A real interesting event for people involved in e-learning and learning technology is the new course by George Siemens and Stephen Downes on connectivism. It has awakened my interest in blogging again as I would like to contribute to the network. So far 1600 people worldwide interested in the subject of Connectivism have signed up and the course is in 4 languages. People can still enrol. As always the start of a new online course is a bit confusing as you have to figure out how and where to find the most important materials and features on the Moodle site. A wiki has been set up to bring researchers interested in the subject together, which is interesting. The problem with global courses of course is that they are global and that people in different time zones get up and go to bed at different times, which makes it difficult for all to get involved in synchronous communication. The first session for instance is in Winnipeg, Canada at 19.00 , which means in Swansea UK it will be 1am and not such a good time for me to take in anything about connectivism. I expect though that George will have arranged something as usual to make sure that the Illuminate event will be recorded somehow. I wonder how the session will work technically. The last one that I was involved in was at the connectivism conference last year with 120 people and the volume of people then caused all sorts of technical problems. See how it goes this time. Good of George and Stephen to take on a project like this. Lucky for them only a small group wanted to get involved in the accredited version of the course. Can you imagine marking 1600 essays or blog entries?
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