This week brought out a less appealing facet of my personality. I did nothing in the #clmooc at all, except check in a few times. This was the special week where everyone was making credos, a “this I believe” sort of aria of affirmation about connecting, teaching, making, writing….etc. And I just didn’t feel up to a new declaration. Not that I haven’t made plenty of these in the past. For example:
Yet much of what I did the last week and a half was related to the values I hold about connected learning, as some of my colleagues and I brainstorm plans for our own MOOC. MOOClet. MOOC Module (MOOM?) We’re writing in the middle of night, holding conversations on Google docs, interrupting each other in mid-sentence sometimes, stopping to feed babies or sleep or say goodbye before short roadtrips. Occasionally, it gets a little freaky and I have to move chunks of the conversation around to a special “other” place so I can stay focused, whatever that means.
Frankly, I find the prospect of this MOOClet rather overwhelming (perhaps ever so slightly terrifying) after seeing how expansive the #clmooc can be. Yet, it is so very exciting because so much of my life’s value exists online now, and so far, my teaching hasn’t been online. That’s not entirely true, of course, as there is teaching discussion on Facebook and ePortfolios and LinkedIn groups, and Blackboard, always. Websites. But the courses have not been online courses per se.
Experience has taught me that teaching, like life, often happens while you are busy making other plans. There is a good chance that the moment where one says “now I am ready to teach a MOOC” never arrives in life. As for credos, they come on little cats’ feet, in the midsummer dreaming, perhaps. If you value poetry, perhaps, you can appreciate a slanted credo ala Emily Dickinson’s truth.
