once you start MOOCing you just can’t stop.
I had a great time connecting with folks from #etmooc – I especially enjoyed the synchronous blackboard sessions. Having never participated in an interactive online classroom before, it was a surreal experience to watch a presenters respond in real time to what I, a faceless student, scrawled on the blackboard slides.
However, I’m starting to gravitate away from #etmooc, as much of the conversation is focused on the practical challenges of K-12 educators. Group discussions and tweets were an eye-opening exposure to this world of end-users but the discussions turned more to the integration of technologies and tools. My current interest in developing education technologies is more rooted in both the technological platforms and the pedagogy behind their development.
Fortunately, there’s a MOOC for that.
More than one actually.
I decided to sign up for the MIT Media Lab’s “Learning Creative Learning” course, which held its first session today. Already, I’m seeing direct parallels between this course, and the Instructional Design course I took last Fall. Our first reading was the instructor, Mitch Resnick’s paper, All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten (click here to read). Resnick’s “Kindergarden learning style” reminded me of David Kolb’s learning cycle:
originally from: http://www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/ldu/sddu_multimedia/images/kolb_cycle.gif
It looks to me like these two theories of learning are describing the same cognitive processes. In fact, I think we could re-arrange Kolb’s learning cycle to match with the Kindergarten style like so:
| Kolb | Resnick |
| Hypothesize | Imagine |
| Test | Create |
| Experience | Play |
| … | Share |
| Reflect | Reflect |
| Hypothesize | Imagine |
The addition of “Share” in the kindergarten style is particularly relevant to skills in the modern workplace and fits with my personal experience of understanding ideas more thoroughly as I teach them to others. I strongly feel that sharing is an element that is inherent in much online media, one of its strengths yet to be fully harnessed in contemporary online course offerings.
Anywho, thanks, #etmooc for a wonderful and informative few weeks. Onward to the next MOOC…and beyond!