The year of no s**t Sherlock

With apologies for the potty mouth title. If you want a really good review of the year from an ed tech perspective then I suggest reading Audrey Watters' series of posts. One thing that I found myself doing repeatedly this year was staring open-mouthed at my screen as I read yet another 'discovery' or 'innovation' from US based silicon valley start-ups relating to education. It seems that if you want to be noticed then having no shame in pretending you have invented something is a real advantage. And journalists really do love a 'new and shiny' story. Here are some of my faves:

The SPOC – don't want your MOOC to be massive and open, then try a Small Private one. Or as we've called them for the past 15 years "an online course".

Hybrid Pedagogy – Clayton Christensen discovered “a fundamentally new concept [in] the world of disruptive innovation.” Or as we call it "blended learning"

MOOC based learning and innovation on campus – Coursera announced that it was working with universities to deliver MOOCs on campus. Or as we call it "elearning".

Micro-MOOCs – a micro-MOOC is either a platform to host video and content (or as we call it "the web") or "short e-courses" (or as we call them "OERs")

Creating quality courses is hard and expensive – who knew?

Retention with open access is difficult – again, why did no-one tell them this?

Massive open online content – again, as we call them "OERs"

I hope next year isn't as dumb.

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