Welcome and Introduction

Before proceeding with your first blog post, take a moment to consider your privacy preferences. Please think about the following:

• Do you want to be online or offline?
• Do you want to use your name (or part of it) or a pseudonym — for example, West Coast Teacher?
• Do you want your blog public or private? You can set individual posts to private or password-protected, or set the whole blog to private.
• Have you considered whether you are posting from within or outside Canada? This blog is hosted in Canada. That said, any public post can be aggregated or curated onto social networks outside Canada.

To help you build a digital presence and establish yourself in the field, we recommend a public website under your full name. That approach fits the principles of open education and gives you control over your professional narrative — but we completely understand if you are not comfortable sharing publicly, for any number of valid reasons.

First tasks

1. Open the admin panel by adding /wp-admin to the end of your blog’s address.
2. Read the How-tos page — it covers what people ask about most.
3. Change the site title and tagline under Settings → General, and replace the name and photo on the front page.
4. Add categories or tags to organise your posts, under Posts. Do not remove the pre-existing course categories — they are how your posts reach the course website.
5. Check that your posts are appearing on the course website. You must have a course category assigned to the post, and your instructor must have your blog address.
6. Add or edit pages, and embed images, video and audio — your own work where possible, or openly licensed material.
7. Under Appearance, customise the menu and the site’s colours to your taste.
8. Delete this starter post, or switch it to draft if you want to keep it for reference.

Do consider creating a category for each course you take, if you would like to document your learning — including professional learning outside formal courses. Use the course topic rather than the course number where you can: people outside your programme will recognise “Multimedia Learning” but not “EDCI 337”.

Lastly, be aware of FIPPA as it relates to privacy. Share only those names and images you have consent to use, or that are otherwise public. When in doubt, ask.