Time for Something New....

Growing up abroad my life changed drastically every 2 to 3 years. Major change was part of my life every few years. It would mean moving house, leaving friends, packing and starting all over again. In between these major moves there would be times of change too, when other families left and went back "home" or on to their next move. Life for me meant change and new things.

Now my life changes a lot less often. I have been living in the same town for quite some years now but there is still that yearning for change and for doing something new or learning something new. At the moment I am changing my day job, I will write more about that in another post. Due to the job change I have less time and energy to write on my blog. I hope I will be able to write more posts this month!

I have started doing something new and I wanted to share that with you. I am following my first MOOC! Have you heard of MOOCs or do you have experience with MOOCs? I would love to hear about it.

So what's a MOOC? Well a few months ago I had not heard of them. "A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students and professors". Wikipedia.

I am following a MOOC offered by edX.org. You can see which courses are offered by edX.org here. Interesting courses that are coming up are: Health and Society, Globilization's Winners and Losers: Challenges for Developed and Developing Countries, Solar Energy (by TU Delft, a Dutch University), and the Age of Globilization.

The MOOC I am following is Human Health and Global Environmental Change. It is taught by lecturers from the Harvard School of Public Health and I am very enthusiast about the course. Maybe I will write more about it at a later stage. The great thing is that you can watch the lectures whenever it is convenient for you. You can try to get the certificate but you do not have to.

I am still hoping to find a MOOC on third culture kids. If you come across one please let me know!

I think that MOOCs are great possibilities for global learning. All you need is:

1. A desire to learn
2. Find a topic that interests you
3. Have a computer and an internet connection
4. Find some time to watch the lectures and answer the questions etc. You can watch it in your own time zone, wherever you are on the globe.

So whether you live in Andorra or Zimbabwe there are new learning possibilities for you. Even for expats wherever you live these are new interesting opportunities. I mentioned edX but there are two other websites that offer MOOC's: Coursera and Udacity. Coursera has about 3,5 million students registered who are taking courses. More recently OpenupEd has been launched, it is a European initiative supported by the European Commission. There are about 40 courses available in 12 different languages.

Related posts:

• More information on MOOC's (USNews.com/education) 
• Bumpy Start For Pan European MOOCs (Scienceguide.nl) 
• Bilingualism and Growing up Abroad
• Nieuwe Dingen Doen
• Third Culture Kids Learning Their Mother Tongue