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Hi I’m Linda Kropp and I teach accounting and Business at Modesto Junior College in
Modesto, California. I'm making this video on my iPhone as a summary of my first week’s
participation in the MOOC, Online Learning and Digital Cultures. First, I want to say
that when I signed up for this MOOC, I really expected something quite different. The term
digital cultures, to me, had a more “micro” definition. I thought we would be studying
digital culture or even community, which is probably what I was taking it to mean, as
it applied to an online course or even a MOOC, and the MOOC that we are in right now has
a lot of online community. There’s a lot of interaction between the students, there's
a lot of different ways that networking is occurring, there is a feeling of connectedness
and that’s kind of what I felt we would be studying and how it applied to a MOOC environment,
but I was wrong. This is a much more “macro” interpretation. We are talking about digital
culture as it applies to humanity as a whole. And this is very interesting to me. I have
never really studied this academically. It’s been around me my whole life, of course, but
I’ve never really looked at it from an academic perspective so I’m very excited by the contents
of this course and after studying this academically, how I can apply this on a more “micro”
level to my own online courses. So, this week, as a re-cap, what I have done
in the course, after reading all materials for the week, I have also reactivated my Twitter
account which hadn’t really been used for the last couple years. And I’ve Tweeted
more in the past week than I had in the last two to three years combined. I have updated
my little Gmail account to a Google plus account that I can attend Google circles; I have watched
(after the fact) a Google circle which I thoroughly enjoyed. In fact , watching that Google circle
and how the professors interacted with each other and gave their own perceptions of what's
been going on in the course this week and on the readings, helped me to understand exactly
what we were studying in this course and what we were after—and I really appreciated their
input. I have also started a blog—surprise to me!
I never thought I would be a blogger--never had that aspiration in life. I don’t even
consider myself a writer, really. I have written a lab manual for my financial accounting on
spreadsheet course but that's more of an applied lab manual. There’s not a lot of just-prose,
not a lot of just words. It's more application and explanation of how to do a problem and
so this concept of just academic writing isn’t something I have done a lot of. In fact, my
blog is probably not a typical blog because when I read others, many of them are “just
words” which is probably what a blog is supposed to be, and I find that I just can't
do that. I have to paste something into it like a video I found or a cartoon or something.
So my blogs tend to look a little bit more like a scrapbook than some other blogs that
I’ve seen. So my attempt at blogging is probably a little bit different than others,
but it’s me, and it’s what I want to take away from this class so my blog is more representative
of what I want to remember from this MOOC and what I’ve gotten out of this MOOC and
so I guess it’s a tool for me more than…I guess that’s what a blog should be! So,
anyway, the blog has been very interesting, too, and now I now basically how a blog works
which could be useful in the future. So I will be making this weekly video at the
end of each week, to just recap what I have learned and what I have done so far in the
week and so far I have really enjoyed the course I see no reason why won't be able to
complete this course. I saw statistics this week that were very discouraging. A very small
percentage of people who sign up for a course actually complete it. It was a math course
and out of 30,000 people who signed up, and 120 of those people completed. So we have
22,000 in this course and that would be maybe 90 people completing. So, I expect to be one
of the 90. We’ll see! Anyway, I hope to see you next week!