The first thing I learned was that I wasn’t the only person spending an inordinate amount of time online. My google+ survey revealed that the majority of the cohort was spending upwards of 20 hours per week online. Unfortunately, I don't know how much more as I resisted the urge to break the survey results into 10 hour intervals (thus I learned that surveys are like trivia- you should always go with your first instinct).
Despite spending all this time online, numerous members of the cohort admitted that they were having difficulty staying on top of the material- See Jane Sutton's excellent Blog post "You Did Bury my Gem, But I Don't Mind" or Kim's C's musings about the challenges of becoming digitally literate in "We are literate, right?" Reading through her post was reassuring because at least I know I am not alone in having difficulty to “manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information.”
The good news is several members of the cohort have shared tools to help with this common problem. Carol Bob has tackled this issue head on in her post "Overwhelmness -> Curation" and I found her video regarding PLN's similarly helpful- "Take what you want, offer what you want, when you want, where you want" (once you finish your Master's of course :)
The other topic I wanted to address was what I thought of as the elephant in the room. What are the dangers of sharing? I don't believe in being contrary just for the sake of being contrary, but for the past 4 weeks I have been eating a steady diet of OER's, Copyleft and "Sharing is Good". The arguments for sharing and open licencing are many and persuasive, but as a number of the cohort pointed out there is also a downside. Chris Brandle's "Sharing vs. Competitive Advantage" acknowledged that through sharing his knowledge with his peers he could very well be signing his own walking papers.Then there is the less dire consequences: Is there anyone who hasn't shared a beloved lesson with their peers only to have students the following year complain "we ALREADY did this in Ms. Doe's Class!" That's a favourite activity ruined, D'oh!
This was discussed by George Knight in his blog post, "Sharing: What You Do With the Other Kid's Toys" while he concedes the central premise of open resource movement is sound, that through sharing resources we ultimately all benefit, he points out that in the real world nothing is free. Whatever arguments you can make it support of the benefits of shared learning must apply ten fold to medical research and development, but I don't believe for a moment that drug companies are going to turn over their research to "serve the common good". Similarly, schools around the world would benefit from access to more affordable technology, but neither Apple nor Microsoft are about to start selling their tablets at cost because it is "the right thing to do".
In all likelihood both the scientists inventing new medicines and the engineers developing new tablets gained the bulk of their knowledge from the work of others who came before them and they have used this knowledge to better their position. Are they being selfish? I think not. For better or for worse- largely for worse I would say- our society pivots on the fulcrum of (somewhat) rational self interest. You acquire knowledge and skills then use these to make money.
Somehow I don't think this is true for teachers however (maybe I am naive?) Even teachers say teaching is "a calling" and treat financial compensation as if it were a tawdry afterthought, ancillary to our greater quest to bring enlightenment to all. The harder we work, the more we give of ourselves, the greater our commitment to our quest: enlightenment for all. I think most teachers would admit their is a hint of martyrdom in our staff-rooms- sometimes more than a hint, but I don't suggest that this is necessarily a bad thing. Teachers should be moral leaders and leadership always requires sacrifice.
At any rate, this blog post has gone off the rails a little bit, but to conclude- it was a very worthwhile week of review and I am looking forward to investigating some of the curation tools suggested by my cohort colleagues in my final week.