Next week is the Virtual 4T Conference put on by the University of Michigan School of Education. This is a free, virtual conference (but registration is required).

If you’ve been wondering what the P2PU School of Open is up to, here is a great chance to find out!

On Monday, May 20 at 7pm Eastern, we’ll be having a panel called “The Potential of Open Resources for Your Classroom.” Jane Park from the School of Open will be joining us for this. Hope you can join this and other V4T sessions and expand your professional learning!

ISTE’s Learning and Leading with Technology (L&L) just published an article I wrote about MOOCs.

This article was a step in the progression of some thinking I’ve been doing about deeper professional learning. (Stay tuned for more on that.)

As is often the case with print publications, there were several months between the writing of this article and its publication, and a lot has happened since then! In particular, there are two new MOOCs that are particularly well suited to K-12 professional learning.

The first is #ETMOOC from Alec Couros and a host of others. This course covers a wide array of topics in educational technology and media.

The second is Learning Creative Learning (#medialabcourse) from MIT Media Lab and P2PU. This is a course for designers, technologists, and educators interested in creative learning. It includes a fairly traditional program of webinars and readings, along with experiments via the mechanical mooc and G+ communities. (We also have a P2PU group for this going here.)

Best of all, these two MOOCs are both OPEN (in a variety of senses, including open licensed) and CONNECTIVIST.

It’s not too late to jump in and start learning with either of these MOOCs.

Stay tuned for more interesting MOOCs for K-12 professional learning!

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Image credits:

Massive and open image: Image reprinted from Learning and Leading with Technology (L&L) vol. 40, no. 6, copyright 2013, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (US and Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Intl.), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.

ETMOOC image: Courtesy of #ETMOOC community

LCL image: Courtesy of Learning Creative Learning, MIT Media Lab, and P2PU

Also, I was very pleased to see this Information Week article about the Future 15 talk I gave at SXSWedu: Open Education – Take Back the Curriculum. David Carr, the journalist who wrote this, really did a nice job of capturing what I think is the great opportunity before us right now.

Open content is all about remixing, and that’s making. And there are so many great tools and communities for making with openness: Scratch, DS106, P2PU, Mozilla’s webmaker tools, and more.

Today at 8:00am Pacific, there will be an Open Education Week webinar about CrispyScience and their initiative to develop educational computer interacting toys using MakeyMakey and Scratch.

I’ll be there. Will you?

We’re also having a webinar to showcase various aspects of P2PU today at 3pm Pacific time.

Even if you aren’t “enrolled” in this course, you can participate in this week’s activities (or any for that matter) here in our group on P2PU.

How have you participated in open or peer learning? What benefits have you found?

You can enroll for courses here.

The second annual Open Education Week will take place March 11-15, 2013. Open Education Week is a five-day celebration of the global Open Education Movement, featuring online and local events around the world, video showcases of open education projects, and information. Its purpose is to raise awareness of both the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide.

Here is a calendar of all the events, and here are a few to make special note of:

• School of Open at Citizen Science Workshop – live f2f event, March 10 in Los Angeles
• P2PU: A Showcase of Open Learning – free webinar, Wed., March 14 at 3pm Pacific
• School of Open launch – lots of great, free courses, ongoing

This is a great opportunity to learn more about open and also to share this info with others in your organization. Throughout next week, I’ll be posting daily nuggets of open goodness.

And in case you missed it, here is a hangout a group of us did for the #etmooc about open learning. There are some thought-provoking discussions in here.

PPT file here

Paul Allison’s work – Youth Voices Play and at P2PU (all linked from Youth Voices as well)
PhET (interactive simulations)
FreeReading (reading intervention) and remixed versions (ebooks and Voicethreads)
Hippocampus (online courses)
CK12 (online textbooks, Flexbooks)
Curriki
P2PU School of Ed