MOOCs - Worldwide Learning - Starting Monday

I've posted numerous articles about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in the past year or so. These are on-line, no-cost, events that connect thousands of people from many parts of the world with ideas of people also from around the world. These are part of a larger category of articles under the heading of LEARNING and NETWORK BUILDING.

Starting Monday, January 13 I'm going to be trying to participate in three different MOOCS. These are

Education Technology and Media which you can read about here.

I'll also be participating for the second week in the international JellyWeek event, organized by friends on Facebook and connecting more than 200 groups around the world. While I'll be interacting on-line and on Twitter, I'll also try to attend events hosted by The CO-OP, here in Chicago.

Finally, I'll also plan to connect with my Webheads friends in the EVO (Electronic Village Online) event. You can see the schedule here. One event that I'm definitely going to try to take part in is the Sun, Jan 20, 2013 - 14:00 GMT event where Dave Cormier discusses cMOOC and MultiMOOC, connectivism, and openness in learning.

One of my long-term goals is to connect leaders, volunteers, youth and supporters of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, along with people focused on violence prevention, public health, workforce development, education, diversity, etc. in a year-round schedule of MOOCs that not only share ideas, but lead to actions that increase and distributed resources needed in every high poverty neighborhood in order for constantly improving mentor-rich organizations to exist.

Since January is National Mentoring Month and I'm participating in the National Mentoring Summit on January 24 and 25, this would be a good time for mentoring leaders to connect and begin thinking of ways to use MOOCs to build participation, collaboration and capacity. For the next two weeks you can connect with me and other mentoring leaders on Twitter using #NationalMentoringMonth

I'd particularly like to find partners and sponsors to build an on-line MOOCS in the May-June, Aug-Sept and Nov-Dec time frames which are time frames when I host conference in Chicago and support Back-to-School Volunteer Recruitment efforts in the fall.

My Twitter handle is @tutormentorteam so I hope that during the coming weeks I'll connect with many of you and your own networks as you join in these MOOCs.