Getting My Sea Legs in the CLMOOC: Reflections during Make Cycle 1

Although my brother Joe (@onewheeljoe) has been involved with the CLMOOC and Connected Learning for some time, prior to this week I've only been an occasional lurker. Diving into the first make cycle for the 2014 edition of #clmooc, I found all this connectivism a bit disorienting.

With so many participants sharing interesting tools and rich ideas, it was hard to know where to focus my attention. I recalled a conversation I had with a friend of mine, Harvey Shaw (@harvshaw), about how social media tools can sometimes be overwhelming. It's hard to kick that feeling that we are missing something when we fail to monitor every interaction. This can drive some to abandon such tools before they really get started. 

Harvey came up with an interesting comparison when he was first experimenting with twitter for professional research. He said that he initially felt like he was standing on a riverbank and that the posts were precious items floating downstream. He was overwhelmed that he couldn't collect and process them all. Later, he began to think of himself as sitting on a boat in the middle of the ocean. He thought of the tweets/posts as all the waves and ripples in the water, constantly moving in all directions. This allowed him to stop thinking that he had to capture all of them. 

With my personal and professional use of facebook and twitter, I've worked not to see the content as correspondence I have to keep up with; instead, I'm beginning to think of these social media tools as resources I can mine for information whenever I deem it appropriate.  I wanted to apply this mindset to my work in the CLMOOC also.

So as I paddled around in the sea of contributions to the CLMOOC, I decided to revisit some overlapping theories of action I've developed in the past two years to guide my teaching and professional learning. I figured if I could be cognizant of the goals that brought me to the water's edge in the first place, I could begin to map my course.

These three ideas guide much of my work as a high school teacher and a tech integration coach:

1. If educators, who are isolated due to convention or geography, use collaborative social media to investigate, author, and share resources, then they will learn to appreciate the potential of technology tools to shape learning in other settings and employ these tools to support innovative learning of those they teach.

2. If educators engage learners in an authentic iterative process of problem identification, research, planning, and action NOW (rather than preparing them to act in a distant future), young people will develop agency, skills, and persistence to engage in the urgent work of social change.

3. If I create collaborative learning spaces for participants to:
(a) process powerful first hand learning experiences,
(b) problem-solve dilemmas and challenges of application, and
(c) share effective practices,

then participants will develop self-sustaining habits of reflection and interaction that transform their practices and the practices of those around them.

As I look at them, I see that the CLMOOC Google+ community presents me with many opportunities to understand numbers 1 and 3. For number 2, I'm developing an I-Don't-Know-How-To make that helps me get started planning a modest Open Online Conference (maybe I'll call it a mOOC) that I want to "host" with my students. (My brother pointed out that it might not be Massive...at least in its first iteration.)

Allow me to further stretch (and perhaps mangle) Harvey's water/boating metaphor. I'm beginning to think of myself as a surfer who paddles into the CLMOOC to sit in the calm water just beyond the breaking waves. I don't live in the water and it's impossible to think that I can monitor all the waves in the ocean 24/7. I'm not going to catch every wave. But, when I have the time and the inclination to get in the water, I practice surveying the landscape to see what looks promising. Occasionally, I can see a wave coming that suits my ability and interest, dip my arms in the water, and see where it takes me.