My husband is away in Texas tonight.  My kids are at a concert.  I have the house to myself, and that is a really good thing, because it meant I could spend the night at the computer reading, absorbing, collaborating, learning, reflecting.

Week #1 of my first-ever MOOC is not even over yet and I feel as though I have been pushed and pulled and stretched in every which direction.  I no longer remember who shared, posted, linked what; BUT, I remember all of the new things that I learned.  And I had a small epiphany this week that I shared with my students.

One of the themes this week was “How do you make your learning visible?” And it came to me today that learning = change.  If I haven’t changed the way I think, feel, understand, then I haven’t learned anything.  Tony Stead says it all the time, “I used to think…. But now I think….”  If you can fill in this statement you have made your learning visible. I explained to my students how important mistakes are because they help us to make our learning visible – they help us to see how we have changed.

In the past week, every time someone in the etmooc community posted a reflection or a question about making learning visible it left me wondering “How DO I make my learning visible to OTHERS?”  But tonight I participated in Sue Waters’ Blackboard Discussion on Blogging and we talked about why we blog.  Many of the participants said they blog to reflect.  One brilliant person (wish I could remember the name) said “I write to create myself” (sorry if I misquoted).  I reflected on that a long time.

Tonight I realize that I don’t need to make my learning visible to anyone else other than myself.  I need to look at myself and think – How have I changed? And if I can answer that question I will have made my learning visible to ME.

One of the things that impacted me most deeply this week was a shared youtube video of David Wiley on Openness in Education.  He talks about how we can give away knowledge freely without losing it; in this information age, “Digital expressions of expertise is nonrivalrous”.  I am so thankful that all of my fellow-etmoocers are so willing to share their knowledge and expertise with me without rivalry  because I have a “ravenous demand” to learn and change and grow.