Last year, I decided to step up my professional development and participate in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The National Geographic Society was offering a course through Coursera’s platform, and I jumped at the chance to participate. The course, Facilitating Learning through Outdoor Watershed education (FLOWe) was absolutely fantastic! Each week there were videos and reading from National Geographic’s Education website as well as videos of classroom teachers explaining how they were integrating Watershed Education. The entire course gave me a better understanding of Watersheds, the water cycle, and how to teach these in meaningful and engaging ways to students of all ages. I finished the course and was looking forward to finding another that seemed as interesting.
A year later, the course Tinkering Fundamentals: A Constructionist Approach to STEM Learning was recommended to me, offered by the fine folks at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. This course was different from my first MOOC in that there was a list of material and actual hands on activities each week. It was great to be able to test out the different tinkering techniques and compare notes with other participants in the discussion forums. Here is a link to my Tinkering Final submission , as well as some photos of the projects I did during the course!
I recently discovered at EdX and may test out that platform in the new year!
Have you ever taken a course with either of these platforms? Any courses you’d recommend?
Learn. Reflect. Blog.
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