Welcome to Make Cycle #2 in CLMOOC 2017! Feel free to plunge into this week’s activities, to continue on with Make Cycle #1, to combine them in some new way, or to do some other makes that suit you. There will be no new Make Cycle next week, so you’ll be able to overflow into that as well.

This week we’ll be looking at Connected Learning, as well as making and exchanging postcards.

At the core of CLMOOC has always been Connected Learning, but what is that really? It might surprise you to know that you don’t need a computer, phone, or online connection to engage in Connected Learning. All you need is 1) a passion to learn something; 2) a plan to make something that reflects – or extends – what you’ve learned; 3) some peers who will support each other in a shared enterprise; 4) a transparent and open web of resources you can draw from and share.

So Connected Learning could happen in a quilting circle. Or it could be a gardening cooperative. It could even be a group that sends each other postcards, like some of us do in CLMOOC.

Make with Me

For this Make Cycle, we are inviting you to think about postcards as a way to explore your own Connected Learning.

Last year, a group of us started a postcard group to exchange postcards with each other. Then we extended this into “data postcards.” This was based on the work of Dear Data, in which the authors chose a topic and collected detailed data about it over the course of a week and then explored, summarized, and visually represented their observations in a postcard.

This week, we’re going to use postcards to explore Connected Learning. There are all sorts of ways you can go about doing this, and the form and shape of your data (what it looks like) is completely up to you. Here at CLMOOC, we value flexibility and innovation, so feel free to do what works for you. Here are a few suggestions.

Pencil (quick n’ easy)

• Join our postcard group, and send one postcard to someone. It could be about Connected Learning, CLMOOC, or something else you’re excited about. Once you sign up, you’ll get an email that will give you access to everyone else’s addresses.
• Make a postcard that the recipient can color, continuing the work of Make Cycle 1.

Ink (a bit more detail)

• Make a data postcard about Connected Learning. We will be engaging in this topic throughout the month of August, with hopes of getting something in the mail by August 15th (more or less — again, no hard and fast boundaries).
  You might:
  • Track a week’s worth of Connected Learning. Where did the experiences happen and with whom? How do they show the learning and design principles of Connected Learning? Were they digital or analog?
  • Choose one (or more) of the learning and design principles of Connected Learning, and find examples of it/them in your week.
  • Look at your social media stats and think about what your social media interactions show about how you learn and what you make of it.
• Make a virtual postcard and add it to this set of Google Slides. You might:
  • Take a picture of somewhere you live or work, and turn it into a postcard.
  • Scan a postcard that somebody has sent to you, and tell us about it.
  • Take any of the ideas for the Connected Learning postcard and share them with us virtually.
• Add a new topic to our data postcard document for a future month. (We do this all year round!)

Paint (brushes out)

• Send some virtual postcards. Paperlesspost.com is one way to do it.
• Send a postcard to someone who isn’t in CLMOOC (and doesn’t know anything about it) and explain Connected Learning and why it might be exciting.

Outside the Lines (beyond postcards)

Of course, if you aren’t into postcards, there are other ways you might explore and think about Connected Learning:

• Are you part of a face-to-face community that supports each other in analog projects? This might be a knitting circle, a book group, a community garden, a food bank, a political action group– any other sort of community. Tell us about this group. How do you connect? In what ways do you support each other’s interests or projects? What do you learn about yourself in the process?
• Create a video about Connected Learning, and add it to our CLMOOC FlipGrid. You might also respond to someone else’s FlipGrid post.
• Make an infographic about Connected Learning.
• Write a blog post about Connected Learning. How does this approach differ from others? What is interesting about it?

Check Out These Resources

• More information on Connected Learning can be found here.
• Dear Data is an excellent book, and the accompanying web site might give you some ideas of creative ways to represent the data of your everyday interactions.
• We have curated our monthly data postcard themes to provide additional inspiration.
• If you are interested in having professionally printed custom postcards made, MOO is a cost effective way to produce one-off prints that look great.
• If you are interested in other postcard projects, you might check out Postcrossing or Liberate your Art. If you have other favorite postcard sites, share them with us!
• Don’t forget the badge for this Make Cycle and others!

Places to Share

• In Google Plus, you can join our CLMOOC Community;
• On Twitter, we encourage you to follow and use the #clmooc hashtag this summer;
• And/or post to the CLMOOC Facebook group.
• We also encourage you to share your work in the CLMOOC Make Bank.

Live Events

• Join our Make With Me live broadcast with chat on Tues., July 18 at 7p ET/4p PT/11pm UTC live streamed with a synchronous chat here at CLMOOC. This session will also be recorded so you can watch the archive later.
• We will again be hosting two Twitter chats for Make Cycle #2 — Thursday, July 20 at 1pm ET/10am PT/5pm UTC (focused on Connected Learning) AND at 7p ET/4p PT/11pm UTC (focused on postcards) with the #clmooc hashtag.
  

Need More Information?

• Check out our FAQ page
• Reach out to us with questions or suggestions in the CLMOOC Community or via #clmooc on Twitter.

Finally …

Please share your postcards or whatever you are working on this week on the platform(s) that suit you. We’re on G+, Twitter, Facebook, and FlipGrid.

And don’t forget you can keep working on coloring book pages or any other make that fits you.

We’ll see you online!

Kevin, Sarah, Karen L, and Karen F
CLMOOC Make Cycle 2 facilitators