Every journey begins with the first step...

For all of us, we begin a new journey together this September. For you it will be to learn about curriculum and assessment and 21st learning. For me, it is to use a new book that I have co-authored called Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment: Engaging the 21st Century Learner . This is not the first book that I have used as a text that I authored. But this book was different. First it was a Canadian publisher that wanted the book to be Canadian. That meant not just knowing about Ontario and the great things that were happening here - but knowing about all provinces. What a fascinating challenge that turned out to be.

Another change was that this time I had co-authors. These co-authors, Joanne Reid and Wendy Kolohon, had both experienced the course that you are taking now. Both were my students. Wendy completed her M.Ed. during this time and wrote her MRP on integrated curriculum and assessment at Bluewater District Board of Education.  Wendy helped implement innovative curriculum/assessment at BWDSB and was an expert at what really worked and also the latest directions of the Ontario Ministry of Education. Joanne was a doctoral student who acted as a TA in previous versions of the course and also taught the assessment course for teacher education at Brock.  She had deep experience in the educational field in several roles such as a teacher, success teacher, literacy coach and educational officer. She was particularly knowledgeable about assessment - both large-scale and classroom assessment.

This was a challenging book to write and not the one we expected to write. When we read curriculum documents from across Canada we found that they were many commonalities and that things were changing on the policy front. And they were also changes in teachers' practices. We met the most amazing teachers (via Twitter, Skype, blogs and wikis) who were complying with policy (to be accountable), but who were implementing creative pedagogy that engaged their students.  These teachers saw curriculum and assessment as one and the same thing and this is how they taught. You will meet them along the way. As well most of them used technology to enhance their teaching - but not all of them did. This course will talk about technology but you are not expected to be an expert in it. (If you are technologically literate, that may be very helpful for the rest of us!)

So, we begin... your first task is to create a blog if you don't already have one and reflect on the things you learned in the Introductory class. I have borrowed the instructions from Dr. Candace Figg who so generously posted hers on the Internet. These can be found under Resources in Sakai. Some ideas to inspire your blog.


Here is a YouTube tutorial for Word Press.

So here goes to the next step!