A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to start keeping a blog that I would write solely on a tablet or other mobile device so that I could practice composing this way and get a sense of what it would be like to write more than an quick email, text, or tweet on a tablet. Somehow I didn't get around to it.
When I signed up for #edcmooc I decided it was time; we were encouraged to blog the course and I had decided that not only did I want to take the course to see what a mooc is like, I wanted to access the course only through my tablet and phone so that I could get a sense of what that is like too. (I anticipate the hardest part of this will be completing the final project: creating a digital artifact). #edmooc started today and so far it is pretty good. It was very easy to read the announcements and guiding materials, watch the videos, red the articles, and contribute to the forums. The forums themselves are overwhelming. We are barely 24 hours into the curse and there are already hundreds and hundreds of posts on a single thread. What will it be like in a few days? I will surely return to this issue again, but for now I'm thinking the inevitable repetition in the forums is making it dystopic (to use a key term of the course).
I get quite a different feeling about the other mooc I'e begun recently: google's advanced super power search. (Maybe I added super, but you can't blame me because it fabulous. The course is structured on principles of problem-based learning. They give you a series of challenges and for each challenge they teach you a few skills (either through short video or text) and some example searches to consider. I have found the videos to be concise and well done, but It is the challenges that make all the difference to my learning. This class would be entirely independent except for the handouts. I attended one today with 11 other people (some also were Americans but one was in Great Britain, one was in Spain, and one was Eastern European (although I don't know where she was logging in from). although we started out little awkwardly and had a few tech glitches, it really went long before we were moving ahead to solve a multi step challenge together. Working with others on problem like that we fun, little frustrating at times but mostly an excellent experience. One of the things that made it work, I think, was that I didn't interact with hundreds of people, but 11, and for an hour rather than for the few seconds it takes to read. Discussion board post.
#edmooc is going to have a google hangout on Friday. I'll be interested to see if it works as well for a discussion as it did for solving a challenge.
