Over the past two weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of participating in two lives sessions of #etmooc using Blackboard Collaborate.  The sessions were intense.  First, starting with a session with Alec Couros that centered on the Introduction to Connected Learning.  There was well over 150 people in attendance and the chat window was moving so quickly it was hard to keep up!  I couldn’t imagine using Twitter AND the chat window in Collaborate at the same time.  Far too much information in too short a time for this girl.  There are some definitely advantages of live sessions:  you can add to the whiteboard when the feature is enabled, you can ask questions of the presenters, taking the mic if needed, and you can interact with the participants via the chat window.

The second live session I attended was Sharing as Accountability, presented by Dean Shareski.    It was not as well attended, which I think was beneficial to those that were able to finally keep up with a chat window.  There were many great points that Dean made in his presentation, which prompted me to go and watch another video by him, along the same topic.  I never really considered how far-reaching this idea is.  I knew that entering the ETMOOC that this would be my goal, but seeing how it can affect so many people… whoa.  Talk about an Ah-Ha moment.

So 2 live sessions down, and the week got busy and I wasn’t able to attend any other live sessions.  I entered the Advanced Blogging Session with Sue Waters to realize I was way over my head.  I decided to leave it, and come back to the Introduction to Blogging session later.  I was finally able to do that today, so I went back to that advanced session after the intro session.  Both of those sessions were recorded.

While I wasn’t able to interact with the presenters or the participants, I found that I liked doing the recorded sessions better.  Since it is Saturday, and my husband was off running around town, I had my two munchkins home with me.  I can’t tell you how many times I paused the session to go intervene or just take a break to go chill with them on the couch for an impromptu cuddle session.  This “pausing” ability, by far, takes the cake.  I know that I can access Sue or Alec, or even Dean with a simple tweet if I have a burning question, or I can simply post a tweet using the #etmooc hashtag and it won’t take long for me to get an answer.  This connected learning is something special!  I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.