Teaching a MOOC

I've been thinking about you all and about the many posts in my head that don't quite make it onto the computer. A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through a relatively empty airport in Texas around 11PM, listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Slate's Culture Gabfest, when a poetry professor came on and started talking about his love affair with teaching a MOOC (massive open online class).  

He started out expressing his complete disdain for anything that would put any distance between he and his students and teaching online was clearly in that camp. Then, by some miracle, he started working with some technologists that he respected and before he knew it, he was teaching poetry to 10,000 people and it totally changed the way he thought about teaching. Very compelling listening - I recommend it to you.

On the MOOC note, I should say that this week, Canvas announced its new Canvas Network that will make MOOCs more possible for smaller colleges like Seattle Central. Indeed, we are one of the Canvas Network pilot colleges and will be sharing our US History II as a free self paced course.

Resources

• Slate's Culture Gabfest -http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/culturegabfest.html
• The Culture Gabfest You Big MOOC edition - start listening around 21:25 to jump right to the MOOC conversation.
• Canvas Network -https://www.canvas.net/ 
• Splash page for US History II on the Canvas Network -