The collective sigh of relief that should have accompanied this past week's announcement about the delay of new curriculum implementation for Grades 10-12 was more of a giant, audible question mark. Does more time to implement mean more direction? What about more department collaboration time? More prep time? More clarity from the Ministry? More sharing between schools? These are all questions that will be asked and debated at length next week in upcoming Social Studies and English department meetings. In the meantime, conversations flow freely in the staff room, hall ways and photocopy room. There seems to be no lack of things to talk about these days!
The delay in New Curriculum roll-out has definitely had an effect on my final vision project in that all impetus to move forward with changing Senior Socials courses for next year abruptly ground to a halt early last week... until further notice! All my eager collaborators have moved into standby mode, and I've been a collaboration of one for the last, and most challenging stage of my project. Curriculum change will go forward, though, and our school may still choose to implement next year - at least partially. This hopefully means that the usefulness of my project will simply be delayed, but by how long, I have no idea. There will be, however, many meetings between now and then, so life is proceeding as it has been since September.
I want to believe, and will continue to believe that the time I've spent working on this project will be of value to all the intended stakeholders, not only because I have come to learn and love the process of creating a network of digital artifacts, but also because I'd like to believe that the countless hours of neglecting my household responsibilities (and the resulting chaos, backlog and mess) was worth it! In short, I can't wait for the day that I am able to launch this on social media, and share it with the Reynolds community, as I intend to do when the time is right.
More than anything, this process has taught me that sometimes I need to slow down and practice patience, flexibility and the art of taking deep, calming breaths. That being said, I am happy (and even a little proud) to finally share what I've been working on, even though it's not quite 100% signed, sealed and delivered. I hope you enjoy seeing the end product of my journey and, at the very least, I hope that someone out there is able to draw inspiration from what I've done.
1. Here is a write-up that summarizes my experience with this project:
2. Here is the link to my website template and Google Forms survey:
Here is the link to the website template I hope to use for the Socials department, which includes a copy of the survey I designed on behalf of the department to use with Grade 10 and 11 students. Feel free to take the survey - it's just a draft. The actual one will be distributed via students' SD61learn accounts in January (?)3. Finally, here is the current evolution of my Social Studies Course Booklet:
*Please note: one course description is incomplete, and a few still need some revision... I'm waiting for collaboration to resume on this before declaring it "officially done" :)
...and it is with no small amount of trepidation and relief that I will now hit the "Publish" button!
I had to ask permission to see the booklet through Google - does that come to you and you send something back to me? I have a Google account but I guess not one that allows me access to your site.
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