We are here. #edcmooc has approached the end

EDC mooc experience and me

So many wise words have already been written about the edc-mooc course. I have only a little extra to add. Here is a short resume about some of my thoughts:

Besides my curiosity for the course content,  my mental challenge by enrolling EDC-mooc was certainly the language. Would I be able to cope with the reading of the material as well as writing both blog posts and an assignment in english? Not to mention to take part in the social communities around the course. I mean,  I had to expect it to be more demanding than ordering beer with my fish 'n chips in a cheerful London weekend. And it was. Luckily it was.

Now when it's all succesfully completed, I almost burst of different feelings. Firstly I'm quite proud of how my english vocabulary has evolved during the course. And I write more fluent now. Which is SO satisfying. And it makes me consider to enroll a french mooc to increase my skills there as well.

As a teacher I can't help wonder why this course gave me such a kick in that direction. My conclusion is, that it's due to all the written work. I have had the time to choose what to write and how to do it. In a conversation you don't have the extra time to consider, so you just stick to the phrases and formulations you already master. I had never foreseen that would be of such an importance (I'm only a humble science teacher. Please bear with me).

But the most dominant of the impressions from the EDC are connected to the overwhelming experience of being part of the very active group around the course. To feel that we were in this together. I was not one of the most active when it comes to posting, but I read a lot of your posts and enjoyed your movies and pictures. I loved it all.
And then this empty feeling after giving in the final assignment:  "Now it's all over," and "Back to reality."

But again the community was there and a lot of people felt like me. You guys almost made me wheep when you came up with your creative "now-it's-over" artefacts and posts. Here is just two of them (from Angela and Andy):

From Angela Towndrow on Youtube

À bientôt EDCMOOCers from Andy Mitchell on Vimeo.

When I wrote my final assignment, I found it quite difficult to cover even a few corners of the course in less than 800 words. And what to do when my video lasted 4 out of 5 minutes and the Edinburgh team had told us not to give our peer assessors too much work? I hoped no one would complain, as I really, really, really would like to pass this course. 

And then after reading a lot of other final assignments in the Google+ and Facebook groups I couldn't help smiling. Almost everybody had created very rich and very interesting posts and/ or videos and / or pictures with links to even more interesting text, pictures and videos. Looking at all this made it crystal clear, how people had enjoyed working and being creative with the content and they didn't care at all about details like "max 800 words" or "copyright". So secretly in my mind I had fun by naming the edc_mooc group "Mooc'y Riots".

Paul wrote it straight: 

"And I'll probably get disqualified for the third-party content (clip from the film Altered States, 1980). I had fun mashing up ideas from the course with Bjork, Ken Russell, WIlliam Blake and Alice in Wonderland so it was worth it anyway."

If you haven't seen it yet, you should have a look at his video Amaze Gamma

A-MAZE AKA GIRL 3.0 from Paul Gareth Smith on Vimeo.

So what to do now. We can't stop here. We're just begun. It's such a pleasure to see how people still post in the groups and new groups form from the old ones. By participating in EDC_mooc I became a mooc-aholic, and I hope to stay in contact or meet you guys out there in the cloud now and then. You have showed me an utopian picture of a mooc.

Thanks a lot to all of you, the Edinburgh team as well as my fellow participants, for this wonderful ride.

And I'm so much ready to start again, this time in the #openedmooc. I have to go to Sardegna for a school trip in the first week of the course, but then I have two weeks holiday so I'll catch up during the weekend. 16 hours a week is close to nothing compared to the edc weeks :)