Open learning. No deadlines, no guidelines, no marks. Just me and the world, learning together. Seems pretty simple, huh?
What a week I’ve had and what a journey I’m embarking on. I’m taking two tech courses as part of my Master’s program and in one course I am taking part in a MOOC, an ETMOOC to be more precise. Check it out… www.etmooc.org A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course where people from literally all around the world participate and share their knowledge. It is rather amazing…
Let’s backtrack so I can I’ll tell you a bit about the beginning of my adventure. I’m not really a social media type of gal (I think?)…a year ago I bought an iPhone and started texting, and must admit I do like it. It is so easy to keep in touch with teenagers via texting, doing Facetime calls, sending off thoughts to friends as I think of them and having the internet at my fingertips. Yeah, I do like that.
Over the past week, I’ve spent umpteen hours getting myself set up in all the ‘places’ I needed to be to participate in this MOOC…a Twitter account, a Skype account, more Google accounts, more email accounts; I’ve learned about “clouds” (not the fluffy white things in the sky), navigated my way around a wiki to find my actual online course EDCI515, participated in an online orientation session with Blackboard Elluminate, watched archived session, found out that # is not a number sign but rather in this language it is a ‘hashtag’ (figure that one out…), posted my blog on the ETMOOC blog hub (yea, I have a blog too….) and participated in my first ever live MOOC session. Phew! My brain is on overload.
I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of passwords and accounts I now have and the vulnerability I have created for myself because now I’m “out there”. “Out there” is so huge, the unknown, and I do not know who is peeking in at me, through ‘clouds’, or otherwise. I have to be careful about this whole ‘Public’ vs ‘Private’ issue and I have no desire to let the rest of the world know what I’m having for dinner. In my frustrations with getting ‘connected’, I’ve managed to developed the vocabulary of a well educated sailor, lost sleep over working too late into the night figuring out these new things, and now feel compelled to learn about ‘digital footprints’. The only foot prints I care to leave behind are on a sandy beach where I can feel the warm sand and surf beneath my toes. I’m not sure I like all this connectedness just yet; however, I am somewhat curious about how social media works.
I participated in the live ETMOOC orientation earlier this week. Not sure what I was getting myself into, but my curiosity insisted I find out. Once I was able to log on I watched a scrolling screen of comments after comments whizzing past me, I could barley keep up with reading them. I watched the participant counter clock people in as they entered the room… 50, 60, 80, 100! Wow, I couldn’t believe how many people logged into the first session of this course…the counter finally stopped at 200. The session began; I was listening to Alec as he described the process of the MOOC. Other people would take over the ‘mic’ and say what was on their mind. Everything was moving pretty fast and I was somewhat confused with all the new jargon. The most intriguing part for me was watching the whiteboard when Alec invited the group to add their thoughts to the page. He briefly described how to do it and I tried…. The feeling I felt as I was adding my thoughts to this page along with 200 other people from all around the world was amazing! Here I was in 2013 participating in this course with people from all over the globe and our thoughts were collectively gathered on one page. That was a superbly and utterly amazing moment for me. I was hooked. I wonder what my grandma and grandpa would have thought if they could have seen how technology worked today. Amazing.