Week 5 - Huzzar

Hi Everyone,

I hope that your blogs are coming along well and you're enjoying the program.

My interesting technology thing this week is about a MOOC I was signed up for. Since MOOCS are topical at the moment - you probably know all about them - but if not here goes. A MOOC is a Massive Open Online (or Online Open ... who knows) Course.

MOOCs are supposed to democratise education and provide high quality courses in places where it would be otherwise unaffordable or unavailable via the web. You can read more about them on wikipedia.

Anyway, I had enrolled in a course talking about converting course materials to workable online courses. I hadn't even had time to sign-in and take a look at the materials when the course started to experience problems...

You were supposed to sign up for a group but the Google Spreadsheets solution had already been crashed due to some kind of incorrect use. Then you were supposed to post to a discussion board as a method of signing in... but that made you feel behind the 8 ball because there were already pages and pages of groups...

Then there was the extreme slowness of streaming the lectures - even from here at the Uni where the Internet is super fast. At any rate - by the weekend there was a notice that the course had been suspended so they could improve things. My colleague said they had gotten some 40 thousand enrolments... Probably a large contributor to why the course wasn't working...

I happily unenroled. ^.^ Another colleague taking a MOOC in digital culture says it's much better. Glad to hear it.

--- Anyway to the 23 Things

This week is about online books.

We have provided a few links for you... If you happen to have an iPAD as part of your work - I would recommend looking up iBooks and some of the classics freely available through project Gutenberg.

Happy Reading!

~ Jake.