So far #ETMOOC (Educational Technology & Media Massive Open Online Course) has been impressive in the number of people that have registered and started with the orientation/introduction process. There have been some great examples of the use of online tools like YouTube, Animoto and Jux (a new one to me) to create short personal introductions.

Unfortunately I was a little too optimistic in my last post about how technologically “open” this MOOC was going to be. It turns out that Blackboard Collaborate, the main event online sharing forum, doesn’t support the Chrome browser, or Chromebooks, or any form of Linux apart from Ubuntu (maybe), nor even iPads properly (so I’ve heard). Even the archived main events are locked up in Blackboard Collaborate rather than something simple, easy and universal like a YouTube video, so now joy there either.

Nevertheless, the #ETMOOC Google+ community and Twitter feed are currently very busy and more than enough to keep up with at this stage. Apart from the recent Google Power Searching MOOC, this is my first MOOC and I am looking forward to seeing how things pan out over coming weeks. There are some great topics coming up and many great people involved, so it is looking good! I’m already making plenty of connections with educators all over the world, primarily from the English speaking nations of Australia, Canada, the US and the UK. The next most prominent language group appears to be the Spanish speakers, most of whom are communicating in English in this forum.

In brief: a dynamic, fascinating and worthwhile experience, but a shame about one of the main tech choices made.