#1

I've joined the ETMOOC to consider differences and similarities to the online grad course I'm taking through the web, regarding Education and Technology.

The learning management system at  the university has been difficult for me so far. What is difficult? I find there are too many locations for following discussions, and I find following a set of step-by-step instructions as well as the syllabus, makes it difficult to comprehend, to synthesize, to bring it all together. Bringing it all together--people, content, interactions.  Isn't that what technology claims to do?

I have taken the time now to add due dates on my Google calendar.  As well, I'm integrating resources into one file on my computer.  The links, while really advantageous in setting up a class, are not so easily brought together in my mind, so that I can be meta about what I'm learning.  I need overview.  So, I've begun a weekly file to which I add everything that I have read and thought as I read. I think synthesizing and organizing are skills required to make the most of online learning.

With ETMOOC, I find I must already be connected to Twitter, in order to feel connected, to follow the course.  It is rather invisible to me, and I could easily forget that I'm doing this class.  Technology would seem to need to be all-consuming in order to be effectively used. How am I attempting to feel connected to this group? I have bookmarked the #ETMOOC blog, created a blog of my own for the course, followed ETMOOC on twitter, and created an about.me profile.  Then I logged into twitter and saw Alec's instructions about how to connect your blog to Twitter.

But I see this requires a big commitment to write, and to read, and to comment for the forum to be effective.  All this could be quite time consuming, and yet in order to reap the benefits, it must be done. So I wonder how effective would this type of MOOC be with high school students, or even University students who have not experienced enough learning to really become proficient at it. To organize their learning, to synthesize information, to seek out the group.  Is there something to be said for instructors and textbooks who deliver content, and classroom space that quickly and visually defines the space of learning, with face-to-face peers from whom and with to learn?

In my first week of my grad course, I'm feeling a degree of information overload, and a bit anxious about the pace of change driven by technology.  Are what others are calling "entrenched ways of teaching" entrenched because they serve an important function?  Are we in danger of "sawing off the branch that holds us up?"  Should change occur at the pace of technology? And, while there is of course a great need for technology to be incorporated into teaching and learning, what will it cost beyond dollars be to do so?  Always there is a centre, a hub, a model for learning, and is it sustainable to make technology the centre? What of the cost? And, what of inequities due to lack of resources? Technology has historically been the difference between the powerful and the powerless.

(And why doesn't Blogger  have an English (Canada) option so that it doesn't underline my Canadian spellings? Just one small example of inequity in technology. )