Afwaid of da fish! #edcmooc

Yesterday I opened a hootsuite account and today I closed it. I must admit I don't really know how to work hootsuite so it may be groundless fears that led me to this decision but I have this fear of exposing too much of myself to public view and it seemed like hootsuite was opening my private home to the public.

When my daughter was about five years old, we went to see Free Willy, ostensibly a movie suitable for young children, but every time the whale appeared on the screen, she screamed at the top of her lungs "Afwaid of da fish!!"  It did no good to tell her that Willy was a good fish. The overwhelming size of this giant creature on the movie screen sent her into such paroxyms of terror that we had to leave the theatre. 

The Internet is a vast sea and for me, social media is a huge whale in that sea, one that I do not totally understand. After selecting my twitter, facebook and google accounts to appear on my hootsuite, I googled myself and to my shock, my google+ account came right up. I realized that my friends and activities were now available to the world and rushed to batten down my privacy settings there, which did, in fact, hide all of this information from the google-sphere. I had googled myself on previous occasions, in particular when job hunting, to make sure my private life was private, and had been satisfied with what came up. Now, my confidence was shaken and the only thing that made me feel safe again was removal of the hootsuite account that seemingly, had been the catalyst for this minor tsunami in my social media sea.

So, no hootsuite for me. If anyone out there in cyberspace feels inclined to explain how it works and what it is properly used to manage, I might dip a toe into the waters again. But for now, the owl is just a big, scary fish.

What I learned in the first hour of cyberschool #edcmooc

I feel breathless with the number of digital tasks that have exited my fingertips in the past few hours and intensely inadequate after seeing the incredible variety of blogs and creations of every kind associated with the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC.  

What I have done:

• I carefully read the introductory email and followed the instructions to create a twitter account (I did have one set up but it was all but pushing up the daisies since I had only ever tweeted three times previously). I sent out a tweet using the #edcmooc hashtag.  It only took me three tries to get it right. (Which left me wondering, when I deleted the previous tweets does it mean three of them went out anyway? Or did the ones that I used the wrong hashtag for go into empty cyberspace? And also, who exactly sees my tweets?) 
• I created a Flickr account
• I joined the facebook group for EDCMOOC
• I pinned my location on the big google map
• I revived, cleaned up and re-purposed an old blog to use for my EDC blog and proceeded to write my first post
• As I found the EDC boards, I found a number of other blog posts and got lost in them for several hours, then saved them on my own blog to be able to follow them, in the process realizing there are more new concepts/applications out there than I had ever imagined
• Looking through those other blogs also led me to a few youtube videos and I was astounded at the level of ability and creativity in these videos from people who were apparently, just fooling around

At this point, I began to feel overwhelmed and on the heels of this flurry of cyber activity, I received an email from the course professors opening the course content to all those signed up for the course (how many are we? I thought I heard the number 36,000 but that seems impossible).  And so now, I will turn my mind to utopian and dystopian views of information technology on the Coursera "wiki" (now I even know what that is!).

You will notice I did not put any hyperlinks into this post, having perhaps overdone it on my first post. You see, I was just so excited at learning what a web essay is and trying out the fun of embedding links. I still feel like I know nothing in comparison to that vast sea of information (and only on this one topic), but at least my blog helps me remember that I have learned something.

That Awkward Age #edcmooc

I am at that awkward middle age of 50-something - too old for the kids' table and too young for the grownups' table.  The reason I say this is I love what is being served at the kids' table but I am the first to admit I am not a kid anymore and for me, the grownups' table is synonymous with those who are content with ordering the early bird special and not even interested in trying out a new place. It is a state of mind.

There are some who will tell you the awkward age is that between birth and death but I am here to tell you that we tail-end-of-the-boomers have it rough. Whereas the boomer generation was able to scoop the cream of employment opportunities from a frothy economy, my contemporaries were wearing diapers in the early 1960s and by the time we hit the pavement in search of jobs, we were fighting over the leftovers and heading into several waves of recession.  This is not to diminish the struggle of the Gen Xers or that of the Milleniums today. The fact is, the baby boom demographic herd lucked out by the mere fact of the decade in which they were born and a majority are now enjoying vested pension rights and healthy RRSPs (personal tax-free pension savings). 

Enough ranting about first world problems...I do have much for which to be grateful and I am especially excited about the infinite opportunities for learning and pleasure that exist by virtue of living in the internet age. I love hearing new music that others introduce to me through sites like 8 tracks and songza.  As far as social media, it seems that my generation is even more enamored of facebook than my children's generation; many 20-somethings are scornful of the facebook and twitter trend of posting the minutiae of daily life. As for me, I have delighted in finding and renewing old acquaintances. I remember the thrill of the first time I was able to text chat in real time with my sister, when I was living on another continent and phone calls were so expensive they were reserved for special occasions. I remember the nostalgia that gripped me when I first heard CBC radio live streaming while living abroad in South America for more 15 years. I used to tune in to the local Toronto broadcasts to hear the traffic reports in winter and as I looked out my window at the sun and bougainvillea, I marveled at this science fiction prediction come to pass. 

I loved science fiction as a teenager and I still have a very big soft spot for Star Trek (all the series, especially TNG, and the movies), Star Wars, the Matrix series and in particular, any sci-fi that deals with social commentary and not just blowing up space craft. Suggestions are welcome.  

Now I am working in adult education, managing programs that are delivered through traditional text and just starting to dip a toe into experiments like an online forum to interact with students. I am working on a certificate in studies on adult teaching and training and straining to catch up to the leaps and bounds that have taken place over the past few years in online teaching tools. I am hungry to taste that buffet but, despite my considerable motivation and the fact I am considered to be a little more tech-savvy than many of my contemporaries, I struggle to feel comfortable with the myriad of options. We adults of a certain age also want to enjoy this smorgasbord of opportunities to learn and connect with wonderful minds in far-off lands who can teach us and enrich our lives. I want to be part of that revolution and understand how to make it accessible to those who are also at that awkward age and who will never be as comfortable with this technology as our young digital natives.