How to really get to know people in an online course?

Ask a child.

Tania Sheko @taniatorikova

What would a child do? A child would play.

And so we did in Rhizo15, the connected MOOC. It was new to me and I loved every minute.

I wanted to be playful so I wrote a play in response to the weekly prompt:

"Learning subjectives: designing for when you don't know where you're going."

I was unsure about how people would feel about the play - and if they would read it at all - so I was surprised when I received lots of positive comments.

Terry Elliott suggested we make it into a radio play. Simon Ensor added the comment: "I second Terry. I’m in for rhizoradio or other play. Do we have to do casting for the role of Mr X or do we crowdcast?"

I felt encouraged and sent out an invitation to a Google Doc so we could write the play collaboratively.

Hello there. My name is Tania Sheko. Thanks for responding so positively to this short piece of fiction/non-fiction. I’m taking up the suggestion to create something for #rhizoradio (suggested by Terry Elliott and seconded by Simon Ensor) and other suggestions to do a collaborative rewrite eg include a larger cast so we can actually (somehow) create a podcast for #rhizoradio (which is going to be a thing I think). Hope you can join me here!

Here’s the Google Doc; this is what it looked like - so many new ideas!

But how would we bring everyone together to produce the radio play/podcast?

Maha (from Cairo) was thinking about a live reading:It’s near impossible to organize across timezones but if you sleep really late and I wake really early we might catch the ppl in the US or the opposite, if u wake really early and I sleep really late we can make it at a good time for everyone. Usually around 10pm my time that’s 2pm EDT and I think early-ish morning for you?

This is how much people want to do it.

In the end we decided to record our own parts on SoundCloud and send the file to Kevin Hodgson who generously took the time to put it all together.

Other things also happened – you can’t keep up with the rhizome. Actually, so much happened while I was sleeping.

Photo by Moyan Brenn on Flickr

Ron recorded an introduction on Soundcloud.

Autumm Caines created a really neat video promo.

Autumm created the poster in Pulp-O-mizer

Kevin created a Thinglink

So the play is finally written by people from USA, France, Egypt, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Canada and Scotland. Collaborators:

Maha Bali (@Bali_Maha) Jaap Bosman (@JappSoft) Aras BOZKURT (@ARASBOZKURT)Angela Brown (@angela_brown)Autumm Caines (@autumm)Barry Dyck (@barry_dyck)Terry Elliott (@telliowkuwp)Simon Ensor (@sensor63)Keith Hamon (kwhamon)Kevin Hodgson (@dogtrax)Sarah Honeychurch (@NomadWarMachine)James Kerr (@kerr63)Yin Wah Kreher (@)yinbk)Laura Ritchie (@laura)_ritchie)Ronald Rudolf Tania Sheko (@taniatorikova)

And after all the fun together...

Have I continued to interact with these people?You bet I have

in further MOOCs, Twitter, Google +, Facebook groups, Slideshare, Scoop.it, Google Hangouts.

Wherever they are, I’m there too.

Who says you can’t form real relationships online.

Yes Tania we come together through by and with play and then it continues act after act.- Simon Ensor (today after reading my

post)

Friendships, collaborations and creativity across continents … the kernel of learning in engaging online spaces.Kevin

Friends take the time to make you stuff :) Thank you, Kevin.

Some great MOOCs:

Connected Courses #ccoursesRhizomatic Learning #Rhizo14/15/16?MOOC MOOCConnected Learning MOOC #CLMOOC