Happy New Year 2014

Soon 2013 is coming to its end and soon we will write 2014!
What will 2014 bring to us, and what kind of questions will we deal with  concerning learning and educuation in 2014.

 With the wisdom of hindsight we all know that  2012 was the year of MOOCs. Many of us in the edcuational sector also learned that during 2013, something happened with the general awareness of the consequences of incraesed digitalization and learning online. Suddenly it wasn that suspicious to talk about e-elearning, flipped classroom, Open Edcuational Resources (OER), creative commons, MOOCs etc. Almost every international and, in some countries, also national, conference with self-respect had MOOCs and OER in their conference themes. Even many Universities in the world, so even in Sweden started to at least investigate the possibilities to offer MOOCs. In  Europe already376 are offered, and the European MOOCs Scoreboard was launched. Euroepe offer now almost half of the MOOCs offers from the states. Many promising blog posts, research, initiatives was also launched during  2013. Ine very good summary of teh MOOC development is the BIC Research Paper 130 The Maturing of MOOC. 

The European Commission launched also the intitiative on Opening up Education' to boost innovation and digital skills in schools and universities.
First it was of interest that they really emphasizes OPENNESS, with stating that "Opening up education means bringing the digital revolution into education. Digital technologies allow all individuals to learn, anywhere, anytime, through any device, with the support of anyone" Furthermore they stated some recommendations:

review their organisational strategies

exploit the potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

stimulate innovative learning practices such as blended learning

equip teachers with high digital competences

equip learners with digital skills

think about how to validate and recognise learner’s achievements in online education

make high quality Open Education Resources  (OER) visible and accessible

During the year OpenupEd by EADTU was launched, a uality label for MOOCs  and the promising MOOC quality project by EFQUEL was carried out.

Learning Analytics have also been very much discussed during the year.

Even other abbreviatiosn as MOOC has been seen on the horizon , like just to mention some:

MOOCC, MOOPS, MOORC, mOOC, SOOC, BOOC, ROOC, DOOC. Although one of the hottest and latest is SPOCs

The 24 September 2013 Harward Univdersity launched their SPOCs

"Keep up, keep up. If you've only just caught on to the concept of online university courses called Moocs, then you're in danger of falling behind again.

Harvard, one of the world's most influential universities, is moving on to Spocs - which stands for small private online courses. Nothing to do with Star Trek and sombre Vulcans, but plenty to do with ambitions "to boldly go"."

So for 2014 I will like to see how we can learn from the hypes in 2012 and 2013 and really focus on RETHINKING education and its somewhat unfashion pedagagy, infrastructure, linear learning offers and to really keep up with all possibilities the digital evolution has brought to us. Society is today rather far ahead, thanks to teh digital agenda. Let us bring the digital agenda into education as well. Let us discuss and think learning instead of technology and tools. Let us try to bring a more rhizomatic perspective and  approach to learning

Let us for 2014 work on  the consistencies of all those open initiatives!
All of us can do something to make a difference for 2014!
At least this will be mine promise for the new year to come
What is yours?