Closing Ceremony

Well this is the last post on MMOOC7 and the closing ceremony gave participants a chance to reflect on what they had got out of the course.

First of all, I didn't complete the Moodle part of the MOOC because I was so engrossed in all the wonderful webinars provided by a host of presenters with Nellie Deutsch at the helm. I wish that I had taken the opportunity to find out more about the inner workings of Moodle that Nellie provided but may be next time (Roll on MM8!) What I did learn, is that it is a versatile learning platform which can be used to provide courses online. Perhaps I will play a little more with MoodleCloud to try and see what I missed.

The webinars covered a variety of topics both theoretical and practical and although I originally intended to attend as many as possible, I found that I wasn't able to keep up with the pace and write this blog at the same time. (I don't know how Nellie managed, it must be something to do with her power poses.) Accordingly I focused on watching the replays which Nellie and others kindly posted in various places online. The main disadvantage of this was that I was not able to participate in the chats and live questions which are an integral part of any online webinar.

I watched presentations by people I had come across online before and other new (to me) people who also enriched my teaching with their ideas, anecdotes and resources. There have been too many excellent presentations to say which one I thought best. I have collated a list of resources from the webinars which are in a separate post for me to go through when I have time - they are in no particular order, just the order in which I found them and I am sure that I have missed loads! Some of them were presented and some were found from digging around when I saw a reference to them in a slide or in the chatbox.

The one thing that I thing I have got out of the webinars, and it cropped up many times with different presenters was the importance of learning by doing for teachers and students, as well as empowering students to take more responsibility and control of their own destinies. Having now written this blog I will go back through it after a short break and see which aspects I can introduce into my new teaching life online.

Thank you Nellie for creating and organising this wonderful online learning opportunity for so many and thank you to all of the presenters from around the world who took the time to prepare their sessions and share their valuable knowledge with us all. I apologise if I was not able to do justice to your presentation in this blog and apologise for any screenshots which you may have not intended to share. Once again thank you all.