Yes, I am once again jumping into another MOOC. Once again, I am quite confident that I will “complete” the Open Course in Technology Enhanced Education. (Whatever “complete” means in a MOOC, but that is a different question for a later blogpost.)
There are several good things about this MOOC compared to my previous experience on #edcmooc that give me some confidence: the size is more manageable (about 700-750 enrolled); the conveners and participants are already actively engaged and committed to the use of technology for education, and they are moving with agility to fix early problems based on input like this from Stephen Downes; they are using WordPress instead of Coursera’s lame not-invented-here-syndrome version of course management software.
Enrollment is still open if any of my #COETAIL buddies want to jump in with me. Give it a try! I think you’ll find that the content and approaches are complementary to what we are doing at YIS this year. Week One content prompts include these options, some of which will look familiar:
- How Eric Mazur brought peer instruction into the lecture theatre using simple ‘clicker’ technology in his lectures
- How Sugata Mitra designed a physical and social environment around computers so that young children would self-organise and teach themselves new skills through peer interaction and ‘emergent learning’
- How Stephen Downes and George Siemens pioneered the development of massive open online courses
- How Margaret Cox and colleagues developed technology that could simulate the tactile and visual experience of drilling a tooth
- How Helen Keegan devised a full Augmented Reality Game (ARG)
The organizers do a really nice job of selecting short excerpts from the longer videos, linking to exact start times and specifying how long to match minimum. Saves time and keeps the discussion tighter.
I’ve started my own very short list of ocTEL tweeps, and just following the #ocTEL hashtag won’t cause you to drown in Tweets, but will link you to some interesting people and resources. Come on and login. You decide your level of participation. Even if you just find one cool, new video or idea, then you’ve gotten something out of this MOOC from the Association for Learning Technology.
I am an English language instructor working in Tokyo, Japan. My current teaching position is Associate Professor in the English Department of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tokyo Medical and Dental University. I love teaching writing, helping students improve their media literacy, advocating for Open Access, and collaborating with other teachers. I currently serve on the National Board of Directors for the Japan Association for Language Teaching.