Learning has always been a passion of mine, even from a young age. I’m sure my mother will kill me for telling this story to the world, but when I was three years old I was kicked out of preschool for misbehaving. My mother had told the school
Learning can be stressful… Seriously!
numerous times that I was bored and to give me more work to occupy my time; however, the school was convinced that I was developmentally delayed (yes, I was acting out THAT BADLY), and they didn’t want to “put up” with me any longer. Well, the day after I was “expelled” from preschool, my mom took me to a gifted preschool for an entry assessment. I’m sure it goes without saying, but I was accepted into this new school and my behavior issues (mostly) disappeared. Just goes to show you what a little academia will do for a child, right?
Fast forward to 2012… When I heard about the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, I was beyond excited. I could study anything I wanted? With prestigious professors? From home? FOR FREE?! The idea was incredibly intriguing and I couldn’t wait to get started. But, as always, where to begin?
Serendipitously, right around the time I heard about MOOCs I began my position here at Infragistics and I had the opportunity to truly take advantage of some of the offerings I was so keen to delve into. To date, I have taken “Gamification” and “Designing Artifacts for Society” on Coursera and I’m currently deep in the trenches with “CS50x”, Harvard’s Introduction to Computer Science Class offered on the EdX platform. I earned the certificates in both Coursera classes, but I honestly can say that CS50x is taking the cake as far as difficulty level.
So to get to the point here… I feel like the MOOC universe has a lot of opponents as well as a lot of supporters. I’m not quite into pushing that angle, although I am definitely an advocate of the MOOC platform. My only goal here is to focus on sharing a selection of the “exciting” things I’ve learned and am learning in my courses. Stay tuned for my thrilling epiphanies!
Questions/Comments?
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