I’m one of many who’ve signed up for the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08) massive open online course (MOOC) facilitated by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. It’s a brilliant opportunity to learn in a more structured way about an area of interest I’ve had ignited since encountering George’s Knowing Knowledge book (and SCOPE Seminar around it) in January 2007. It’s also an opportunity to widen and strengthen my networks – there are some familiar names in the participants list.

My first digital fingerprints have been adding my pin and some details about myself to the Google Map created for the CCK08 learning community by Rod Lucier. This led to me adding a Google profile (using some google apps but I hadn’t done this yet). I viewed the introductory presentation (made with Articulate) and visited the moodle site but don’t seem to be able to log-in to post an introduction in the forum. Did I mention managing multiple accounts being a risky business? I’ll sort it out tomorrow!

Here’s the course description: “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future”.

There have been a few emails from George leading up to the start of the course (which is this week) to keep in touch and provide links to some pre-activity tasks and readings. There’s been an option to pay to do the course through the University of Manitoba but it has also been open to others on a non-accredited basis. It is part of a Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning. This will tie in well with my current course with University of Southern Queensland, FET8611 Emerging Environments for Learning. I’m exploring using Mahara for reflective blogging and as an eportfolio tool as part of that course, along with the tikiwiki knowledgeGarden (mentioned in previous posts).

I’ll be using this blog for the course so I hope to share some of my learnings and excitement here.  I can see we’ll be using some familiar tools, some I’m aware of but haven’t really investigated yet (eg Pageflakes) and some new ones. It will also help me get into the habit of posting more reliably and frequently!

Lovin’ learning,

Janice