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It seems like a really good innovation.

I watched the intro video and the lesson one video about creating trails.

I would say it is more heavily an xMOOC with potential for cMOOC via the google community, but it doesn't seem like anything learned within the google community would instantly / organically influence or bring about changes to the front-end content. But the chance to share your own experience and findings, makes the course more fun and applicable to real-life.

The course is nicely structured so participants can have a sense of achievement at each level and they can work through at their own pace, which means they can put in as much or as little as they wish (or have time for).

Learners may feel motivated if they are working on a particular project. But if they are there just for interest (i.e. those who are not school teachers), then they may not be able to do the practical tasks and therefore feel less involved.

I have taken part it a MOOC and found that having completion % charts and being scored on my participation really motivated me.

I am not entirely sure what the learning outcomes or assessments were, I did not see them anywhere obvious.

~ Liane Robinson

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I agree with Victoria that the Technology Outdoors MOOC is aligned to the cMOOC approach and while there is lots of valuable information and activities the unidirectional nature and reliance on self-managed activity may prove difficult for some learners. Victoria's reflection that the content could have been less structured and accessible at any point corresponds with student feedback from an 'adaptive release' NILE structure I designed then received feedback from students that they would prefer to be able to access the materials how and when they wanted. This is to accommodate different learning styles and speed of completion. The digital Learning Across Boundaries I felt was a really good approach which I may re-adapt for teaching this year. I really liked the collage/drawing concept which was so simple yet effective and can be translated into some of my Media Production teaching & learning. The negative side to this blog approach involves too much engagement for the assessor as I experienced using NILE blog exercises and I may experiment with 'audiopods' (my term) to provide quick assessment feedback as a 'soundtrack' for developing individual/class-based learner experience. I am aware this facility already exists in NILE but I am keen to explore a more creative use of the approach where we create an ongoing interactive  'learner Module assessment and feed-forward soundscape or video-montage'

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I agree with Victoria that the Technology Outdoors MOOC is aligned to the cMOOC approach and while there is lots of valuable information and activities the unidirectional nature and reliance on self-managed activity may prove difficult for some learners. Victoria's reflection that the content could have been less structured and accessible at any point corresponds with student feedback from an 'adaptive release' NILE structure I designed then received feedback from students that they would prefer to be able to access the materials how and when they wanted. This is to accommodate different learning styles and speed of completion. The digital Learning Across Boundaries I felt was a really good approach which I may re-adapt for teaching this year. I really liked the collage/drawing concept which was so simple yet effective and can be translated into some of my Media Production teaching & learning. The negative side to this blog approach involves too much engagement for the assessor as I experienced using NILE blog exercises and I may experiment with 'audiopods' (my term) to provide quick assessment feedback as a 'soundtrack' for developing individual/class-based learner experience. I am aware this facility already exists in NILE but I am keen to explore a more creative use of the approach where we create an ongoing interactive  'learner Module assessment and feed-forward soundscape or video-montage'

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Conole's work in this area was very informative and these are just some thoughts and reflections from viewing the Materials. Roy
I just went back to complete one section and was totally frustrated by the design, the content was excellent but I would re-design a 'chaotic access' structure using wordpress instead (which I will).

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Welcome to our Technology Outdoors MOOC.

This is a free, interactive and participatory online course on how to make effective use of technologies to extend teaching and learning beyond the classroom walls.

To get started, please see the course content at the bottom of this page.

General Introduction

Course Overview

Technology Outdoors is a flexible online course that you can join in with at a pace and depth that suits you. We will suggest activities and ideas, and encourage you to try them within your teaching.

We would like you to leave each week with something new to try out in practice and we will encourage you to share your experiences and swap ideas on our weekly themes within our Google+ community.

Who is this course for?

Our course is aimed at primary and lower secondary teachers, however anyone with an interest in the field is very welcome. It is taught in English.

Overview of course structure:

The course is divided into four sections, each with a different theme and suggested activities:

Section 1: Creating Trails

Section 2: Art in the Environment

Section 3: Wild Writing

Section 4: Science Outdoors

Duration: Self-Paced. Workload: Approximately 2 hours per section.

Structure for each section:

We will begin each section by sharing resources and case studies with you from the Digital Learning Across Boundaries (DLaB) project run by a partnership of universities, schools and cultural institutions in Norway, England, Belgium and Denmark. We will suggest some activities that help you plan to put ideas into practice with your own learners.

One of the most exciting aspects of the course is the chance to share and reflect upon these co-created resources with our community of fellow practitioners. Real life examples, photos, videos and comments within the community will give the course a truly practical focus. The community will also give you a chance to make some international connections and set up some collaborations of your own. You can join the community now and introduce yourself.

You can also follow us on Twitter on @DLAB_Erasmus and use the hashtag #DLABErasmus to see what others are posting.

What this course will give you:

The idea is to take a few risks, try some new things, share our developing practice in teaching with technology outdoors and learn together as we go.

We hope that our course will inspire you to explore strategies to integrate technology into learning beyond the classroom by offering guidance on:

how to use technologies to devise authentic and meaningful outdoor learning activities

how to embed technology use in genuine curriculum contexts

how to use technologies to enhance learners' exploration of the physical world

Succeeding in a MOOC

You may wish to watch the below 4 minute video that describes five steps that will help you succeed in a MOOC.

Show us where you're from!

Can we encourage you to add your location to our Zeemap as it is really interesting to see where everyone comes from: http://j.mp/2qiuSNA

You need to go to 'Additions' and 'Add marker'.

To get started on the MOOC:

1. Log in (or sign up for FREE if you have not already done so). Please note: you can tell if you're already logged in if you can see your login details in the top right within the black bar.

2. Once you are logged in , then Click on Week 1: below to get started.

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Technology Outdoors is Year 1 of the Digital Learning Across Boundaries project Welcome to our Technology Outdoors MOOC. This is a free, interactive and participatory online course on how to make effective use of technologies to extend teaching and learning beyond the classroom walls.

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First up the actual course content looks impressive, lots of great activities for the children to participate with out of the classroom and also a great use of multimedia to share it all with others.
But from what I can see this course doesn't quite fit into either MOOC camp. The course gives lots of ideas for lesson activities that can be adapted so its not an exercise in duplicating knowledge as in an xMOOC but  cMOOC's are meant to have limited structure and synchronous sessions and the course is very structured, the students have to do each unit in order and you can't even look at the other sections until you have done the first one which got my back up straight away so it is not synchronous either.
Also as Roy pointed out all learners will complete these courses at different rates so while they are able to 'share' at the end of each section (the course assumes students will be there at that point at the same time, possible if there are enough people doing the course) there may not be anybody to share with as they could all be on another section, if you don't think someone will read your posts it's not going to make you feel part of a network of learning.

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I would describe the TechnologyOutdoors online course as aspiring to be a cMOOC by empowering learners to create networks for discussion it also requires participants to be self- motivated and able to manage their time through the workload process.  However learners appear to be restricted by the format of following one lesson at a time and not being able to choose the order of the lessons or to look at the materials within each topic is more reflective of xMOOC.  For example Wild Writing was more appealing to me than Creating Trails but the message ‘Please go back and complete the previous lesson’ felt too prescriptive for an open learning course and being able view posts about Wild Writing but not be able to access the materials reinforced my frustration. The use of the term lesson rather than session, unit, element had school education overtones but the choice of the word may have been used as the most universally appropriate term for the range of learners.

As a potential host the main challenge is one of engaging learner throughout the course ensuring that blogs are responded to and that all learners feel that their contributions are valued and in this course the facilitators as well as other learners reply to posts.