ETMOOC 10 Years Later: Ten wonderful things ETMOOC has done for me

 Hard to believe it has been 10 years since I first started ETMOOC.

Why after all this time do I still engage with this community and with the people I met along the way? 

Because ETMOOC was the beginning of giving me a space to learn and grow, to share ideas, to experiment fearlessly with people who were willing to let that happen. Not only let it happen, but encourage it, challenge constructed ideas of learning and open new windows to what can be a better way of learning and doing. 

It encouraged curiosity, creativity, openness and sharing, risk taking and fun! 

The first thing you have to understand about ETMOOC is the mastermind behind this course, Dr. Alec Couros, is a networking god. He got together a most superb team and enlisted the help of people everywhere to make an exciting, innovative course. It was obvious he thought very deeply about what he was trying to create and the people who supported the whole learning experience were equally onboard. 

This is not an extensive list by any means nor is it in any particular order except #1. 

1. My Professional Learning Network: This is the greatest gift I received from participating in ETMOOC. I may be a small voice in the wilderness, but the network I have grown started from the kernel sowed by my participation in ETMOOC. I have been engaged with this group for 10 years. From there to #CLMOOC and #Rhizo14, and #ccourses and #olcmooc to #TVSZ (all versions!) I've ended up interacting with amazing people that have been a part of my life since. We've all grown and changed, but we still connect. 

2. Personal Connection: It doesn't matter how often I am online, but I can still reach out to this networked group anytime I want to trial a new idea, comment about the world we live in, offer words of praise, support, enlightenment or have the same reflected back at me. Given the nature of my job and my home life, sometimes I have disappeared for months at a time. But that connection still exists. And I use it. Almost daily when I am online.

3. Self Awareness: I've learned a lot about myself as I took this 10 year ETMOOC journey, both as an educator and a student. Understood why sometimes learning new things is hard and frustrating. How sometimes that frustration is a good thing and sometimes a bad thing, especially if I allow it to turn me away from learning something new. I've also realised I am lousy at self care and won't really be good at it until I stop investing so much of my energy in my job. As a friend once said, "How are you going to use your precious energy?" So I am contemplating that a lot lately. 

4. People: As I look back at the spaces ETMOOC opened up for me, I have been lucky to interact with so many talented people. University professors, classroom educators, artists, instructional designers, graphic designers and other people who value creativity and expression. Sharing and supporting comes so naturally to people. And some of them have remained friends to this day. How often can you say, "I took this course and I still hang out with them 10 years later". Online?

5. Creativity: I enjoy creating silliness just because it is fun. Being introduced during ETMOOC to #DS106 was mind blowing for me. #DS106 Radio? A blast! I had so much fun creating sound content. Whether it was my own Halloween show, Headless DS106,  The 3Ts Cooking Show, Three Fingers of Gin for #DS106 Noir, it was all a mix of goofiness and learning how to use software like Audacity. Where would I be without it? It taught me the art of the possible with their amazing #DS106 handbook.  But also their amazing Daily Create! Do I do the Daily Create everyday? Not anymore but I love seeing what other people produce. Some of my best poetry and life reflections are on the DS106 website. Thank you Jim Groom (I am a True Friend) and Alan Levine! 

6. Being a Zombie (or a DragonBovine): #ETMOOC lead to #TVSZ. I am huge fan of games and #TVSZ 2.0-6.0 were so much fun!!! I created movies, wrote a ton, posted pictures to free myself from being eaten (or to entice people into allowing me to eat them...) and generally paid no attention to my paid employment for a few days in order to play. Created out of the fabulous brains (BrAIns!BRaInS!!!) of Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel, it was fast paced game with ever evolving rules and layers and always supported by Janine DeBaise and her students. Hugely enjoyable! 

7. The Impermanence of Software: As part of this reflection, I have been rereading my blog. So much of what I created is no longer there. Storify- shutdown 2018. Mozilla Popcorn Maker- video editing software-Is hosted at the Internet Archive as of 2016. Windows Movie Maker-Shut down in 2017. My projects didn't make it over. Piktochart is still here, and Audacity, but I am not sure what else will disappear with my content. DS106 is still there (thank goodness!) but it does make me think of the ephemeral aspects of creating. Maybe I need to learn how to be a stone mason so I can make a more permanent record. (oh wait, that doesn't necessarily last either!)

8. New Software: I have to admit I haven't kept up with all of the software changes. I think one of the reasons I do more writing and less video and photo oriented Daily Creates is I am a still a beginner with creating product using photo editing and video editing software. It takes some dedicated time for me to learn new programs and currently I have little to none. But when I finally have some breathing room (retire) I'll make the time.

9. Memories: It's been a while since I blogged. Three years. The pandemic has taken a toll and I feel like I work harder now than I ever have. Maybe it's because I've had to restart so many things, rewrite rules, review new policy, etc. It hasn't helped that my father became ill and died during the pandemic. But reading through my blog reconnected me with the joy of the journey, the giddy and heady fun of learning and creating, especially the silly stuff, when it seems I may have had a sense of humour. No ETMOOC, no blog.

