Photo credit: Todd Petrie via flickr (CC-BY-2.0)
Hi,
I’m Brett de Villiers. I’m signing up for the Open ds106 course, ignoring that little voice inside my head that says I have no time for this class.
As I started going through bootcamp (ahem, 2 weeks ago), I was unemployed and looking for work. In addition to sending off CV’s and cover letters to potential employers, I had also been looking for MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) to sharpen my marketing skills, and to make me a more interesting candidate. That’s when I stumbled upon ds106.
Let’s face it, while being out of work sucks, it has the upside of affording me loads of time to go through a class like ds106, while continuing to look for work.
But that’s all changed now.
After the 5th interview with one lucky company, I’m happy to say that I was selected for the job. I should start sometime in the first two weeks of April 2015.
But on the downside, I have a two-hour commute! I’ll be taking the train into to town, then the metro, followed by a short bus ride. With a wife and four chilluns waiting for me at home, I wonder if I’ll be forced to work on assigments on the train, because I honestly have no idea at this point how feasable it will be for me timewise to handle the assignments.
All I can say is that I’m extremely interested in learning and playing with the technology behind digital storytelling; interested enough to go ahead and sign up anyway.
I anticipate going through this class more slowly than many of you. Please bear with me!
Wanna be my advocate? All encouragement is welcome @brettdevil on twitter.
Devil May Care 
Glad to walk along your path. #ds106 as an open course is totally flexible. I signed up in January after thinking about it for more than a year. The traditional college cohort sections out of UMW run on a strict schedule and “students” are in a system that grants credits etc. They are also in a course that is trying to show them creation, connections, learning are 4 Life and not just about the checklists.
Independent learning at your own pace and also deciding what you need and what you don’t need to do in order to meaningful. Twitter helps – it allows you to see what others are doing and to take your learning where you want it to go and to get support and inspiration.
Another group is on Google+ – it will connect you to some more open course and 4 Life folks. You will also see that some continue to engage, but do not follow the units of the course or stay in one unit for months and take it beyond its limits.
The train might be a nice time to do some of the work and a way to find some way to make the time for “you” and not take away from kids and family.
Welcome! Looks like you are off to a good start.
4 Life – Kathy
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Thanks for your encouragement, Kathy. I discovered some of your blog posts last week. I’m mostly set up now, and am starting to tiptoe through the twitter tweets. Though, I haven’t connected to Google+, yet. I enjoy looking at what the students are doing, and am looking forward to rolling up my sleeves getting my hands dirty.
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