2014 in Learning Technologies to the Nth Degree

2014 was an interesting year for learning technologies.  I think it's funny when you look back at the predictions a year or two ago about what was predicted to be big... especially as some of those are still on the radar.  In fact when I wrote about the technological acceleration a couple of months back one of the ironies I didn't mention was that in the learning world we seem to follow that much slower and what is predicted to occur doesn't necessarily come that quickly.  In actual fact if you think about e-learning itself, how long was it 'the next big thing' before it finally hit?

I started the year out with an old favourite topic of mine around capability building and the need to spend the time to do more than just bring in technologies but to spend the time embedding and upskilling.  In fact later in the year I got annoyed with L&D people in general around this various topic and called out to Upskill L&D (I like it because it rhymes too:).

One of the trending topics though for me were around physics.  Well no, not really, they had physics type titles but really they were about analogies and their place in learning.  The most hit of these was the theory of relativity which even had our sales manager reading it (wow, well done Zack) and I followed that up with a quick dip into quantum physics too which looked at the effect of observation on outcomes.

Of course one of the big trends that has hung around for another year is the interest in MOOCs.  I put together a few posts on the emotive subject from MOOCs v eLearning to Stepping through the MOOC minefield (for beginners) and later in the year trying to work out the Essence of a MOOC.  All in all I concluded that MOOCs, not unlike elearning, were a mixed bag and the good ones at heart had some form of interaction (again, not too dissimilar from good elearning).

Of course one of the emergence from my side over the last 12 months has been some of my own crazy ideas added to the world of learning (and everything in general).  My ideas on the power of blurting were probably underpinned by one of my most controversial ideas that knowledge is overrated and the dangers involved in overprocessing.  Lots of this has been part of my own learning picked up through #lrnchat and #pkmchat and of course chatter with other peeps.

All in all I managed to put down 42 blogs this year on Learning Technologies - up 30% from 2013 and up close to 50% in readership.  Thanks for those that have spent any time to read it and I'll try and follow up next year with more of the same :)

Happy 2014 everyone and looking forward to 2015.