Finding a space to create, critique, and care

I've been spending a lot of time recently reevaluating my virtual space, online identity, and general approach as to how I can open up my own teaching and learning.  For example, I've decided to connect a lot of what I've done in the past and what I plan to do in the future to a Udemy course dedicated to anyone interested in teaching English to students of other languages (TESOL).

What drew me to Udemy is its ease of getting a course up and running and its networking concept.  Other sites tend to focus more on the content or the live sessions as separate components whereas Udemy focuses more on the instructor (i.e., teacher, educator, trainer, coach, etc.) and the course itself.  Instructors can bring in live sessions and content directly to the course, rearranging the content if the learning progression is of importance.  And through livestream, Udemy live sessions can be recorded and uploaded so that the recordings themselves become additional content as well.  Essentially, any document, audio, or video file can be uploaded to Udemy including content that is embedded from virtually any other site.  This is what sets Udemy apart from the others: content can be either brought into a course directly or it can just as easily be linked to other sites such as YouTube, BlipTV, among others.

Along with Udemy, I am also investing more time into a complementary wiki.  The wiki provides the means for greater interaction between educators interested in TESOL since all content (shared in both the wiki as well as the Udemy course) can be reused, revised, remixed, and/or redistributed as long as attribution is given and its use is noncommercial (i.e., Creative Commons, attribution-noncommercial-sharealike 3.0 unported license).  The goal in connecting technologies in this way is to grow connections between educators interested in TESOL in ways that foster creativity, criticality, and caring.

If you are interested in the ongoing live events that are a part of this open and ongoing course, check the schedule and add your comments and suggestions as to how you'd like to participate and what should be included.

Happy holidays!