Phew! I wrote ten of these suckers. Here's the list of all the trends I've chosen to highlight from the year, along with a short list of what's missing. Some of what's missing is simply because these trends aren't really fully fleshed out yet. Some of them are missing because -- sadly -- a lot of developments in ed-tech bypass these issues. (Or maybe the journalists writing up lists do...) [...]

Hooray! I finally made it to the end of this massive open online series. The final Top Ed-Tech Trend of 2012 is “the politics of ed-tech,” chosen because it was an election year, the year that the Internet defeated SOPA, and the year of the MOOC. It is hard, I should note, to extract the politics of ed-tech from the politics of education or of tech. And I do have to wonder how much longer something like "ed-tech" will even be a useful category -- politically or otherwise. [...]

Here’s the second-to-last post in my Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012, and indulge me on this one, dear readers. The trend is “robots” — or more eloquently as I’ve written the headline: automation and artificial intelligence. I find it super-interesting that the three major xMOOCs all come from AI Labs (Coursera and Udacity from Stanford’s and edX from MIT’s). What should we make of the push for AI and automation in education? What do we gain and what do we lose here? [...]

Post number 8 — we’re getting to the end of my year-end series, folks. This one looks at education platforms. Or rather, I’m phrasing this as “the platforming of education” — I want to highlight this as a process and not just as a product (although certainly that’s the direction that platforming takes education). How are major education/technology companies creating platforms? What are the implications — for schools, teachers, students? [...]

I wrote about “data” as one of the top trends of 2011, noting at the time that this often meant simply “quantitative data” — or more accurately even, standardized test results. There was certainly plenty of interest in (and handwringing about) testing this year, and perhaps the political and financial pressures from that continue to spur this trend. Certainly there were a number of ed-tech companies that offered data “solutions” and learning analytics. But who uses these tools? Who benefits? And who owns the data? [...]

Last year, I opted to write about the “Digital Library” in lieu of calling out digital textbooks as one of 2011’s biggest ed-tech trends. And honestly, it would be easy for me to make the same argument here again: despite all the hype about “revolutionizing” the textbook, students just don’t love them that much (digital or otherwise). But there were enough interesting developments around “open textbooks” this year to warrant this as a trend from 2012, although as I hope to demonstrate, “open” isn’t necessarily in that strong of a position here. [...]

MOOCs. If I had to list an ed-tech trend that was the most discussed, this is surely it. And while there’s still plenty to debate about the impact that MOOCs will have on higher education (as well as for K-12 and lifelong learners), this does feel like the most important trend of the year. Oh the irony, this post on MOOCs is pretty massive itself, and I don't feel like I've really covered all the news and analysis adequately. But as MOOCs are the topic I've blogged most about this year, I do feel like I've said more than enough already. [...]

Part 4 of my year-end posts about popular ed-tech trends in 2012. Of course, the “flipped classroom” is hardly new. The term can be traced at least as far back as 2010 (with Daniel Pink pointing to Karl Fisch and the “Fisch Flip”) and the idea of reversing instruction and changing how lecturing and homework works. But with all the hype about Khan Academy and MOOCs, the “flipped classroom” became a popular trend — another tool to “revolutionize education.” [...]

2012 was deemed Code Year in a move of marketing genius by the learn-to-program startup Codecademy. Code Year was a well-timed initiative tied to New Year’s resolutions: sign up for weekly emails from Codecademy and this year, learn to code. Like most New Year's resolutions, this probably didn't work out so well for everyone. But Codecademy was hardly alone in pushing for better coding skills and literacies this year. There were lots of learn-to-code startups -- launched and funded -- and lots of talk about whether or not programming and coding should join "reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic" as basic literacies that everyone should possess. [...]

Post number 2 in my series, this one looking at what is (mostly) a phenomenon that occurs outside of the traditional, formal academic setting. I think that's worth pausing and thinking about. What does it mean if schools are no longer the places where our children (any of us, really) can explore and play and make and build and love to learn? This post examines the Maker Faire, the controversy surrounding DARPA-funded makerspaces in schools, Kickstarter "maker" projects, and my very favorite, Caine's Arcade. [...]