I got a late start with this wonderful learning opportunity becasue I first heard about it on Saturday while attending the Classroom 2.0 Live webinar. (Thank you Peggy. @pgeorge) After the weekly CR2.0 webinar concluded, I checked out the link Peggy shared with me and started exploring the#etMOOC.
Luckily I had completed two MOOCs this past summer – Power Searching with Google and#digifoot12 run by Verena Roberts (@verenanz), who I believe is one of the facilitators for this MOOC also, so I know what to expect as far as information overload. It can be very overwhelming to first time MOOCers.
I listened to the recorded session hosted by Alec Couros (@courosa), whom I’ve been following since I joined Twitter in 2009. His calm delivery made me sure that I was going to enjoy this experience even though it was going to push lots of information at me. I would need to set some goals for myself and try to stick to them.
First I would have to set some time limits for myself. How much time per day/week could I afford to spend pursuing my learning with the other #etmooc participants? How many blogs should I add to my RSS reader, which is sorely neglected most days because I run out of time? How many comments could I leave others to extend the conversation?
I checked out the calendar and thought I could definitely attend at least one of the synchronous meetings that would be held in Blackboard Collaborate each week. I checked out the #etmooc Google+ community, joined it, and scanned several of the entries which had been posted. Then I opened open TweetDeck and added the #etmooc column to it. That’s all I did on Saturday.
Sunday morning I got up early and after finishing with my emails, I went back to the #etmooc blog hub and started reading through it more thoughtfully. I hopped over to the Google+ group and clicked on a few links others had shared to their blog posts about their first week with #etmooc. I even left a couple of comments.
Then I stopped and thought about my goals I still needed to set before fully committing to participanting in this MOOC. I decided that I could spend one hour a week attending the live webinars. I could spend another hour a week on Google+ or the blog hub looking for posts with titles that intrigued me. I promised myself I would not add more than two or three blogs a week to my Google Reader. And then I decided I would try to comment on posts of at least 5-10 other participants each week. Oh and of course, I would need at least another 30 minutes to blog about what I was learning along the way.
So with some clear learning goals established, let the adventure begin!
Photo Credit Tom Barrett on Flickr