Change Your Thoughts, Change Your World

This week marks the end of eLearning and Digital Cultures.

In order to receive a Certificate of Completion, a digital artifact is required for submission for peer review.

To express ourselves well on the web, we need to be able to communicate in ways that are “born digital” – that work with, not against, the possibilities of the medium. This can be challenging when what we want to communicate is complex, especially for those who are used to more traditional forms of academic writing.

Complex…!  That is an understatement.  There were so many ideas floating around in my head that I hardly knew where to start.  Being digital, I refrained from the text-based outline and used EverNote Clipper to storyboard my ideas.  After looking at quite a few presentation tools, what became evident was the need to create a video, in order to bring the ideas to life.  I kept  getting stuck between “What does it mean to learn” and “How does our culture affect our learning.”  To the curious onlooker, it may not seem like a difficult task to bring the two ideas together, but I was stuck — until, being a former History Teacher — I used a linear construct to illustrate my ideas.  In fact the blending of the above two ideas is a more personal one, because I built upon my preexisting knowledge and using the tools of a digital culture — hopefully — expressed how a digital culture affected my own learning.

For the past week,  numerous posts from  EDCMOOC participants of their artifacts has been flooding Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.  Have peer review prior to submission of my artifact was critical in synthesizing my ideas based on the feedback I received, and made for a substantially better final product.

It is bittersweet to complete this final project as it means the EDCMOOC is coming to an end.  I am participating in a MOOC for the very first time, and delighted to have picked such an inspiring one to start.  I am currently looking for my next MOOC.

This video was created as my final artifact for eLearning and Digital Cultures MOOC 2013.  Enjoy!