Backward Design

To clarify...

At OISE, every one of my instructors stressed the importance of Backward Design, where you start with what you want the students to do/know (ie. the overall curriculum expectations), decide what you want to evaluate (ie. final test/culminating task) and lastly design the lessons for that unit to support those expectations.  

With this blog, it seems like I am doing the exact opposite: starting with ideas I think will engage the students and trying (maybe a bit too hard) to fit them into the curriculum.  I agree that backward design is how a teacher should approach unit/course because it helps keep the big picture question 'why teach?' in focus.  However, backward design is a method that is extremely hard to do unless you have a pool of solid resources to pull from.  That is what I am doing here:  generating some ideas that are starting points for units/courses I think can engage students and support 21st Century Fluencies that I could use when eventually some day I have an actual class to teach (at least thats how I rationalize it to myself).