LTMOOC starts today, where to blog it?

I had to miss the first hangout for the latest MOOC to get under way.  Here are some details on LTMOOC

Week 1 starts April 15

• Orientation (30 min) - You’ll be welcomed to the course (view live or recorded)

• EdLab Seminar (60 min) - You’ll learn about the Instreamia Platform and its methodology
• Instreamia Tutorial (30 min) - You’ll learn how to use Instreamia as a student
• Introduction Blog Entry (30 min) - You’ll get a chance to introduce yourself to the class
• First Hangout (30 min) - You’ll get a chance to meet others and discuss online learning

Week 2 starts April 22, through week 6, end of May

http://ltmooc.com/course-schedule/

This MOOC has a friendly flair to it.  It's one of those endeavors that's sure to inspire others to simply declare MOOCs on the theory that, 'hey, I can do this!'.  This one I think has about 400 subscribers, not a huge MOOC, off by a factor of 10 from a celebrity cMOOC and by another quantum from a robo-graded xMOOC.  The participants in this MOOC seem to be normal teachers, first-time MOOCers.  The conveners Ryan and Scott Rap are IT professionals with an interest in language learning and a start-up called Instreamedia to promote that effort, which we're sure to hear more about shortly.

This is my first post for the course, meant to be more an introduction than an analysis of this MOOC (more of that later).  But by way of introduction, there are some ways that whomever I cluster with in this MOOC and I and can converge.

Foremost, this MOOC is sure to converge with Learning2gether, the weekly seminar series I've been coordinating since 2010.  As the conveners find convenient times for hangouts in the middle of my night, I can cater to those who would be more active around noon GMT on a Sunday or Monday.  We announce our events here, http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#Nextupcomingevents, and I'm reconstructing the Posterous archives in Wordpress, http://learning2gether.net. I'll generate interest there and invite participants to join me in a session in a couple of weeks.

Apart from that, I am a teacher of EFL and long-time coordinator of Webheads, http://webheads.org. I have a number of other blogs, now being also resurrected in Wordpress.  One is at http://vanceposterous.wordpress.com/ and another at http://curiousvance.wordpress.com/, from a Posterous blog I call "Just Curious" (that name unfortunately not available at Wordpress).

The last post at that blog was one year ago on the occasion of Earth Day which falls on Monday April 22 this year.  In that post, http://curiousvance.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/learning2gether-with-earth-day/, I invited others to join me this year.  In fact, I just scheduled an event for it this Thu April 18 involving my students at work: http://earthbridges.wikispaces.com/Earthcast13+Schedule, where I'm trying to interest other teachers.  If any LTMOOCers are interested in joining in, all you need to do is sign up at Wordpress and enter your event at the wiki.

Incidentally, I was thinking to make my Tumblr blog my LTMOOC blog, but I don't see how to make comments to posts there ??!!!  Off to work now from Vance ... 

Meanwhile, Scott Rap explained about Tumblr: 

As for the tumblr blog, the interaction is somewhat cryptic... 

You have to 

1. Click into the blog-entry (not the blog homepage)
2. Click reblog in the top right. 
3. This posts the blog post to your blog
4. You can add a comment to the original poster
5. It shows up as an interaction on the original blog, and a blog post on your blog

I hope this helps those who'd like to interact with the tumblr bloggers!

And OK, I followed steps 1, 2, and 3, and I now have Scott's post in my Tumblr blog at http://vancestevens.tumblr.com/. Also, if you click on the title of Scott's post in my blog you are taken to his blog, which now shows that this post has a NOTE! Success, this note says that "vancestevens reblogged this from scottrapp." However, the process remains cryptic.  I don't see how to make a comment to Scott either on his post or on his post embedded in my blog.  

Playing around with it, unexpected results occurred.  As noted, I was trying to work out how to make some kind of comment on Scott's post, so I went into my dashboard and EDITED the post, I was able to add a reply but when I clicked SAVE nothing happened for a while.  It seemed to be prompting me for a URL, so I gave the URL to this blog post and saved that.  This made it so that when you clicked on Scott's blog post title in my Tumblr blog you didn't go to see what he had written, it brought you here instead.  So I went back to the dashboard and re-edited the link to return us to Scott's blog but when I saved that, all of his post disappeared from my blog along with my comments, apart from 3 words, which you can read as what I 'added' if you visit Scott's post from my Tumblr blog.  

So my first experience replying to a post in Tumblr blog has resulted in data loss and consumed much more time than if I simply left a comment in almost any other blog, which would put the comment below the post in the original blog and not alter the appearance of my blog.

However, I'm here to learn :-) Awaiting further explanation ...