Daily Archives: September 6, 2008

YAP for the MOOC CCK08

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I love abbreviations. They allow to say a very long title etc. in just a few seconds. The heading in full reads as follows:

Yet Another Participant for the Massive Open Online Course “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2008”

Fellow participants of the course know what will follow in the next lines: my introduction. As there are over 1,000 people registered for this course, which George Siemens and Stephen Downes humbly call “a rather large open online course…”, I will try to keep it short because we have read and will read a lot of intros until Monday when the course will start officially.

Currently, I live in Luxembourg and work as an assistant at the University of Luxembourg in the Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education. I have put myself of the CCK08 map in case you want to know where our campus is located in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

I am interested in this course because I want to broaden my knowledge about connectivism, educational technology research and usage scenarios and gain more insight as well as connect with people who are active in this field.

This course has already started to be a success because it brought together people from many different backgrounds and countries who are all interested in the topics of the coming weeks. Even though we may not always be there and contribute to all discussions, we will be able to hear other voices that we might not have come across otherwise and learn from them and with them.

As of now I do not know if I can cope with the “massive” in this online course because even if everybody writes only 1 contribution a day that will be more than 1,000 close to 2,000 if more people than the 1,800 already registered participants sign up. I still have to develop an appropriate reading strategy to stay on top of my game. Do you have any suggestions?

Now on to the last point: random information. I have not yet participated in a course taught entirely online because I am more inclined to blended learning. Thus, this will be a big challenge.

Although I am not in the official Second Life cohort of this course, I guess, there will be opportunities to meet in that virtual world. Then I will be able to practice speaking, walking, teleporting etc. which is much more fun if there is a purpose behind it than simply testing.

I’m looking forward to the official start of the course and the things we will discover together.

Opening the windows for new experiences

Opening the windows for new experiences

Extending the scope of this blog

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I have started this blog back in 2006 (using a different blog software) to end my email “curiousity letter” as I kept adding friends to it who were then not able to read previous mails. Though not many of my friends were and are avid blog readers, I hope they do stop by now and then to see what I’ve come across.

Then in March of this year, I decided to open my blog to the public, not because I thought I could revolutionize the blogosphere or become the next big thing, but to make it easier for people I know to read my postings without going through the hassle of signing up for a user account and keeping track of another login and password.

Due to my quickly upcoming participation in the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online Course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes, I had to think about creating another blog to be able to post my thoughts and reflections on the course. However, on second thought I wondered why I shouldn’t use this blog here as I will continue to be curious and wonder about stuff. Only the scope of my musings will be extended. Up until now I did not write about anything related to my learning experiences etc., but only about other things. I can use this opportunity to jump into the cold water and also write about things here that concern me professionally.

Let’s see how it goes.