And It Begins….#ETMOOC

Tomorrow I will start the long anticipated Educational Technology MOOC #etmooc (my first ever cMOOC).  The course was designed and developed by Professor Alec Couros and his merry band of contributors.

#etmooc contributors

I’m quite excited to be involved in this MOOC.

My only experience of MOOCs is completing an xMOOC on Gamification by Coursera and I was a recent dropout of another xMOOC on How To Reason and Argue.  However, there’ll be no dropping out of this one! [There, it’s written in black and white and for the whole world to see so it must be done!]

Already, I’m noticing the differences with this connectivist MOOC and it’s on the level of engagement with the participants and the level of excitement buildup through Google+. I also think it’s because the target audience is specific to those who have some interest in the topic iteself because it directly applies to their role or their work.

To find out what a cMOOC is Dave Cormier and Stephen Downes explain is here.

What stands out for me is that there are 1200 participants representing over 67 countries of which you can see visually in this map.  That is, a whole world of my fellow students I can learn from!  Many of them are from educational institutions and academia but we all have one thing in common – and that’s to learn about educational technology that will assist and support us in our roles.

Some of them have already started connecting through our Google+ Community page

Our Google+ Community already is in progress…the excitement is building

And there are Twitter subscriber lists set up so that we can further connect through this medium.

Now I just have to check the timings of when the webinars are on and it starts tomorrow!

You’ll be reading more about #etmooc over the next weeks.