I am sitting in a hotelroom in Pittsburgh, after two days of visits to the ETC and preparing for a meeting with the film department at Point Park University today. I’ve came here with since the Norwegian Film School has been looking at starting a programme in Games and interactive stories together with the Media Technology programme at Gjøvik University College.

In fact, a lot of my time recently has been applied to developing new curricula, both within the Film School and with expternal partners. It’s interesting and creative work; all the more so since throughout it all the ideas I’ve been exposed to through my somewhat irregular participation in #etmooc have influenced my thoughts and conclusions.

I see that next week, as #etmooc winds down, I will miss a couple of the sessions (again). It appears, therefore, I should summarise some of my more immediately apparent takeaways from this experience.

1. I have experienced connectivism in practise. I first heard and read about connectivism about 18 months ago, and have read a fair bit since. But, working as I do in a very practical art, I know that reading and experiencing can lead to very different conclusions. As it happens, this time that has not been the case. Connectivism has a lot to it that I like, and I firmly believe that at a certain level, learning happens in the connections between people.
2. I have found a use for Google+. The #etmooc community on Google+ has been very active, and since (almost) all the twitter chats have happened in the middle of the night for me, I have found my community for chats in G+. It is less realtime than twitter, but a much easier forum for discussions than blogs. I did make a mistake early on; when I joined the community there were only about 50 other people there, and so I proceeded to add everyone to an «etmooc» circle I set up. As the community grew to hundreds of people I came to regret that descision and eventually gave it up when I realised I could not keep up with the flood of new members. Over time I will see who I continue to communicate with and will prune the size of the circle, I imagine.
3. The live Blackboard sessions were a blast. The pace is so fast, with the session facilitator speaking, the slides moving and people writing on the whiteboard, the backchannel chat and the twitter chat…it’s a lot to keep up with and it’s easy to miss a key moment because you’re engaged in something else going on. The corollary of that is
4. You have to live with the fact that you will miss interesting stuff. With so many people and time zones involved there is simply no way to keep up with everything. I struggled with finding a level of engagement I could live with, were I could feel like I was still participating but not neglecting my job and personal life. As my job got busier these past few weeks I felt I was missing so much #etmooc stuff that it effected my motivation to keep up at all.
5. Some of the most interesting discussions came out of the blue. This discussion about openness and the virtual panopticon came out of the sessions on the Open movement and combined openness with thoughts triggered in me (and several others; see the articles linked in the discussion above) on the release of Google Glass. It was further emphasised for me at a lecture on Artificial Intelligence in games at the ETC the other day. At the end of the lecture the Q&A ventured into area looking at the data all our tech is gathering and storing about us and our behaviour and preferences. I am looking forward to contued discussions about this.
6. The most dissappointing thing was that I have not found anyone else working in developing curricula for fine arts education at a post-secondary level. There are not that many of us, so it is perhaps not surprising, but I had hoped to connect with others. On the plus side, I’ve made interesting connections with people, and I hope some of the them will last.

On the whole, I am glad I did this. It’s been valuable to me as an educator and have been inspired to think thoughts I would not otherwise have thought. I will do this again, but I hope the next time I take a MOOC it will be a little less…massive.