Week #11 - Can You Hear Me Now?

This week was both gratifying and petrifying for me. By now you have met my first experiment of the week - my VOKI Avitar.  Now that was very cool to produce.   I loved creating my Avitar and was happy to be able to move her from VOKI to my blog!

I'd next like to address my exploration of MOOC's.  Massive Open Online Courses.  (Cormier, 2012) tells us that MOOC's are courses - they are not schools.  MOOC's are about connecting, collaborating, engagement and an event.  He goes on to use 7 key words/terms to describe MOOC's:

1. Courses
2. Engaging & Collaborative
3. Open
4. Free
5. Inclusive Participation
6. World Wide Distribution
7. Life-Long Networked Learning opportunities

These words captured the essence of MOOC's for me. MOOC's are available to everyone who wants them, the work is shared by anyone willing to participate.  Participants can be contributors or not.  Participants keep the work and all they learned from it.  Information sharing in a structured yet graded environment.  How did I not know about this before?? I was pleased we were to review the Daphne Koller video again.  I find her inspiring and as the co-creator of Coursera, a woman to be admired for her brilliance.  After reviewing her talk for the second time, one key motivator she identified for herself to drive the concept for Coursera, was a saying by Thomas Friedman:

Friedman (Koller, 2012)

After my first viewing of her several months back, I took it upon myself to find out more about 'FREE LEARNING' from reputable Universities - was there a benefit to me and potentially my degree.  There were many courses offered at Brock that I would have to take but I wasn't really interested in - could this environment offer me an interesting yet credit worthy opportunity?  I have found several courses, and I will inquire with Brock if I can actually use them as credits!  I even got my husband enrolled in an economics course at Stanford through Coursera - LOVE IT! As with anything wonderful, there are always critics.  John Gold and David Coffey took it upon themselves to critique another MOOC environment - the Khan Academy. (Chen, 2012) notes in her blog that the professors 'biggest gripe is with the procedural, rules-based approach in all of Mr. Khan’s videos.  Khan Academy videos can be effective supplements to classroom teaching, says Mr. Golden, whose specialty is math education. But he argues that they do not encourage students to think critically. “If I have a bone to pick with the videos that I’ve seen so far, it’s that they tend to be about giving students rules and asking them to practice rules, as opposed to problem-solving,” he says. So who says everyone has to think just one way?  

This lead me to my next exploration this week - listening to the great Bill Gates discussing his book, The Road Ahead, where is discussed his vision of education how it could be transformed with technology with Jeffrey Young (Young, 2012).  He also spoke to society's need for 'degrees'.  

(Gates, 2012), "if you have a great degree then you're considered for jobs, and if you don't have that degree there are a lot of jobs you won't be considered for.  He continues, "the question is, Can we transform this credentialing process? And in fact the ideal would be to separate out the idea of proving your knowledge from the way you acquired that knowledge."

This quote I will carry with me always...and explore what I can do to move this concept into reality.

After all of this, I was further motivated to learn more about MOOC's.  I found many of the videos we were assigned outdated so I found a brand new one.  The embeded video proved most beneficial to me in further understanding the benefits of MOOC's to our world learning and Digital Citizenship growth and understanding.
 

(Cooper, Our Education System)

Demystifying MOOCs! from Zaid Alsagoff  
This week continued with some fun from my Feedly.  This comic fit so well into my exploration of education equality and MOOC's, that I had to share it with you here.  I believe it speaks to Bill Gates vision and just reemphasizes that education is an individual journey and one size does NOT fit all!


I explored a few more things this week.  They included:
Webcasting, Podcasting, Screencasting, TeacherTube, SchoolTube, and or course YouTube.  I then went into creation mode and created a screen cast (on how to add pages to your blog) as well as uploading a video (Chasing a Double Rainbow) - I hope you enjoy both.  

Once I got the hang of it it was fine - BUT...it was very time consuming (as is any new task.  Will I use it again - Oh YES!  My students could use this for presentations, and assignment submissions.  My wheels are turning for January 2014.
My final task this week was to insert Creative Commons into my own blog.  Ensuring my work is used with my approval and with acknowledgment of contribution is very important to me and as these months have passed I have come to understand how this respect of the digital world contributors must be extended to all and must be taught to all.  The process of acquiring my own CC was very easy and embedding it into my blog just as easy.   You will find my Creative Commons on the footnote of my blog home page.

Enjoy my rainbow chase (PS I haven't caught it yet)!
     

References:

Chen, A. (2012, June 28). Parody critiques popular khan academy videos. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/parody-critiques-popular-khan-academy-videos/37543 

 Cooper, S. (Artist). (2013, November 26). Our Education System [Web Drawing]. Retrieved from

                 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BZ_qJp4IEAEDYip.jpg:large 

                Cormier, D. (Writer) (2012). What is a mooc? [Web]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/eW3gMGqcZQc

                Koller, D. (Performer) (2012, August). What's new about mooc's. TED Talk. [Video podcast]. Retrieved

                                from http://on.ted.com/Koller

Young, J. (Performer) (2012). A conversation with bill gates about the future of higher education [Web]. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/A-Conversation-With-Bill-Gates/132591/