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Social Media and Open Education - getting started...

So, I signed up for a Social Media and Open Education course (EC&I 831) as a non-credit student. The course is being run by Alec Couros from the University of Regina in Saskatchewan (which always makes me think of the Proclaimers song "Cap in Hand"), but that was a several weeks ago. Since then, I have, for various reasons, done nothing...

Now, I'm catching up!

Easy stuff:
  • Follow all the people from the course who are following me, and follow a few extras. I didn't opt to follow everyone - not sure why not, but I imagine it's because I just felt slightly intimidated by the sheer numbers of them. I'm sure I'll add a few more over the duration of the course as I get to see who's doing what and who has interesting things to say. Mind you, if others use the same criteria, I'm not sure I'll generate many new followers!
  • Sort out Twitterdeck - new Twitter column for course related activity. This should help me to keep track of what people are saying
  • I've already added a tab to my Netvibes page, and I have the course blog and wiki feeds in there. This helps me keep up with the course stuff and the aggregated contributions by all the other participants' blogs. I'll probably do that little by little over the coming weeks...

Now to the course:

Week one stuff:
Intro and Grad course movie trailer - check - good movie
Listen to the week one Elluminate archive - great to hear the class session and very interesting to experience Elluminate for the first time - the organisation I work for has provided Marratech to all our schools, but this has since ceased to be developed (by its owners, Google) so we are now looking around for alternatives. Elluminate is in the frame so good to get some first hand experience, albeit asynchronous/historic. Timezones permitting, I must try to join one of the live sessions at some stage...

With regards to the Elluminate session, it's useful to hear the archive session, and most of this blog post is being written while listening to Alec. I'm listening and reflecting and writing all at once. As I listen more I go back and edit some and then write and listen and reflect more. Also very useful to be able to pause the session when I am interrupted by miscellaneous family demands!

The Elluminate archive is a very powerful learning tool - the fact that I can pause, rewind and review at any time, watch participants' comments, hear them asking questions is phenomenal. My previous experience of real online learning was when I completed my masters module in Open and Distance Education with the Open University (in 2002) - The main collaboration tool for the course then was First Class with discussions which could be live, but were mostly asynchronous. Access to the tutor always seemed remote - no 'live' communication, all asynchronous, either by threaded discussion or by email. One of the main issues for me as a student was a feeling of isolation. I get the strong feeling from Elluminate that this is much less of an issue. Simply to hear the tutor's voice is a major factor, not to mention hearing the other students. Mind you, Twitter didn't exist at the time, blogs were unusual and the web was still web 1.0!

The great thing here for learning is the potential for learning connections. I'm just listening to Alec (the tutor) asking people what they think about the course and how they find the level. To me, the level will be the level you want - by making connections with media and interacting with people I think you create your own level.

Sorry I wasn't able to respond to the Twitter shout out - I was tucked up in bed at the time!

Going to have to watch Michael Wesch - The Machine is (changing) us , but that will have to wait for another day - much too tired now and work in the morning...

Anyway, week 1 was for credit students only, so this was just a wee practice for me!

Tomorrow....week 2! Hmmm....



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Comments

Alec Couros said…
Thanks so much for being part of this. We'll be watching! :-)
28 September 2009 at 00:38
Alastair Crease said…
Thanks Alec, but...could be a long wait!!!!!
12 October 2009 at 23:09
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