But I've also recognized that I stopped writing my blog when I took my current position. I still write all the time, but it is historical, or museum related, or policy oriented, or analytical. Not for pleasure. Not for fun. I spend so much time writing that doing it for my own personal growth and enjoyment has become a thing of the past. And that is sad. 

What else is sad? I can see how safe I felt online back then. When I first got comfortable with Twitter it was a safe space. Much of the free software we were using at that time didn't seem too threatening. Now we all have to really think hard about the impact of social media on our discourse and our lives. Of how much we share. or if we should share at all. It's no longer feels like a safe space. Thanks to Chris Gilliard via Alan Levine who really opened my eyes.

10. Social Media Training: More than ever, students need to be able to  understand how they can be influenced by social media. This means that for the people in the classroom right now, student and teacher, media training is a must. We need an ETMOOC reboot more than ever. Not only how to use the software for making, but how it can be manipulated and made for creating disinformation and misinformation.

Thank you to everyone who created such hilarious, fun, illuminating and worthwhile offerings with me all those years ago. Thank you to everyone who continues to connect and share with me. Who reaches out to encourage me. You make being online uplifting. I hope I do the same for you. 

Thank you ETMOOC. You've been hugely influential on who I am today. And don't the best learning experiences always do that?

Oral vs Written

I have finally watched the week four video. One last thought before I move to week five on the idea of "Is books making us stupid?" I write for many reasons. To keep records, to list what needs to be done for the day, to communicate with others, to work out my thoughts, for the sheer joy of a cleverly turned phrase.

Dave is right about the distance of writing, but wrong to think that this is somehow a cheat or dishonest in terms of communication. I think the reverse. I think that because one has to consciously think about what one is going to write, one is actually self censoring prior to writing as well as editing once it is down on paper. I am glad of that objectivity, glad of that distance. Too often words spoken in haste lead to unhappiness. Interpretation of oral words is just as culturally biased as reading is. Are we just celebrating the immediacy of the spoken word vs. the thoughtfulness of the written? The preference for the engaged immediacy of the spoken word can be as dishonest a cheat as the written word for are we truly truthful when we speak? And do we remember what was actually said or what we think was said? Is any communication truthful then? Or just simply truth as I know it and interpret it?

How is the give and take within an educational community any different? I have been present during some fabulous lectures, but most likely the ideas were synthesized after both reading information, discussion with peers and the application of practice. And I expect the lecture was written down first, prior to delivery. In a round robin discussion, how many times have I seen them veer off course because they have gotten bogged down in semantics or the inability to communicate a larger idea or guide the discussion? Sometimes groups mesh as an engaged community, sometimes they don't. Communication, like all human endeavors, is a flawed one.

This year I will be married for thirty years. As I look back, many of our arguments and fights were over our inability to adequately communicate our ideas verbally, by improperly interpreting the other's words, expressions and making assumptions as to meaning. A part of our life together has been lived apart due to his career. A phone call could lead to hurt, while a letter soothed the sting because we could explain ourselves fully. In a letter, I could explain what was in my heart and head, I could express my anger, hurt, love, loneliness and all of the other emotions that encompassed our relationship at that time.

I think, and this is an assumption, is that Dave is asking us, in the same way Prof. Sicoly (my research and methods prof) used to do, is to not make assumptions. To take every item of truth that we hold dear, whether written or oral and question it. And to remember that long after the spoken word has gone silent and no longer reverberates in our head, that the written word has a very long life span.

Books is Making Me Stupid

Confession time: I still haven't watched the video for topic #4. Instead I made a video on, you guessed it, "Books is Making Me Stupid." The title seemed appropriate.

Since the question/statement has been rattling around in my brain all week I started to write some thoughts down (walking the dog is my time for clarifying thoughts!) I then recorded it using Audacity and hunted around on Freesound for some background music. But none of the music matched the rhythm of what I had sung. So I just started looking for jazz instrumentals that had an underlying beat. I played the music, while I spoke the song. It's not perfect (there is some squealing in the background which came from I know not where) but overall I was pretty pleased with it. You'll notice that the final is different from the original.

Now there are some things I wanted to do differently in terms of the images I chose, but two things happened: a Windows 8.1 upgrade (yuck!) and sheer laziness. (I just didn't want to be bothered hunting around for software that strips the sound off the video and leaves me the video alone, I always seem to pick up a virus, it was late, I was tired, Windows was hurting my brain, yada, yada, yada.) So instead I just went to Goodreads, plugged in the different words, picked a book that tickled my fancy and just worked on the timings in Movie Maker. For the videos I just went online (I knew I was going to use a still from Zoolander), except for the last clip of Mariana Funes, who graciously sent it to me so I could work on a zombie video. I was having trouble finding the steamed image, when I remembered how wispy Mariana's video was and decided to use a chunk for my video. Thanks goodness for my time in DS106 that gave me some background in making a video!

