It happened so fast. It was a forwarded email in the University group email that caught my eye.
The Geneva Learning Foundation, in partnership with the University of Illinois College of Education and Learning Strategies International (LSi), is pleased to announce an open access course to support the development of scalable digital learning.
I applied and was invited to the Asia-Pacific briefing last June 23 which was thankfully at 1 pm! I was relieved as the original weekly live online meetings were 2 am Manila time.
I took down notes with my new Nemosine Singularity demonstrator fountain pen on my proudly Filipino-made Elias notebook. Sorry, had to mention that because I just got these recently after reading Why You Should Always Carry A Notebook by Srinivas Rao. One reason why?
It can enable you to create more than you consume.
Reda Sadki gave the briefing. He emphasized the need to commit time for the course then segued into an aircraft carrier analogy, where a high level of performance and reliability is expected despite complex processes. Was he referring to this course? Gulp! I actually understood how complex the process of landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier was. I had gone to the USS Midway in San Diego a couple of months back where veterans explained the process.
I was able to go on the USS Midway Island tour – the Island is that superstructure above the flight deck. I was able to take a picture of the deck through the narrow window here.
But I digress …
I’m one of those who hadn’t heard of Scholar prior to signing up. I had to look that up at http://info.cgscholar.com/about-scholar.
Scholar is a web writing space for learners of the social media generation. With its focus on peer interaction and formative feedback, Scholar harnesses enthusiastic learner engagement. And with full multimedia features for writing in all subject areas (text with embedded image, video, audio, and data set), it unleashes student creativity. Scholar brings writing instruction and student work into the twenty-first century.
I’m more familiar with Moodle so I’m very excited to try what Scholar can do differently. Reda pointed out that the first thing you see on Scholar is the Activity Stream rather than a static list of course materials. Here’s what mine looks like so far.
Reda mentioned productive diversity. I looked that up too. Google Scholar gave me this – Becker, Karen L. (2004) Productive diversity in changing realities of distance education: is online group assessment the answer? Malaysian Journal of Distance Education, 6(1), pp. 57-75. In the abstract it says,
… how harnessing multiliteracies within a learning environment can add value to the learning experience.
The task before us is to produce a course outline or a learning module in 4 weeks. I’m going for a learning module.
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
I’d written about the social media and healthcare courses I wanted to create even BEFORE I registered to be a #DigitalScholar. I think that’s the universe nudging me! So I’ve decided to use Scholar to develop my module on Twitter for Health Professionals.
Wish me luck!
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