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 :-)