Being a MOOC Star

The way I see it, there are two principle ways to contribute in an important and/or recognized way to a MOOC.  You can:

1) Think great thoughts.  Come up with a new take on the issues being discussed that your readers and viewers have never heard of or thought of before.

or

2) Bring the great ideas of others to the attention of your readers and viewers.

People participating in the EDCMOOC that I'm in right now are doing a lot of both - mainly number 2. 

I'm not doing either particularly.  But I am doing something else - so I guess I'm adding a third category.  One that won't make me a MOOC star, but will be a good contribution I think, and that is I'm an encourager.  I'm reading and responding to others' ideas and trying to applaud what I think is good and useful.

I'll probably end up focusing on "MOOC identity" during this course, and perhaps in my course artifact.  So I'm thinking of a short. simplified taxonomy of MOOC participant roles.

Part of the EDCMOOC Machine

The title of my new blog comes from the video called The Machine is Us.   

The video has a clear message that the blurring and blending of human and technological activity that we have now on the internet prompts us to rethink: 

"...Copyright

Authorship

Identity

Ethics

Aesthetics

Rhetorics

Governance

Privacy

Commerce

Love

Family

Ourselves…"

So, you and I are part of the machine.  We're teaching the machine and we are being taught by the machine.  This is very much a part of the focus of study for the eLearning and Digital Cultures MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) that I'm participating in over the next 5 weeks. 

 Here is what I hope to gain, also known as my learning outcomes:
1) Consume media about eLearning and digital cultures as directed by course instructor team and fellow course-takers, and of course my own happenstance
2) Experience making selections about conversations, tools, feeds, and groups to interact with
3) Reflect on how the experiences of those choices and interactions affect the process of learning
4) Create a list of ideas that I have along the way
5) Create a list of questions raised along the way
6) Create a list of technologies that I'd like to try out, or use more 

Thoughts so far... well the pre-course activity was overwhelming in itself.   Thirty six thousand students plus were buzzing with tweets, links, blog postings, Google+ postings, etc.  I had 'Infowhelm' (a great new term) very quickly.  But it is exciting.

I worry that it has been so long since I've done any formal educational writing that I may not have all the nomenclature at hand as I did in the days of doing my Master's in Education at the University of Exeter. Let's face it I could have other worries with this big, unwieldy course, but I'm just going to try to learn and enjoy the ride.