The Power of Organizing without Organizations
I have just posted my introduction to the Moodle Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course which is about to start. The course, which has already been nicknamed MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) because of the number of participants – about 1600), will be co-facilitated by Georges Siemens and Stephen Downes
Although open courses of this kind are not new and nor are the tools used (message boards, Moodle, blog, wiki , microblogging, syndication, social networking platforms, Second Life), the innovation comes from the sheer number of participants involved from different parts of the world.
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What is fascinating, as Clay Shirky mentions in the book I have taken the title of this post from, is how the different people are meeting, moving and gathering online to make things happen, taking them from the global context to discuss them in their own communities. Although the course is in English, translations to Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Italian have been taken up by volunteers and are linked from the course wiki. Special interest groups are being created in different languages, physical and online locations.
As Shirky mentions, the tools for sharing and co-operating on a global scale have been placed in the hands of individual citizens and in the same way the printing press has amplified the individual mind and the telephone amplified two-way communication, all these tools amplify group communication.
The big challenge, in the next 12 weeks, will be to both read, reflect and post, converge and diverge, breathe in and breathe out, listen to the global and think local. An ambitious experiment in intercultural perspectives, scalability and how to evaluate the outcomes of such project. Looking forward to learning a lot from it.
It’s as if an ice cream truck came around the corner, and everyone ran out to join in! With so much to offer, this course is one giant quadruple scoop sundae with nuts, cherries, and whipped cream!
For some, observation ground of the comings and goings of Clever Sheep 🙂
I was just over reading the posts at the Google Group – can you believe I didn’t even know it was there? And 189 posts, or something like that? Crazy…
You are now having a bit of the flavour of the EVO courses 🙂 Our Weblogging session in 2005 felt like this as well. About 274 messages before it even started.
It's as if an ice cream truck came around the corner, and everyone ran out to join in! With so much to offer, this course is one giant quadruple scoop sundae with nuts, cherries, and whipped cream!
See you online…
The “quiet” before the tempest… This is the background nervousness of We the People getting ready for engagement…
You’re a couple of steps ahead of me – I must get on and post my introduction. I’m rather anxious about it, but I am sure this course will be mayhem but fun.
We are all at different stages – I am also trying to catch up on one and the other..fortunately some themes overlap 🙂