Trends of 2012

Trends for 2012 was highlighted both by Hack Education and Tony Bates as below. Most of them have really been a hype as for example MOOC and the flipped classroom


Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012 Hack Education by Audrey Watters 
1. The Business of Ed-Tech
The most notable ed-tech trends was: iPads, Khan Academy, social media (the good and the bad), online learning, and MOOCs
2. The Maker Movement
Why Maker Faire? Why make? In his talk at Maker Faire this spring, Mythbusters' Adam Savage explains:


3. Learning to Code
Codecademy encouraged people to make this the year they learned to program. Sign up for an email newsletter, the startup said, and it would send you one a lesson from the Codeacademy site per week for the entire year
4. The Flipped Classroom

Flipping the classroom is hardly new. But with all the hype surrounding both Khan Academy and MOOCs, it’s hardly surprising that the practice became incredibly popular this year.

Indeed, in his 2011 TED Talk (which has been watched over 2 million times on YouTube), Salman Khan talked about the ways in which his videos are used by teachers to “flip the classroom. Flipping the classroom also became part of the argument that Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller makes about how massive open online classes or MOOCs ( another huge ed-tech trend of 2012) will change the offline university experience.

5. MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs. This was, without a doubt, the most important and talked-about trend in education technology this year. Audrey Watters describes a brief timeline of the what the New York Times has called “The Year of the MOOC”:

6. The Battle to Open Textbooks

As for the other trends as well textbooks and libraries goes open. Of course there are many reasons for that, costs, accessibility,  culture of sharing etc. Despite this movement there is the battle with publishers.

7. Education Data and Learning Analytics

Audrey Watters said already in 2011 that more and more of our activities involve computers and the Internet, whether it’s for work, for school, or for personal purposes. Thus, our interactions and transactions can be tracked. As we click, we leave behind a trail of data–something that’s been dubbed “data exhaust.” It’s information that’s ripe for mining and analysis, and thanks to new technology tools, we can do so in real time and at a massive, Web scale. There’s incredible potential for data analytics to impact education. The trends with edcuational data and learning analytics  were increased fro 2012 and will so do for 2013 as well.

8. The Platforming of Education
Platform use to be referred to everything from software to hardware, from applications to operating systems, from websites to the Web and the Internet itself. In tech-marketing-speak, “platform” is often meant to invoke greatness or aspirations thereof. 
9. Automation and Artificial Intelligence
 It was Thrun’s Artificial Intelligence class offered in the Fall of 2011 that’s often credited for the whole MOOC craze
10. The Politics of Ed-Tech 

Audrey Watters state that education is political. Education is political not simply because of the governmental role, but also  because of the connections between education and community. Education is political because learning is at once personal and social; it is both private and public. Of course, if education is political, then ed-tech must be as well. As such, the politics of ed-tech isn’t really a trend; it’s a truism.

Besides the top ten list Audrey Watters is aslo mentioned the student (youth) voice; #Occupy; BYOD (bring your own device); gaming; badges and credentials; the globalization of ed-tech; cheating; crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. 

Tony Bates predicted for 2012

1. The year of the tablet: 99% probability
2. Learning analytics: 90% probability
3. Growth of open education: 70% probability (depending on definition of open education)
4. Disruption of the LMS market: 60% probability
5. Integration of social media into formal learning: 66% probability
6. The digital university: 10% probability
7. Watch India
8. The great unknown: 10% probability

 He also refered to tehe blogpost by Watter and also stress that MOOC, tablets, lerning analytics and disruptive education  maybe are some of the most   important.