I read an #etmooc post this morning “bigger may not be better” by Linus. He raised the issue that with so many people being a part of #etmooc, was it maybe too big to handle. I replied but, being on the iPad at the time, I must have made a typo and it rejected my email and nuked my post. I didn’t write it again, but will put my thoughts here.

I definitely agree that the number of blogs being posted for #etmooc is overwhelming, but I think the important thing is that people are posting and thinking about what they want to write. The thought certainly occurred to me ‘why am i writing this, no-one will find my blog and read it’, but that thought was quickly replaced by remembering that, primarily, this blog is for me and my learning. If someone else reads some of my posts and benefits, that’s great, but it’s for me to document my thoughts, what I want to try in my classroom, what worked, what didn’t, and what I want to do next. Which, as an aside, reminds me that I want to try to follow Christine Redman’s lead and change my language from ‘the classroom’, which tends to be 4 walls, to ‘learning space’, which first of all defines what we do there, and isn’t necessarily just within the walls – it includes cyberspace.

Like Linus, I only follow a limited number of (I hope) well chosen people/organisations on Twitter. A couple of these are quite prolific and I find that through them I receive more than I can cope with on many days. Through twitter I have been directed to blogs, sites and articles that I am unlikely to have found on my own. I sometimes feel that I’m not pulling my weight in the twitter sphere- that I haven’t anything profound to say, so I’m more of a re-tweeter. But I have a few followers so I hope I have been able to pass things of interest on to them. The Pocket app to save articles for later is great. The Edmodo Maths group has been a great place to connect, for me. A very generous community of teachers post links, ideas, assignments etc. While I haven’t had many actual worksheets, assignments or such I’ve felt worth sharing yet, mainly because most of the teachers are American dealing with the Common Core, I have certainly shared thoughts, ideas, suggestions for iPad apps etc. by responding to other posts. Sometimes this results in short ‘conversations’. i admit that I often feel more connected through these than through twitter. That’s where a larger network is an advantage. With a common link, in this case maths education, a larger group means more chance that someone will be able to help you or visa -versa. I guess it’s a large group but a narrower focus.

This morning’s session with Alec Couros on connected learning was excellent. First, because I managed to successfully login and join the session using the Blackboard Connection app on my iPad! A down side of the iPad is that I didn’t seem to be able to add text to the slides where others could. I was able to do that on my mac in the last session. I don’t know how some people were apparently tweeting at the same time. I found it hard enough to keep up with listening and watching Alec’s presentation, reading all the comments and then adding a few comments of my own. I definitely learnt almost as much from the other participants as I did from Alec. While I might use Twitter and Edmodo, I still am still more of a ‘lurker’ and as I’ve said in a previous post – every time I learn something I find out how much more there is that I want to learn.  It’s going to take a while for today’s session to settle in my brain and for me to decide where next. I will be getting the slides so that I can watch the presentation again. Certainly it has consolidated my plans to try to have my students connect more with each other. I started an Edmodo group in the second half of the year with my Yr 7s. They didn’t respond as much as I would have liked, but seeing comments from other #etmoocers and reflecting on my own reactions I realise that they too probably weren’t sure if they had anything worthwhile to say. I’m hoping that being able to share this experience with them may help my new class this year to be more involved. Time will tell.