I have finally done it! I have joined my first ever MOOC and so far the experience has been amazing. The only thing that will get in the way is ‘time management’ but I have a plan.

I started off well with this intro that I posted on the ETMOOC Community:

“Hi everyone!
I’m Tina from Adelaide in South Australia and I am really excited to be participating in my first MOOC. I am currently at Cowandilla primary school and will be teaching a Year 3/4 class when our new school year starts on January 29.In addition to classroom teaching I also have a specialist background in teaching Greek, ICT, ESL, Music, Drama and Dance, from Reception to Year 7 (K – 6).
I love social media and the beauty of connecting, online and face-to-face, with amazing people from all over the world.
I am looking forward to sharing and learning with you all.”

Since then I have participated in the Orientation online session using Blackboard Collaborate, which started to make my ETMOOC experience feel ‘real’. Seeing and hearing Alec Couros made the session more personal plus chatting with others on the side, participants and moderators, helped me to connect even further. Add to this the updates that I am receiving from other participants in the ETMOOC Community on Google+, I now feel like I am on my way with my ETMOOC learning adventure.

I just took part in my second ETMOOC online session “Connected Learning – Tools, Processes & Pedagogy” and even though it started at 4:30am my time, I am so motivated at the moment that I started this blog post. I am glad that I got up early for this session because it brought me back from the land of procrastination. I think this came to be because I was feeling a little overwhelmed with so much happening, both in my physical world and my online world. It was timely for me when I came across Sue Waters’ blog post ‘Work smarter and stay connected in a learning community’ I took her advice to help keep things manageable and I now feel less overwhelmed. I still have a way to go before I have it all organised to suit my needs but I am determined to work smarter in 2013.

Next on my list is my introductory video/presentation and that I will leave until later when I will be more refreshed.

Here’s to a great ETMOOC experience for all of us participating and if you aren’t participating, give it some thought because it is a great way to learn online.