time management is a skill to be practiced, one that can never be perfected, but one that will bring you comfort when the going gets tough. Set your schedule! Be ruthless in managing your time! Honour your needs and factor in your mental health.

Here’s two ‘be happy’ thoughts! While this happy student’s guide references another course (DS106), it has a message for you as this course gets started.

The Happy Student’s Guide to ‘3910 CDL’

Be Happy by Pharrell Williams, with animated minions to add to the fun!

Happiness is starting a new course!

Domain of your own

So I’m thinking out loud here – so you can hear it, think about it, consider creating a domain of your own. It’s of course your decision, at this point in your academic journey, whether you think it’s worth the effort. Creating a domain of your own is a badge of recognition, a way others in this big wide world can find you. As a soon to be educator, is it worth the time and effort?

I’ve got two domains to my name. I didn’t have these domains when I started teaching. One is fairly new, created this year. The other is older, but also created to build my ‘brand’ as an educator. You’ll find me at hjdewaard.ca and hjdewaard.com. I’ve also acquired the FiveFlames4Learning.com domain where I keep my blog.

But, that’s not the point of this post. What I’m really thinking about is YOU, as students in this course, about getting your own domain. It costs – there’s an annual fee to be paid. Like a subscription to Netflix, but better because this will directly impact your digital web presence as an educator, not just become a distraction from the ‘real world’.

Here’s a blog post that may get you thinking about this topic – Why a Domain of One’s Own? There will be lots to consider if you read through the blog post and the comments. The people behind this post and comments are deep thinkers and active creators in digital spaces, recognizable names in the ed-tech spaces and networks. It’s worth a read. Some great conversations may result.

Let’s begin

Let’s begin here. Today. Now is the best time to get started. You CAN do this!

I’m starting to create and design this course site today. I’ll work over the next week to set up the best theme, create the structure for this course site, add pages, nest pages, set up the menu, add widgets to the side and bottom panels, fill the pages with content to support student learning, add or create images, supplement content with embedded hyperlinks, embed video and other media objects, and generally fill this empty site before the students ‘arrive’.

From a blank WordPress site, I’ll create a space and place to model critical digital literacies. Yes I can! and you, the students who come here to share this journey, can do this too! Let’s build things, tinker and play with digital technologies, together!

Let’s BEGIN!