So here's my final product. As always, the video seems to look and sound so much better in Movie Maker. In YouTube the music in the background is fainter. Oh well.

I am uncomfortable....

with this week's topic! "Is books making us stupid?" Now I haven't even watched Dave's video and I haven't read anyone's post because in my mind I am thinking "Uh, no?!" and "Fix the grammar!" So I know Dave is being deliberately provocative to try and make me challenge some long held assumptions about literacy and reading, books and the idea of fixed knowledge. So I'm uncomfortable and really reluctant to go there- to engage at all. After all, I am a readaholic- I always have at least 3 or 4 books on the go. There is not a day that I do not read something, even if it's drivel. But I am also driven by curiosity to know what Dave has posted. Honestly, I completely understand Pandora!

But the statement alone "Is books making us stupid?" does speak to me on so many levels. First, of course, is the idea that books are a source of fixed knowledge- that once written down, it is finished. Except at its heart this idea is false. Any writing, and therefore any written idea, is fluid. Volumes are edited, abridged, reworked, rewritten, lost and then found (think Shakespeare, the great borrower and the great influencer- the ultimate in recycling of ideas!) The fact that an idea is written down gives us time, as the reader, to mull over in our minds what the writer means to convey. The beauty of it is that as soon as the thought is coalesced into writing it is no longer the property of the writer but the reader. Each of us, when we approach a text bring a different viewpoint, life experiences and cultural dynamic to bear. We shouldn't expect to engage in understanding text the same way, because we are different people.

As to those who read and cannot find the "correct" meaning as according to the educational powers that be, good for you! If you can articulate your point of view and derive a different meaning from a text, that is as it should be. As far as I am concerned, your perspective is valid (after all, you're reading the writing of someone who loathes "Waiting for Godot" supposedly the best play of the 20th century! What about Pinter? Or "Rhinoceros"?)  As well, different words, especially in English, have multiple meanings and multiple interpretations. I find that as I get older, my writing and language usage is becoming archaic (Karen the dinosaur!) Does this mean that I am a poor communicator or that I should stop writing? And reading?

And how can books be making us stupid, when the internet runs off of text? Text messages, blogs, visual presentations, email, Twitter, reviews all rely on our ability to interact with text. Or perhaps books and text are making us stupid because we have stopped listening to each other? And yet, if that were true why is YouTube, Skype and Google+ hangout and radio such communication mainstays?

As educators, our challenge is to make sure that our students are comfortable engaging with text as well as the spoken word and other forms of media. Reading is such an immense hurdle for so many students and writing even more daunting. Is that because we assume there is a "right way" to interact with text? A right way to write? As an elementary teacher, I've had some brilliant students, gifted at writing and reading, in understanding the contextual meaning as defined by what the ministry has determined a book means, etc., etc. But I've also had some students who are gifted, imaginative writers who cannot spell and grammar eludes. To them I say, keep writing! (Hire a good editor!) Because in the end, what we really are trying to develop in each student is their gift or talent in the area of communication.

Next stop? Dave's video!

Uncertain, Uncertainty and I don't know!

I sometimes wonder why I bother to write my thoughts down as there are so many thoughtful responses and replies to the "uncertainty" question Dave Cormier posted this week in #rhizo14. Often I write to clarify my own thoughts on my path to figuring out the "I don't know, but I hope to find out/understand." And I read from the community to help me in that process and also from the sheer delight of seeing how other people think, because it is not how I think.

There is Kevin's excellent post on how he views uncertainty which marries nicely with my ideas about change. It helps that one of the books that was recommended during ETMOOC (I think) was the "The Half Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know has an Expiration Date" by Samuel Arbesman. What we learn changes and mutates over time, as does what we teach. Where's Latin, for example? I only got one year of Latin because there were not enough students who wanted to take it ( I loved Latin too!) And yet Latin was the staple of higher education 100 years ago.

I loved Jaap Bosman's post about the place of wonderment in uncertainty. I know I feel anxious and frustrated as I learn new things, but also exhilarated and I am soooo pleased with myself when I finally understand how something works. Learning something is rather like opening a present (and I rip my presents open rather than try and save the wrapping paper, though that has been changing too as I grow older!)

Lou Northern's discussion about the place of ego and it's barrier to being open to uncertainty was a great read but I, like Frances Bell, was struck by this phrase "What am I assuming that makes me so sure that I’m right?" I love this.

But really, I am not sure about the idea of embracing uncertainty. Life is uncertain at its core and the only way we have to deal with it's very unpredictable-ness is by clinging to certainties. When we teach in the elementary panel, we are encouraged to create a place of safety for the learner. Isn't that in conflict with the idea of embracing uncertainty? For life and sometimes learning are not safe. Can we only embrace uncertainty at a certain age? When we have internalized the reality of living in an uncertain world?

Certain things are certain for now. The sun will rise and fall, everything born will die, gravity still works, ice is cold. So should we only teach the concrete, for only that is true and all else, fleeting and ephemeral?

I don't know.