My Life as a Lurker

Lurker #ccourses
So, I am interested in the emerging Connected Courses that is slated to begin very soon, with a bunch of folks that are always worth hanging around with in the virtual interwebz (Jim Groom, Alan Levine, Howard Reingold kick things off and then others like Mimi Ito! Laura Hilliger! Mike Wesch! take the baton). It seems, from the outside anyway, like a nice continuation of ideas and thinking from this summer’s Making Connected Learning adventure and from the various DS106 parties. Plus, it part of the Digital Media & Learning Research Hub (DML), so that’s always worth a gander (old fashioned word, repurposed for the digital age)

But I suspect I may be more of a lurker in the #ccourses this fall for a few reasons. The theme of the course seems to be university level (higher ed is right in the title). I know I will be swamped at the start of my school year with my sixth graders, and a new principal. And I am trying to figure out what the heck I doing for my K12 Online Conference Keynote presentation.

Still, I want to be tapped in, watching things unfold. So, I am putting on my lurker hat and swimming around the edges of this Connected Courses concept, hoping to steal some ideas and engaging in conversations when I can.

Peace (in the lurk),
Kevin

8 Comments
  1. Hi Kevin!

    Thanks for the lurk commitment although I hope you will bring your awesome creative inspiration to this effort (time-permitting of course). I know that your perspective is crucial to the overall endeavor of rethinking the overall education landscape (which is at the heart of this venture). I think the Connected Learning movement folks who are rooted in K-12 efforts should be engaged more directly with those who are rethinking and shaping the future of HigherEd.

    In many ways, K-12 cannot change until Higher Ed changes. HigherEd sets the rules and the entrance requirement. As Cathy Davidson has pointed out in a recent blog post (http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2014/07/27/un-common-core-what-are-fundamentals-futuresed#.U-YPZXOLmWo.gmail) – no responsible parent wants to mess up a child’s chance of getting into college so the conservativism in K-12 is exacerbated by our trumpeting of test scores, etc.

    I think this forum is a place to start working on a more purposeful “connect” with these key communities. You (and I am looking at all my #clmooc-er peeps) are key!!

  2. Love seeing network overlap between the connected learning community in K-12 and higher ed! Hope you’ll help us build these connections and looking forward to your reflections.

    • Thanks, Mimi. I agree that those connections and those conversations are important. It’s one of the reasons I love the National Writing Project. It gathers together K12 and college folks to talk about best practices, not just of writing but of learning.
      Kevin

  3. You are already NOT lurking, Kevin. I, for one, have no expertise in extending this kind of learning to k-12, but I’m interested in learning whatever ideas you might have. Welcome aboard!

  4. Ha! I love your lurking face! Let’s lurk together 🙂 As you say this is a bunch of people worth hanging around and learning from even if life may be busy elsewhere.

    I have an idea that something special, that goes beyond the boundaries higher ed/not higher ed, is emerging here. For me, it connects with ideas around POSSE/DOOO and Jim’s comment a while back that off the back of whatever technology we use what he wanted was to create a global community of open educators to support each other. To some extent we have that in our little communities like DS106 or Phonar but this is an attempt to bring us all together under a larger umbrella. I like that and want to support it however I can.

    Welcome to CCourses – I love it that if you write the CC in capitals reminds me of creative commons as underpinning it all!

    #mfccourses

    • So true. And that vision of something larger makes a lot of sense, particularly as we dance among common spaces. The danger, of course, is that our networks get narrower (the ‘echo chamber’ effect) and not larger and expansive, and rich with many views and experiences.
      Kevin

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