I have just enrolled in a MOOC in the past week and I am excited about engaging with the content and the learners on the course. I hear you ask what is a MOOC? Well a MOOC is short for a Massive Open Online Course and they are now becoming very common ways for people from around the world to learn. If you want to learn more about MOOCs can I suggest you watch the following video on YouTube or read the following blog to get a better sense of what is involved.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/bWKdhzSAAG0[/youtube]
This is the second MOOC I have participated in this year. Earlier in the summer I signed up for a Coursera course that was entitled Internet History Technology and Security Course. I used to teach this topic many years ago so I was interested to see how others would teach it. I must confess I was not a very active student and only logged in a few times. So now I am back again – I have signed up for a new course and I am more determined to remain engaged this time around. This time I have signed up for a course from Stanford University and is entitled, Designing a New Learning Environment. Already I have been more engaged and more active in this course than I was in the first one I joined. However, there is a long way to go and I hope I can stay active. If you are interested in joining the course please visit Venture Labs and sign up.
There were two resources on lesson one that I found really valuable and I thought might be of interest to teachers everywhere. In lesson one, Learning Technology Design and Sustainability, we were introduced to two additional resources. The first was a link to The “Must-Have Edtech Cheat Sheet” and the second was the E-learning Tools and Resources for Education Mind Map (click the plus signs next to each category of tools to expand and view examples).
Take a moment and check them out as I think there are some wonderful links to tools that you could begin to use in your classroom. If you have more time why not sign up for the MOOC and see what you think of this new way of learning through connections and collaborations