ETEC 522 – May 2012

The eLearning Coach: 2012 Trends

Summary:

Connie Malamed’s thoughts on the top emerging technologies of 2012 suggest several trends that she believes will become more prominent and more developed throughout the year.  Her suggestions range from backchannel tweeting at conferences to collaborating on the cloud, to support for HTML 5 over Flash and the expansion of blended learning.  Overall her ideas introduce possible areas of technology expansion while also presenting each area as a viable option for use today.

Analysis:

Usefulness & Future Plans

Malamed’s piece is useful in a broad sense as it provides a quite general overview, without becoming bogged down by technical detail that would confuse or discourage readers.  She speaks to several technologies that are already is use and, rather than suggesting the need for development of new options she, most often, explains the use of pre-existing technology.  For an entrepreneur this is disappointing as her focus is on which technologies are already becoming more successful.  At the same time, an eager entrepreneur could jump in with a technology that meets the needs of multiple areas, for example a game that uses HTML 5.

The suggestions within this review provide ideas that could motivate individuals to bring more technology into their own lives, while also potentially encouraging discussion and sharing of these ideas.  The brevity of the article does, however, leave readers needing to do further research before they are completely able to discern the potential of each option.  For some, the ideas she discusses are already familiar and though it may not lead them to new ventures, it may remind them of the potential in the things they have already started to work with, which could in turn lead to new uses or applications of the technology.  The list that Malamed has pulled together is also, most likely, diverse enough that each reader will find something that is new to them.  For example, though I have heard of conversations running during a conference (backchannel), I did not know that I could find examples from David Kelly. 

Lastly, in the future I would be curious to see how accurate Malamed’s predictions for growth or expansion of these technologies are.  There are several aspects that I am personally interested in applying to my work, so I can consider it from a personal perspective by suggesting that several areas are likely to increase in use, but it is more difficult to know what the ‘world at large’ will do with those ideas.  Although I cannot guarantee that I would seek out further information on every topic she covers, she has sparked my interest.  Her succinct thoughts and the clarity of her writing would likely draw me back to her site, whether for this topic or for another.  In other words, in the future I would be interested to read more of what she thinks worthwhile, regardless of whether the topics overlap or not.

Thoughts?

-Meggan