Multilitteratus Incognitus

Here we are, module 2 of Connected Courses, and the focal topics for these next two weeks are Trust and Network Fluency . This module we have a few webinars to watch, and there are a number of book recommendations. Truthfully I cannot make it through these books, as much as I would love to read some of them at the moment.  Too many other things happening to focus meaningfully on them. I guess I will focus on the (free) audiovisual media provided, and the information posted by other participants (225 connected blogs thus far!). I've decided to break down a (potentially) bigger post to two smaller ones.  This one will focus on Trust, and the subsequent one on network fluency. Trust is an odd concept and it's not easy to pin down. We might think that we  know what trust is, however many of us tend to default to the US Supreme Court's definition of  "I know it when I see it" which is quite subjective.  In the introductory reading for this module, is " my d

Back in September Maha Bali's post on Critical Pedagogy: Intentions and Realities hit the interwebs on the Hybrid Pedagogy site. It's something I've been thinking about writing an Online Edition from my own experiences teaching in an online environment.  It seems to be a bit slow on Connected Courses this week (at least as compared to last week, measured in blog posts), so this seems like a good opportunity to write a little about the topic. I should say that I haven't overtly thought about applying critical pedagogy to the classroom†. It is quite odd, if you really think about it because of where my academic foundations lay.  I am a graduate of the Applied Linguistics department at UMass Boston.  A department created and shepherded by Dr. Donaldo Macedo (those who know of Freire's work, also know Macedo). But we don't just have Donaldo in our department, we also have other scholars who move in the same circles as people like Henry Giroux, so to not have ove

Έχω πολύ καιρό να γράψω κάτι σε αυτό το ιστολόγιο στα Ελληνικά, η τελευταία φορά ήταν το 2012 για ένα άλλο MOOC (ανοιχτό διαδικτυακό μάθημα που έχει πολλούς φοιτητές) το οποίο είχε αρκετούς συμμετέχοντες που είχαν ως μητρικές γλώσσες κάτι άλλο εκτός από Αγγλικά.  Έτσι λοιπόν, για να φέρουμε και άλλους ακαδημαϊκούς στο μάθημα, και να φέρουμε άλλους που προφανώς να μην μιλάνε Αγγλικά, είπα να αρχίσω να δημοσιεύω και στα Ελληνικά.  Μπορεί να μην γράψει κανένας άλλος στα Ελληνικά αλλά τουλάχιστον την προσπάθειά μου την έκανα :-). Το θέμα αυτή την εβδομάδα είναι το “γιατί;” στην εκπαίδευση. Έχω γράψει ήδη (στα Αγγλικά) για άλλα τύπου “γιατί;” αλλά σε αυτό το δημοσίευμα ήθελα να ασχοληθώ λίγο με το τι διδάσκουμε στα μαθήματά μας.  Τα μαθήματα που διδάσκω είναι για μεταπτυχιακούς φοιτητές, και έχουν ως θεματολογία την εκπαίδευση, κυρίως την δια βίου και εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευση.  Οι φοιτητές μου είναι από 28 έως και 68.  Ένα από τα μαθήματά που θέλω να μάθουν είναι το πως να είναι από μόν

Wow, it's not even Wednesday noon (half-way through week 1 of module 1) in Connected Courses and the feed is buzzing with the title (and/or #whyiteach).  Quite interesting.  Lots of things saved to pocket.  I will most likely read through them this weekend ;-)  In any case, I joked on twitter earlier that I should write a post on why I don't teach (who knows, this post may evolve to that near the end), but for now, I thought I would address some questions, and riff off of, or build upon, some comments from Randy, Cathy and Mike from this week's live session . The first question asked was: What was your favorite class to teach? I've only really taught two classes. I've directed workshops and one-on-one tutorials in the past, however these were really one-offs and there wasn't sustained engagement.   The first class I ever (really) taught was a course that I designed to introduce graduate students in instructional design to research methods.  This was a speci

It's been a while, but I am finally (sort of) getting back to addressing some feedback that my colleague and I got on an article we are working on with regard to MOOCs.  My colleague, Zaharias, thought it would be a great idea to sit down and make an (initial) typology of issues around the development of MOOCs. The abstract was accepted for a special issue of a journal, but our final version was not.  This I found a bit odd, but I've taken the peer reviewer's comments to heart, and I am thinking of ways of addressing them.  Some, in my mind, are valid.  I "live" in my head, so for me terms like cMOOC, xMOOC, FSLT12, CCK11, MobiMOOC, connectivism and so on are second nature.  I think to some audiences there might be some need to explain what this alphabet soup means.  Other comments that I also took to heart revolve around typos that just sneaked under our radars. After 8200 words, and multiple readings, who could blame us ;-) As a newly minted editor, though, fo

Good ol' Zoidberg asking Why Back when I was an MBA student, probably in a project management class, we were told that we should ask "why" five times in order to come to the root cause of the problem (I wonder why this is why kids seem to keep asking "why" incessantly ;-) ). It thus seems quite a propos that the first formal week (two weeks actually!) of Connected Courses are focused on Why we need a Why . As is the case with most cMOOCs there are some reading suggested by the good organizers of the MOOC, but most content will most likely come from fellow participants, which at the moment number to around 180(!). The live session isn't for another day or so, so I've decided  to tackle some ideas that came up in the readings for this week. Luckily most things were in a format that Pocket could read out loud to me so I was able to tackle most in my schedule ;-) First up, I came across Who are you and what are you doing here? which was quite odd. T

This is an eventful week!  Online classes begin at my institution.  This is my first semester not teaching in a few years, so I will be pouring my time into the course I am taking, as well as any MOOCs I have time for. This week #whyopen ends, my course on Negotiation on NovoEd ends, and Connected Courses begins.  I thought I would write a few thoughts on the end of WhyOpen and the NovoEd course, and have a few kick off thoughts (prior to reading anything) on Connected Courses. As far as NovoEd goes, I've been wanting to take a course on that platform for quite some time, but it seems that most courses were Common Core related (K-12 USA), which isn't really my specialty. There was a course on Designing the New Learning Environment , but I guess I missed the original offering and it hasn't been offered for a while. When the course on Negotiation came up it seemed like a good opportunity‡. I don't know if my experiences are generalizable to other NovoEd courses, but

September is here! New academic year has begun, the campus is again full of life (and lacking parking), and I am back to school as a student, this time at Athabasca University!  I am also looking forward to a number of MOOCs that are beginning this month, among them Connected Courses , which promises to be an interesting cMOOC.  Perhaps I am insulting the course by calling it a MOOC (MOOCs these days seem to have a bad reputation), but it seems like the label that works best for it at the moment.  When compared to xMOOCs, there aren't a lot of cMOOCs offered, so time to savor the learning opportunity here. Once again I've signed up for quite a few MOOCs (almost all of them xMOOCs) on coursera and futurelearn but I've decided on a different tactic for them.  I've decided to give grazing a try.  In previous attempts at MOOC learning I've been quite determined to follow the path set out by the course designers and facilitators.  Dot every i , and cross every t. T