Diving into #clmooc

Having been on the periphery of previous #clmooc (Connected Learning MOOC (#clmooc) A Connected Learning Massive Open Online Collaboration) runs this year I was determined to dive on in. The barriers to joining in were to do with summer being my busiest time, for workload and family, but after so many years of following on the outskirts it felt a bit daunting to dive in. In some ways it felt like entering a room of strangers, many of whom had close knit connections, and announcing ‘Hey, I’m Clare. Look what I made.‘. Stranger yet was that whilst the majority of people didn’t know me, I felt as if I knew many of them after observing conversations during previous iterations. This highlights my wonder and simultaneous bafflement of open online communities.

I decided to ease myself in by contributing to a couple of Daily Creates and starting conversations with #clmooc that way. Next up was an exploration of the spaces and finding out where everyone was on the global map and adding a few introductions of myself.

Kick off – Make Cycle 1

I always knew that despite the ‘C’ standing for ‘connected’ that it was equally about ‘creative’ but I was taken aback by how much creativity the first task called for. Being set the challenge of contributing a line drawing/completed coloured drawing to collective global colouring books was not at all what I was expecting. Thinking about the options I realised just how inclusive an activity it was: creation, completion, messy, neat, abstract, fun, serious, collaborative, individual, private, public, personal, simple, complex, online, offline, words, picture, poetry, music ….. something for everyone.

Drawing though? I don’t consider myself to be artistic, in the conventional sense and shy away from using the ‘creative’ label so how best could I contribute to both activities (the colouring in aspect will not be a worry!)? So how did I do, what did I manage?

As I was on holiday I missed the hangout and Tweetchats and had no access to a printer so I have added catching up on these activities to this week’s list. An ethos for #clmooc is ‘Whenever you connect with CLMOOC, you are exactly on time.‘ which I love as no matter how busy life gets there is something that can be done to contribute/learn. Being limited with regards online time on holiday also meant I was making offline so I hope to convert some of this to work for Make Cycle 2.

All in all in only a couple of weeks I have enjoyed the process and definitely learned a lot about the quirks, limitations and power of my mobile devices. I have also used Google+ in earnest which I have never really done before. Last but definitely not least I have met some really lovely people.

PS my go to crayon colour is green

PPS there seems to be an explosion of Crayola products in this house over the last week and not all of it is down to me, serendipity methinks!

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