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Shortly before Christmas, I followed a #edchatie twitter chat. This twitter chat, for Irish educators, takes place every Monday evening. While I am aware of it, I don't normally participate, because 1) the time doesn't suit me, 2) active participants are mostly from primary or secondary education, with minimal HE discussion, 3) although I have an interest in primary and secondary education as a parent, I haven't felt encouraged to engage from that perspective. However, I do like to drop in from time to time. On this occasion, I introduced myself as usual, and said that I would be mostly lurking. I got an immediate response from @fboss , the convenor, who suggested that I should try to participate, and I agreed that I would. The topic on the evening was #whatilearntin2013 . The stream was full of positive reflections on the year. Maybe it was the time of year, end of semester blues, a particularly challenging year, or maybe I was just a bit down, but I could not think of a s...

At this stage, #edcmooc is over, and I can say that I have finally completed a MOOC. Before I reflect on my own experience of being a student on #edmooc, I want to complete my musings on the resources provided. Week 4 continued the theme of Being Human, with a collection of videos, some readings on Transhumanism and some less challenging perspectives on Education. Of the four videos, the two that I connected with most are True Skin ( see it on Vimeo ) and Avatar Days ( watch on YouTube ). True Skin reminds me of some of the sci fi videos from week 1, and has a dystopian feel running through it. The idea of being able to upload your mind - memory backup - is fascinating and has clear beneficial aspects, for example, for early alzheimers sufferers. What does it mean for learning though? If you can upload a (brilliant) mind, can you download it, or part of it, multiple times to many people? Maybe we'll all become like our smartphones, downloading learning to our brains like apps. L...

I think I made a mistake in week three of #edcmooc. I was doing some travelling by train and decided to review the resources while in transit. Unfortunately, the Iarnród Éireann WiFi wouldn't let me access any of the videos, so I couldn't watch the film festival or Steve Fuller's TedX Warwick talk Defining Humanity . Instead, I jumped straight into the advanced reading: Neil Badmington's introduction on Posthumanism. I read it twice, in full, and have gone back to sections since. But, I really don't think I have the necessary background to be able to make any sense of it at all. Being Human, Humanism, Posthumanism and Transhumanism As I read Badmington's introduction, I had fleeting glimpses of meaning and at times thought I might be approaching some understanding. But eventually I gave up. Is it possible to understand what posthumanism is without understanding humanism? I don't know, but all the different arguments got my head in a spin. I was ready to give...

In week 3 of #edcmooc, we were asked to " create an image that represents or illustrates any one of the themes you have encountered in the course so far ". Well, I'm not particularly creative when it comes to images, so I decided quite quickly that this was one part of the course that I might not take part in. On Wednesday I struggled with some of the readings around humanism and post-humanism. I will talk about this in my blog post reflecting on week 3, coming soon (I hope). Anyway, I couldn't get my head around the theories and by Thursday morning was really feeling deflated. On Thursday lunchtime I had an opportunity to go to a free lunchtime concent on campus, arranged by the Arts In Action group. The recital was given by Luisa Sello , a flautist, who has travelled the world as a recitalist and chamber musician. I had a lot of work to do, and I really thought twice about walking the few hundred metres to the venue, thinking I might be better to just work through l...

Interactive White Board of the future We're already in week 3 of #edcmooc, and I'm behind. I have some train travel ahead of me tomorrow, so that should give me a chance to catch up on materials. But before that, I'd better write up some thoughts from week 2. Week 2 continued on the theme of Utopias and Dystopias, this time looking to the future - of society and education. Looking at the materials, videos and readings, a lot of thoughts went through my head. I'm not really sure what this course is all about, and I don't have a lot of time to devote to it, so I find myself relating the materials to my own professional life working in academic staff development, as well as to my own experiences of education as a parent. I did watch all five videos in the film festival. Two of these ( A Day Made of Glass and Productivity Future Vision ) are video advertisements, offering a very sanitised possible near future. I say sanitised because everything, every surface, looked s...

Back in early January, I heard Jeremy Knox speak at the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference about his involvement in the Coursera MOOC, E-Learning and Digital Cultures. It sounded interesting and, despite a heavy workload, I decided to sign up. I don't know if I'll complete it, but week 1 has been interesting and I'm still there. I'll blog about the whole MOOC experience separately. For now, I just want to record my thoughts about the week one content and reflect on what I  might have learned. First of all, I am a scientist by background, namely computer science and mathematics. While I love reading and the cinema, and I know what I like and what I don't like, I'm not used to analysing and critiquing them. I don't ever use the words "utopia" or "dystopia" in everyday conversation and I'm not comfortable using them. So, this is definitely new to me. I think I have a better idea, after week 1, of their meaning. I can see, I think, h...