I’m jumping into the Connected Courses adventure — here goes!! #ccourses popped onto my radar during the early summer, through Twitter and Flickr feeds (thanks @heloukee 🙂 ) The blog posts and videos and tweets which followed whetted my appetite further. I identify as an open educator and feel deeply not only about helping my students to develop their learning networks and networked learning skills, but about about sharing my ethos with students, and finding out about their practices, preferences, and values. That’s the heart of learning for me — whether it’s IT or poetry or history. I shared some of my thinking about this at #altc last week and here in Navigating the Marvellous, a summary of some thoughts about open learning and education, connecting across boundaries, and power relationships in education.
I participated in one of Howard Rheingold’s courses in 2011 (#mindamp). Howard, you modeled so much of what all of this is about, with humour and great insight. Thank you. I still share Howard’s adage with students whenever one of our learning experiments doesn’t go quite, er, as planned: “If you’re not falling off, you’re not on the edge.” I love that Howard addresses all of his students as Esteemed Co-learners.
Now for the confession. I’m been blogging for awhile here… but my blog is in need of some major rework. I’d like also to create a self-hosted WordPress blog. I’m immensely grateful for the advice and suggestions from Click, Link and Embed (priceless, guys!) and had hoped to get down to this during this pre-course week, but start-of-semester pressures mean that’s not been possible. So I’m taking a deep breath and just getting started in #ccourses with my blog as is — but stating my intention to get under the hood of my blog later during #ccourses.
So, thanks to you all — organisers, participants, readers of this post — for bringing #ccourses to life. I’m heading in with open mind and open heart… see you there 🙂
Image: Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 catherinecronin
So glad to get a chance to share this with you, Catherine!!! I’m looking forward to much fun and a TON of new ideas!!! I’m blogging here:
http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/
… and also trying to expand my Twitterverse! ConnectedCourses will be good for that too I think!
Happy Friday! 🙂
Thanks Laura 🙂 Just commented on your blog post… I’m so happy that we’ll be connecting here in #ccourses, taking those occasional G+ conversations to another level. Looking forward to it!
Ha ha, that is why I like Google+ … I need a plus button to say plus plus plus back 🙂
Welcome aboard, Catherine! Thank you for the kind words. Hope you can tune in to BLog Talk today! Speaking of G+ — there is a group for #ccourses: https://plus.google.com/communities/106022497782227422189
Thanks Howard! Twitter is my main hub, but I do connect with some wonderful open educators on G+, like Laura 🙂 I’ll join that #ccourses community as well. Looking forward to this adventure.
I’m planning to join Blog Talk tonight — will be 10pm here, so perhaps with a glass of wine & feet up 😉
Already learning from the clear way in which you frame issues about open practices. Looking forward to learning together on #ccourses.
Came across this as I was reading assorted posts:
http://halfanhour.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/whats-ours.html
“Even if I were to construct my own internet backbone and manufacture my own computers, our economy is so interlinked that fickle behaviour on the part of one corporation or another (perhaps the power company, perhaps the government) will intrude on my space. Because, in the end, everything I own, everything I create, everything I see, is obtained from, and at the discretion of, corporations and service providers.
This is not sour grapes; it’s just a fact.”
An interesting take on the ‘unbridled optimism’ about having one’s own domain 🙂
Many thanks, Mariana — I’ve enjoyed our #ccourses chats this week 🙂 And thanks for introducing me to Vialogues too. I really appreciate your comments and links you shared. https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/17437
And thanks for sharing that interesting post by Stephen Downes. I’m also a pro Flickr user and objected to the changes earlier this year. I think Stephen’s point re: a domain of one’s own is a good one. It’s not that this will free us from all “fecklessness”, but it “moves it back a level”, which is important. I think it’s essential that we move *in the direction* of owning our data, as much as is possible. I’m sure this will come up lots more in #ccourses – talk again soon, Marian 🙂