virtual flânerie chez MOOC

…late in the day or game of my life ~ figuratively speaking, but this flâneuse persona is off on another city jaunt...virtual flânerie in the form of MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses about cities.

The first, nearly over, is Technicity, and the other, in development and yet to start, is City MOOC.

Open Letter from SJSU Philosophy Dept to Michael Sandel

painting by Gandolfi Gaetano

…for more (if not optimum) context, read comments and related article. Optimum context would involve taking the edX course in question, reading up on MOOCs, Sandel, edX. the MOOCing  of HigherEd in general and, in particular, the Gates Foundation driven agreement between San Jose and edX. All that still might not be enough but brings us closer to an informed opinion. Even then there will be more variants and questions than consensus. 

Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University wrote the following letter to make a direct appeal to Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor whose MOOC on "Justice" they were being encouraged to use as part of the San Jose State curriculum. (See related article and comments)

Is this philosophy or just more mooc madness?  If philosophy is truly about knowledge, how we know and ways of knowing of the world. Consider this comment in the letter, 

.. the thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary - something out of a dystopian novel.

thoughts on starting #introphil

…in no particular order, counting #introphil, I am now in…four MOOCs! (not counting CM11 or POTcert):  #etmooc, EDC and #mmooc13, five counting soon to start Complexity from Santa Fe Institute. Whatever was I thinking? Nice to "see" Gordon and Jaap. A number of familiar names/avatars from Fantasy SF course (later morphing into an active post-course book club) are there too although few blog and have yet to see signs of any on my rare Forum visits.  I wonder who else I know from online will be there? Most of the usual connectivist MOOC bunch sticks to "about pedagogy and elearning" courses.  

The Human Cost of Social Connectivity, Brian Solis

I'm not entirely sure where this article fits into Multiliteracies, but it does and maybe the sooner the better ~ part of the firehouse / filter / shallows / narrows discussion because they all contribute to "Social Media Fatigue" and "Follow Fatigue" ~ symptoms of "Chaos Navigation Failure Syndrome" (CNFS, a syndrome not a disordet and I just made it up)

Over the years, we’ve learned the importance of social media in our professional and personal lives. It is after all a revolution in of itself. From improving governments to socializing businesses to improving collaboration and learning to investing in personal development, social media is influencing and reshaping all it touches. But there are very real costs associated with social media and they extend well beyond technology, popular networks, trends or monumental events.

You are here because you live and breathe new media and with each day that passes, you place unprecedented value on social and mobile networks and the role they play in your livelihood. Your experiences are incredibly personal, but are also influenced by your connections. The value you glean from each network is directly correlated to the relationships you forge within each network. The content that you curate, create, and consume dictates the focus and significance of your interest graphs.  The gravity that attracts people and information to your egosystem is essentially yours and only yours to define. And, that’s the point of this post. We must study the human cost of social media to improve how it is we adopt and employ it in life, study, and work.

via briansolis.com

About the human cost tied to social networking: "The reality is that the cost of social networking is great and without checks and balances, engagement can cost us more capital than we have to spend"

Is the new "tree of knowledge" is network?

Posted via email from Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments