"About"...Learning on the Road!



Welcome to "Moociens, welcome to "Courserians", welcome to "Tedsters" and "Big-Thinkers", welcome to "Wikipedians", welcome to life learners, welcome to all web surfers!

Hope this blog will help you in your learning or inspire you to join in and share the learning experience.
I am addicted to Coursera which offers MOOC: Massive Open Online Courses. I wanted to leave a trace of my learning on the web by adding a very personal touch to my blog because my intention was not to copy the content of  courses to respect the agreement I signed with Coursera. So, please sign up for the courses you like, you will not regret it! On this site you will discover a bit of each class I had an experience with and learn more about Coursera in general. Do not hesitate to come back regularly to check the blog. I will keep on reviewing and enriching the pages and I will create new ones.

Interconnecting with the rest of the world...


Kids walking on the dust road in front of the house.

I am French. I Left France in 2001. I traveled a lot, was so far a resident of 7 countries spread out on 4 continents. Now, I live in Southern Thailand with my family in an eccentric house in the heart of the Island of Koh Samui. Electric cables reach my house hanging from coconut trees.
Being linked to the internet in a remote place, in a foreign country was for me highly important!

       internet topology

Image credit: the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite
Internet topology (connections of all the sub-networks in the world) Credit: Bill Cheswick, Lumeta Corp.

 You can see on this picture electrical cables attached to the coconut trees.
About ten poles had to be installed for us to be linked to the internet. I had to cancel my enrollment in a course on astronomy because the work took many days to start and to be finished. Instead, I gazed at the night sky... The sky here is very clear because there is no air pollution and not much light pollution either (some nights, I can see no light from human source at all from my house).


I needed to be link with the rest of the world in another way than experiencing only the ocean feeling arising when meditating or looking at a beautiful landscape. This is the view I have from the living room.




I like surfing on the web while listening to the wind blowing in the surrounding trees.
After watching "Robin Wood" in technicolor for my cinema class, I took a break: I went down to the garden and I observed a monkey picking coconuts for his owner. The monkey was very agile when climbing up the trees, selecting ripe coconuts and making them turn in his hand to pick them.

I also love studying in the night when the air is not so hot... I can hear lots of sounds coming from the forest. Sounds vary depending on the season and on the time...
One of the loudest sounds come from tockeys, those huge Thai geckos (about 30-40 cm long)... They make a soft sound and then they loudly go: "Geeeey-Koooo!"


Here is a tockay next to a regular gecko (on the other side of the window). This tockay's territory is around my terrace. So I get to see him very often. Tockays like it when I put the lights on in the night because it helps them hunt. I often see them devouring insects. Another tockey I like hunts near my computer room and I can see him peeking on the other side of my window. 

But... Hey! Let's come back to our subject!

Crossing Disciplines

A wide choice of courses are now available online. And it is always amazing to witness how some courses, very different from one another were using the same references to develop ideas. Yes, you can specialize in one field, but do not hesitate to pick up subject from several distinct areas to get a better perspective on your favorite topics!! Make it a holistic approach!

Moocs and the future of online learning:

  Do you know what a MOOC is?


I discovered Coursera in particular while watching Ted Talks
Daphne Koller, What we are learning from online education, TED Talk


Coursera courses are free, except if you want a signature track on your certificate.
I went browsing and found a course I thought would be excellent to try out the concept:
« Design and Artifact in Society » by Wharton, branch of the University of Pennsylvania.
I enjoyed looking at all of the videos by Karl T. Ulrich and I got my certificate. I had interesting discussions with students from all over the world.
I also successfully finished the course « The Language of Hollywood, storytelling, sound and color » by University of Wesleyan.
I just handed in my assignment on Kant and Marx for the course « The Modern and the Postmodern » by the university of Wesleyan.
I have just got the results of my first quiz for the course « Know Thy Self ».
Free education on internet will have an immense effect on the future on a planetary scale. Some kids living in slums in India benefit from a similar system. Sugata Mitra's project is highly inspiring...



Sugara Mitra, Build a School in the Clouds, TED talks

Also, thanks to technologies like the Sixth Sense invented by Pravna Mistry, our kids future is full of promises:



I hope my blog will awaken your curiosity about MOOCs, or will help your in a course, or will make you want to share your own experience on this blog...
Many different courses are available. I am taking some that seem at first to have nothing to do with one another. But, some courses overlap in sometimes quite surprising ways!
Coursera is not the only MOOC. Here is a list of MOOC which may interest you: MOOC list 

Coursera has been the perfect platform for me! Here is why...

We have been always, always, always on the move!!! 
We have been moving from one place to another so, soooo many times in 12 years!!

Embarking one more time

Packing again

Full moon from the ferry boat

And we experienced great challenges during this past year. I felt all I could really do was serving close ones and making sure of maintaining a sense of security in the family. 

Coursera was the perfect flexible platform adapted to my lifestyle. Studying on that platform has been a great way of giving myself a special treat... 

2012-2013... Places I have not just visited, but actually lived in during that time:

1. Suzhou, China

2. Chiang Mai, Thailand 

3. Singapore

4. Hua Hin, Thailand

5. Koh Samui Thailand
6. Penang, Malaysia... 

In this blog you will find info about some Coursera courses I took. You will find some useful tips. I also want to show how courses interconnect and how life is often interwoven with online experiences. Hope you will enjoy it. Do not hesitate to send your comments on this blog! Looking forward to reading you!


Have you enjoyed this post? Would you like to add a link to your own blog? Do you have a suggestion to make to enhance this blog? I would love to hear your voice! Please, do not hesitate to add comments!

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