Learning This Week

To begin learning about what a Mooc is, I Googled it of course. At first I thought a Mooc was a tool or a single website. It made a lot more sense when I found that it actually meant a Massive Open Online Course. Next, set about discovering the difference between a connectivist mooc and and an x mooc. From what I understand, an x mooc is more prescriptive. There are specific learning objectives. In a Connectivist Mooc, students are more in charge of what they learn. There isn’t set objectives, so much as topics to explore and research/share. I bookmarked the sites I found that helped answer these questions and shared them on my blog and Google Group. I also spent some time becoming familiar with some of the other terms I have been hearing so far in our mooc. PLNs for one. Professional Learning Network. I like how our Google group has been set up for us to easily identify those who would likely to naturally become part of our PLN. I have been posting on the K-3 group since I teach 3rd grade. It seems most likely that these members will have similar questions and experiences as myself. Besides learning the different terms and their meanings, I have learned a whole bunch about many different online tools. It was all a bit overwhelming at first. It wasn’t until today that things seem to come together for me. For some reason today, I was able to find out how to easily post things to and from Diigo, Google Groups, Twitter, and my blog on Blogger. Things just seemed to work today, whereas the rest of this last week everything seemed to be a struggle. I’m not sure if it was a service problem, or if I just had looked at everything enough for some things to sink in.