Well, I have to say that I am a bit sad to see the Open Ed course ending (though not unhappy to be having that little extra time back in my week). I learned not only about open ed, but also about online learning, lifelong non-traditional learners, blog-based collaboration, learner-driven learning, international education, and more.
Most of all I want to thank everyone who participated in the class. I learned so much from all of you and enjoyed our conversations. I will continue to read your blogs and hope we will continue to talk. (I only wish I knew Italian!) Thanks also to David Wiley for putting this together and for making it an open experience.
I will continue to use what I have learned, to participate in the open community, and to expand my learning in this area.
If anyone hears of other similar education-related open courses, please post them on your blogs. I look forward to participating in other learning opportunities like this.
A few other miscellaneous thoughts on process:
– I loved the addition of the week to read, reflect, and comment. (Another suggestion to accomplish this would be to require initial posts to be done by Turs. night and comments by Sun. night.)
– I missed the assignment to spread the word about open ed within our organization (which I have done anyway). Perhaps in future classes, the first few weeks of reading could be condensed a bit and this kind of creative sharing and advocacy (and other hands on projects) could be included and even expanded.
– I’d like to see the inclusion of K-12 open ed initiatives, in addition to post-secondary. I’d also like to see more discussion of international and developing world issues and concerns.
– In future courses (or any other blog-driven collaborations), it would be helpful to have weekly Technorati tags that we would all use and access. This would save a lot time spent wading through non-participating people’s blogs and other unrelated blog entries. (My reader runneth over!)
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Thanks again, everyone! Keep writing, and stay in touch!
HI karen – thanks for the note on the site. I’m not a very active blogger – but will try to be. I am really happy to have ‘met’ you, and I too will be keeping an eye on your blog. I feel that we think much the same on these issues, and am really glad to have discovered you!
Just a quick note, wanted to make sure you had seen Sylvia’s Blog, highlighting MIT’s resources for high school…a start!
Cheers!!
Hi Karen, It was great to ‘meet’ you also. I am originally from Hermosa Beach, so I felt like I knew you better than the people here in Utah. There was no collaboration between USU students. Well, I should say, if there was I was not part of it. And though I work for David, we rarely had conversations about the class (once we discussed localization and I found out that we both had very different ideas about it). Our office is not located on campus anymore so it seems I don’t run into anyone. Thanks for you input and I hope we do stay connected. You have added a lot of valuable work to OER.
Hi Karen, loved reading your posts. Wanted to give notice of the Open Education wiki on http://opened.wetpaint.com