It is Monday afternoon here in Guatemala City and outside my office our Elementary IT teacher is doing an excellent job of teaching a Grade 4 class about researching safely on the internet.  In my office, I am not quite that organized either on my desk or in my mind.  As you can see my desk is quite cluttered though I do have a nice view through a window to the outside behind me.

My mind is in much worse shape as far as organization but it is full of wonderful ideas and possibilities. This journey with ETMOOC is both amazing and overwhelming but I cling to the suggestion by so may experienced “Moocers” that there is a way through and to take it in small bites.  So that is what I am trying to do.

I could spend all day just browsing through all the incredible information but I am going to try and get a focus.  I had planned on doing more of that this past weekend but got hung up on listening to Simple K12 webinars on iPad usage and then on Sunday it was football day.  While not having a team to really follow in the playoffs I still love seeing a good game and chatting with my family back in Canada about what we are all watching.  So not as much got done as I would have liked.

So back to my review of Week One – What I have learned?

I attended or listened to the archive of all of the sessions offered and learned so much.  I have already written about what I learned from the blogging session.  Today I listened to the Curating and Social Bookmarking session.  I have to admit that up until I listened to Jeff Heil do the session I had never really thought about curating information as opposed to just bookmarking it.  I really appreciated the distinction that was made and I made a decision that I want to be more proactive with bookmarking and then beginning to curate the information. I think I need to narrow my focus a bit.

One of my favourite apps is Pocket formerly called Read it Later.  It is so easy to just click the link and save anything so that I don’t lose it but can get it later.  The problem is that at the moment I have over 300 things in my Pocket that I have to read, some going back 18 months.  This seems to be defeating the purpose.  I am so afraid that I will lose something that is interesting or appropriate for what I am doing that I easily just put it in Pocket with great intentions. It reminds of the ease of ordering on iTunes or Amazon once your payment info is there. Click and off I go. The problem seems to be that I don’t get back to it or don’t seem to use the opportunities I have to revisit what I saved.  I have decided that I need spend time this week either just getting rid of everything or decluttering my Pocket app.

I have an account in Diigo but have never really known how to use it.  Jeff gave some excellent suggestions.  He also talked about Scoop-it! which is an app I have had on and off my computer.  Someone talks about it and I think it sounds great and I use my account again and then I get frustrated because I don’t feel like I am using it properly and I take it off.  I am committed to learning how those two tools work.

My take away this week – I have met a number of nice people and I am proud of all the Canadians that keep popping up. I am committed to blogging for myself and not for others.  I am going to investigate Diigo and Scoop-it! and I am using Twitter more and more.

That is a good amount of learning for this past week.  I am proud of myself and have set goals that I think are reachable.