{"id":587,"date":"2015-01-09T18:54:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T18:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/?p=587"},"modified":"2015-01-14T21:02:23","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T21:02:23","slug":"ambition-distraction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/2015\/01\/09\/ambition-distraction\/","title":{"rendered":"ambition, distraction and disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 263px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/9\/9a\/Alice_par_John_Tenniel_34.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"263\" height=\"315\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Tenniel`s original (1865) illustration for Lewis Carroll`s &#8220;Alice in Wonderland&#8221;. Alice sitting between Gryphon and Mock turtle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Today, braving hurricane winds and winter storms, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flnetwork.org\/\">FutureLearn Academic Network<\/a> gathered in Edinburgh to discuss the extent to which MOOCs are (still) disruptive and suggest new directions for the future.\u00a0 A number of very interesting sessions were spoken.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for me I was distracted early on by mention of &#8216;The MOOC Turtle<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/awwright1\/good-mooc-bad-mooc-2-the-return-of-the-mooc-turtle\">&#8216;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>My concern stemmed partly from the fact that the <em>Mock<\/em> Turtle is a difficult, unhappy creature, being neither entirely one animal nor another; and partly from the fact that the speaker illustrated the phrase with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/awwright1\/good-mooc-bad-mooc-2-the-return-of-the-mooc-turtle\">picture of a tortoise<\/a>. What MOOCs have tort us is <em>an altogether<\/em> different research question.<\/p>\n<p>If one <em>were<\/em> using the Mock Turtle as the basis for a discussion about online courses the pickings would be rich*. As you know, the Mock Turtle was a lifelong learner, schooled in Reeling and Writhing, and the different branches of Arithmetic&#8211; Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision, and Mystery- ancient and modern, Laughing and Grief, Seaography, Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.\u00a0 Any of which could easily be new FutureLearn courses.<\/p>\n<p>And if one were looking for new delivery models, what better than ten hours the first day, nine the next, and so on?<\/p>\n<p>`That&#8217;s the reason they&#8217;re called lessons,&#8217; the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Learning analytics have nothing on this.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*Have i mentioned that I think the liberal arts are a good grounding for understanding technology?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, braving hurricane winds and winter storms, the FutureLearn Academic Network gathered in Edinburgh to discuss the extent to which MOOCs are (still) disruptive and suggest new directions for the future.\u00a0 A number of very interesting sessions were spoken. Unfortunately for me I was distracted early on by mention of &#8216;The MOOC Turtle&#8216;. My concern &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,34],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-teaching-and-web-services","tag-go-ask-alice","tag-moocs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}