Multilitteratus Incognitus

I've been thinking about what the post for the second week of CLMOOC, whose theme this week is re-mediation . I was thinking of several ideas, all of which require media skills beyond what I have (and what I have time to learn at the moment), so it looked like a busted week for me (even though I am quite comfortable being a peripheral member in this community).  Then, cats provided inspiration. Here is the original medium: For those that don't know, this is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the protagonist of 3 Assassin's Creed games. One of the maxim's of the creed is "Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted'.  Hence remediation, step 1: Now, last year we got a little crazy cat who seemed to embody the crazyness of young Ezio in Assassin's Creed 2. I named him Ezio because he liked high places, and ran throughout the house in as crazy manner as I made Ezio run through Florence.  Here is remediation 2:

Last week was the last formal week of #rhizo14.  Even though we crazy lunatics have taken over Dave's P2PU course site and are continuing the course on our own (for now), life goes on and other MOOCs start and finish.  This week was the week I completed the Introduction to Communication Science from the University of Amsterdam , and the course Diseño, Organización y Evaluación de videojuegos y gamificación (design, organization, and evaluation of video games, and gamification)from the Universidad Europea, using the Miriadax platform. The former was taught in English, using the all too familiar Coursera model, while the latter was taught presented entirely in Spanish (with one or two interviews in English). The Communications course isn't technically over, next week in the final week, but the final exam was this week.  Since I am done with both, I think it's good to have a little post-mortem analysis. Coursera - Intro to Communication The novelty that got me into t...

Alone in the Dark (DOS, Mac System 7.5) So I'm back to another cMOOC arena, yay!!! Just by chance I came across a Rhizomatic Learning  course offered by Dave Cormier (of MOOC fame), and the course is called Rhizomatic Learning - The Community is the curriculum. The course spans six weeks and this first week was simply an introduction, but as far as intros go, this has been quite a busy week!  It's nice to see fellow cMOOC participants from previous MOOCs like Dave, Jaap, Rebecca and Penny, but also fellow locals, from UMass Boston, Peter Taylor. This first week we are tackling the topic of cheating as a weapon for learning. We were encouraged to think about how we can use the idea of cheating as a tool to take apart the structures that we work in; and to think about what this says about learning,  power and how we (the participants) see teaching.  There have been quite a few blogs up to this point, that I have not had an opportunity to read yet, but I thought ...

Over the past few weeks I've been dabbling with a course on coursera designed by two professors from UW Wisconsin.  I didn't realize who they were (Squire and Steinkueler) initially, but at the "course" progressed I realized that I had read some of their work before when I was reading about video games and learning.  An added benefit was that there were some guest appearances by Jim Gee, someone who is mentioned quite often in the department I work in (Applied Linguistics at UMass Boston) and whose books on video game learning I've enjoyed in the past. Since there really wasn't a lot for me to react to while the MOOC was in session I decided to hold off and do one summative post at the end of the MOOC, which just so happens to be this week. So, the first thing that struck was this insistence that the "M" in MOOC stands for "Massively."  This is just wrong. It's a massive online open course, not a Massive ly  open online course. I ...

Well, new semester, new experimentation with xMOOCs (I didn't see any cMOOCs on the docket this fall).  I decided to try out a few MOOCs on subjects that are interesting to me, as always, while I try to find my way toward a potential dissertation proposal. The first two MOOCs are on coursera and they are "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative" from Vanderbilt and "Video Games and Learning" from University of Wisconsin - Madison.   Video Games and Learning begins next month, so I have some time to take in Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative before that one starts. Right off the bat, I see that  Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative  has two tracks, a "regular" and a "distinction" track. The difference in the distinction track is that you have to participate online in the LOTRO MMORPG (free) and to complete three peer reviewed exercises.  My time is limited this semester so starting a new RPG wh...