Stage of Orientation – #OPCO12

That was me at the very beginning of the course, not knowing where to start and where to go. Now a week later having received more information and participated in the first online event, I am a little bit wiser now and I starting to understand the bigger picture.

As a former student of the Open University (OU UK) finishing my MAODE (Master of Online and Distance Education) I am used to a central format, assessing my student page and finding all the necessary information there. The first couple days when the course started I was somehow lost and it took a while until I got a clue how this MOOC is supposed to work. Now a week later more information is available through the regular newsletters, the course blog provides as well more information and now I know, thanks to our first video conference  that I have to register my blog to receive my badge, but to connect with the other participants. Last week it was over 1000 participants, though ‘only’ around 180 participated on the first video conference. Yet, Twitter seems to be the main place of conversation. You can follow @opco12 or search for #opoc12.

However, one thing I already know for sure. The pace of this course is as fast or faster than my MAODE courses 😉 and I am already a little behind, haven’t read all my newsletter I received via mail, not to talk about all the information I missed in Twitter. But I am on it 🙂

This and the next week (23.04 – 04.05.2012) is about mobile apps. Not sure how much a can contribute to this topic, but considering how many students have and use mobile phones one could assume that mobile apps are already greatly used. Yet, I just recently had to do a little research for the VCRP (Virtueller Campus Rheinland Pfalz) to find out how frequently the 12 universities apply mobile learning. The result was quite sobering. The most popular mobile app was that of the canteen to find out about the menus of the day. Of course IT courses teach their students how to program apps, whereas apps for city maps including places of interest combined with history are pretty popular. Besides that mobile learning, contrary to what the Horizon Report predicts, is still in its infants and not really much used for higher education. Being a teacher in a vocational school and can confirm that we are years away from deploying mobile learning in the near future. We still have the policy that no mobiles are allowed during the lessons. So much to mobile apps 😦

However, looking back at the horizon reports starting from 2009 it is interesting that Mobiles or Mobile computing and this year Mobile apps are placed again on the first horizon.

• 2009 Mobiles (first horizon – a year or less)
• 2010 Mobile Computing (a year or less)
• 2011 Mobiles (a year or less)
• 2012 Mobile Apps and Tablet Computing (a year or less)

It will be definitely interesting to find out what mobile apps are used by others and in which context. Looking forward to learn more about that topic.