Should I give up?

I pondered what to do. Should I abandon it? It’s only a 5 week course so it means that in effect I’ve missed 20% of it. “Is it worth playing catch up?” I asked myself.

Fortunately I decided to watch the recording of the Google Hangout with the course tutors which I had missed last Friday night and this 1 hour’s worth of interaction gave me a really good taster of what had been going on.

Motivations for completing the MOOC

Each of the “professors” spent about 5 minutes looking at one aspect of what had been happening across the fora and social media spaces. I learnt that participants were discusing two main concerns – why weren’t the course tutors more visible and what should the final assessed assignment be like? This was interesting because I thought the course literature made it clear that the professors weren’t going to be hands on and it was up to the MOOC participants to collaborate in creating a narrative of the week’s learning.  I also found it bizarre that people were worrying about the digital artifact they were supposed to produce at the end of the MOOC. But , for me, it’s always about the taking part and learning as I go when I embark on a course of study.  I don’t need the assessment at the end to validate my achievements although it’s sometimes nice to have it!  It was interesting to hear one of the tutors suggest that thinking about the end product at the beginning was a way for some people to make a strategy for navigating their way through the course. I have never looked at it like that before. For me it’s always the excitement of the journey and the unknown destination – a bit like a magical mystery tour

Constraining tropes when talking about digital culture

The discussion about the actual content of the first week was also a great summary of what I had missed. It was interesting to consider the way scholarly writing in the past 20 years had resulted in a binary discourse in relation to technology, culture and educational learning.

Distopia v Utopia
Native v Immigrant
Digital v Non Digital

These are simplistic constraining binaries and we have been greatly influenced by them. It opened my eyes to how my own thinking has been moulded by this narrative.  I’ve always found the  Native v Immigrant description flawed.  It’s quite obvious when working with 11- 18 year olds that it depends on a mix of personality, upbringing and peer group pressure as to how individuals approach the technological world.  I also became  aware of the artificiality of the dichotomy between Digital v Non Digital when I purchased my first iPAd a couple of years ago.  The digital and non digital world has become very blurred for me through the use of this tablet.

However, up until now I hadn’t challenged the cultural constraining discourse of Distopia v Utopia and I shall certainly look to do so in the future.

Constraining Trophes when thinking about Learning

I’m also now thinking about how educationalists  use this oppositional structure when considering young people’s learning.

Facts v Skills

Formal v Social 

Do I need to challenge myself about this simplistic view of the world of learning too?

Apparently over 40,000 people have begun the course since it opened online yesterday evening and discussions are taking place across social media….on Twitter using the #edcmooc hashtag, through groups on Facebook and Google+. The interesting thing is that these groups have been started by individual participants rather than the course providers. The facilitators from the Edinburgh University MSC in Digital Education are providing the course content for the next 5 weeks but making suggestions about how individual students can collaborate to share their learning.

I’ve just joined the course and signed up to the “honor” code and will be blogging about my experience on this Learning Log #edcmooc

I love the way the Snapchat inventors have turned the received wisdom about social networking on its head. Facebook seems an old-fashioned establishment institution in comparison. Who’d a thought it?

But what do I say to the students in my PSHCE lessons? Those who know me well know I’m not going to say don’t use these apps. I’m not a party pooper. Isn’t a shared fleeting moment as socially valuable as a considered post? But I can’t say what I usually do – show a trusted adult if you’re uncomfortable about it.

See my Prezi below or follow this link

>In the Library we opted for a critical thinking challenge. Students had to create their own superheroes outlining their strengths and weaknesses, their safe and dangerous habitats, their outfits and their gadgets. Each team’s Superhero then faced their rivals in a series of Scenarios we had created for them.

I used the Trading Card Creator on the Readwritethink website. We had 5 categories for the scenarios – who, what, where, when and why. The challenges ranged from alien attacks to zoo animal escapes. Sadly Ice Slasher met his demise in the Volcano challenge even though he had a heatproof shield!

It was interesting to see the strategies used to compensate for each superheroes fatal flaw. Some teams gave their heroes very specific flaws (e.g being allergic to pineapples) which they hoped would not come up in any of the challenges. At the other extreme heroes had special powers that were so all-embracing they could face up to anything e.g Shapeshifting. A lot of the teams didn’t prepare for their hero to time travel though which left them kicking their heels rather than visiting the Egyptian pyramids with Howard Carter in 1922.

Our favourite Superhero was Lobsterman. His back story was that he became a superhero when his parents got cooked in Paella! His special power was the ability to squirt corrosive wee and his dangerous territory was, naturally enough, Spanish food restaurants His body armour i.e. his lobster shell had teleporting powers and his gadget allowed him to talk to animals to persuade them not to harm him. That pretty much covers every scenario I think!

Make your own slideshow at Animoto.

Although we had to close the library to other students for a whole day we got to know the new students meeting all 90 of them and it was a great way to start. We have since followed on with more formal induction through their English lessons.

The thing that really impresses me about the CharCharChest is the way it has been so carefully designed to maximise use in a challenging environment. The project also ensures teachers exploit the resources by linking to local teacher training programmes. Fabulous. And all this for just £200. Wouldn’t it be great to provide CharCharChests for many more schools in Africa?

For my own workshops sessions, where I looked at digital publishing and the future of libraries, I talked about how we are all publishers now and that many of the tools we can use allow us to access text in a very visual way e.g with story in Pixton a cartooning tool and displaying statistics or trends with Visual.ly or Wordle. Here’s the Prezi I made to share at the workshops:

Her Superpower was as a Living Respository of Human Knowledge but oh noes she was DEPOWERED on M-Day.

Is this telling me something I didn’t know I wonder? Is this why my job is to help students navigate the Information Tsunami for themselves? Swimming not drowning!