Starting DALMOOC

I couldn't help it. Seeing the great offerings from edx I've signed in for two courses at more or less the same time. The risk is that I'll find it difficult to find time for them both.

However, the Data, Analytics, and Learning-course (https://www.edx.org/node/2186#.VFwOrflwuPY) is interesting not only because of the theme, but also because it seems to merge the socalled cMOOC and xMOOC. I find that very promising and admire the open minded approach that George Siemens and his team set out with - also regarding how many ways there might be to participate in and gain from this mooc. Some diving deep in readings, postings on twitter, facebook, google+, blogs and so forth. Others contributing only within the provided tools of edx and ProSolo (which I have still to experience). Some  only reading or watching videos. Some only there to get tips of the tools. Some online and in sync on google hangout, others (like myself) viewing the recordings a few weeks later. And so on.

'Ordinary' courses and classrooms are less minded to suit so many different learner paths and goals. But maybe they exist just the same? Reminds me of Peter Goodyear writing about the educator's need to appreciate the difference between assignments put forth by the teacher and activities students undertake to respond them.

low floor, high ceiling, wide walls

Speaking of the design decisions behind Scratch, Mitch Resnick from MIT Media Lab tells in one of the course videos that "one of the things I learned from Seymour Papert is that he used to talk about developing technology with a low floor and a high ceiling, meaning it's easy to get started, the low floor, and you can do more and more sophisticated things over time, a high ceiling. We sometimes also talk about having wide walls, meaning that you can have many different pathways".
Nice metaphors :-)

Lifelong and lifewide learning diagram

Life Center has an elegant diagram of formal vs. informal learning:

Talkabout

Sunday evening I'll take part in a group conversation in a modified google hangout: https://talkabout.stanford.edu/projects/52-design-and-development-of-educational-technology

The course has provided startup questions ... but still. It'll be interesting to see how an online conversation between strangers will take off :-)

Reddit - a tool for evaluation?

Prof. Eric Klopfer has held an 'Ask Me Anything' session on reddit.

Lots of good questions and answers.

... but seeing it after a day spend talking about tools for evaluation, my mind goes: Would this be a tool to facilitate 'Delphi-evaluations'? I've discussed sites like tricider and sli.do at work. Reddit has some similarities and perhaps a more interesting setting? - I mean, a lot of other interesting discussions are right at hand

Here we go ...

I'm attending two edx-moocs this autumn:

• Design and Development of Educational Technology

and

• Data, Analytics, and Learning.

The courses have started ... I haven't quite yet. But I reckon I'll need somewhere to keep track of my reflections, and this blog will be it.