This is year SIX of the fantastic awesomeness of random end of yearishness that is the Top Ten Edu News events of the year. First… a Quick review of the five years that have passed…
# Top 10 of 2009. I like the winner. the Zephoria incident. “will you knock down the tower”?
# Best of 2008… the end of ‘the killer app’. and the ‘end’ of blogging.
# best of 2007? well… tough to ignore twitter going crazy. But i love the Tom Wood story.
# Top ten of 2006? oh Ted Stevens. We’ll always wonder if that dumptruck of internets arrived to your office.
# My top ten edublog news events of 2005. Winner? browser based app. fav? 100 laptop doesn’t exist.
And now, what I’ve been waiting for, the top 10 of two thousand 10
Number 10
Free is dead
We rang in the early part of the year to news that Ning was going to force people to pay for the fine work they were doing and then the year was going out with delicious maybe going into a ‘sunset’. We’re all coming to terms with the fact that people need to be payed for the work that they do.
Number 9
Wikileaks
Leaks that were a flood to a website that wasn’t really a wiki. An international manhunt and
a new flag to fly up the ‘internet is dangerous’ flagpole. If there was a story this year that threatens open access to education, this is the one. All that and not for many surprises, rich people in the Caucasus throw big parties and some people in government are kind of annoying. Open still good… but probably going to get harder.
Number 8
Pads
Ipads, blackpads and android oh my! (android understanding table) I know i’m a convert, and any of the rest of you caught with any so retro as a ‘laptop’, had better be making a fashion statement.
Number 7
Angry birds bringing the tetris
Angry birds got the mobile devices into the hands of the people this year. All those people claiming to be working when they flipped their iphones over in the meeting room you were in? They were smashing blocks and trying to get their eggs back. But it brought the mobile device, and the obsessive use of it needed to get it into the mainstream out to people. Like tetris and the home computer, angry birds may be the secret weapon that made the mobile computer mainstream.
Number 6
switching to google
The university of Alberta wants you to know that lots of people love the switch to googledocs. (i do too)
As we all move inexorably towards our google overlords its our email that is now moving under its inevitable sway.
Number 5
Old Spice
A marketing campaign that targets the guy who runs the moodle installation in your university. (yup, they responded to a tweet from @kvillard who work at my uni) How does this change the way that kids need to be prepared…? Now there’s a 21st century skill. (How it was done)
Number 4
Pearson to get accreditation and private online schools
So, it seems that all kinds of people are talking about giving out degrees nowdays. I wonder if they’ll get a cut on their book prices?
Number 3
The end of research
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html?_r=1
It seems that we have lost interest in the word ‘fly’ since we starting being able to do it. It also seems that the words ‘love’ and ‘art’ dip in their use during the first and second world wars. In their ongoing attempt to take EVERYONE’s job, the job of the fearless data researcher is quickly going out the door… slackers like me can now wax philosophical over ideas that we came up with over a pint and ‘researched’ in 10 seconds. Haha.
Number 2
Cable Green, director of elearning and open education for the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges rocks.
A real, honest to goodness, open textbook model
Number 1
Netflix. Yes. Netflix.
We’ve seen piles of amazing video this year, and the Ted talks have taken over many a discussion table, and not just those deemed cool enough to be able to attend. In netflix we have a potentially sustainable model for learning video, that could easily replace all those rabid intellectuals who believe that CONTENT is what they’re selling. If learning is about content, then video is the way to put it together, and netflix is the way to sell it. It’s not the education system i want. But at least it would work.
UPDATE Number 1a
Student fees
Two years ago i first heard someone tell me higher ed student fees would triple on a fifteen year horizon. Two years later, the kids are in the streets in the UK. Is it a right? Is it a privilege? Even Churchill thought it was crazy to shut down the liberal arts schools during WWII. If anything is going to break the stranglehold of the ‘degree’ over society, it’s making it impossible to pay for (if it isn’t already). (via doug belshaw snarking me about US centrism in the comments)
