Well - after a frantic couple of months (parents ill, I moved house, waiting for exam results - passed my MEd - woo hoo!, job changes at work, piles of marking, swine flu, sick children etc etc etc)... I just thought I'd pop onto my blog to say 'hello' and to reflect, briefly, on this year's bits and bobs.
2009 Highlights
So... my highlights from this year:
1. Social networking makes your brain turn to mush
2. But it's okay... because just about everything else gives you cancer anyway
3. The VLE was dead
4. Then it wasn't
5. Twitter took over the world
6. While Google Wave-d
7. Microsoft Bing-ed... then got sued for binging and their Word was no longer law
8. And Facebook kept managing to annoy people for messing with layouts and privacy settings
9. But it still won the battle of the social networks
10. And Apps were 'it'
Reading stuff
Oh, and when time got tight and I was under pressure, I still found time to catch up with Steve Wheeler's excellent Learning with 'e's, John Connell and Martin Weller's ed tech goodness, Jane Knight's tool recommendations, Mashable's stream of social media goodness, educational goings on with The Guardian and ReadWriteWeb for their tech trend interpretations.
Tech stuff
I also still love Google Reader, Delicious , YouTube, Blogger, Google Docs, SlideShare and Twitter
... while Slideboom, WordPress, Plurk, ScreenToaster and Diigo have also emerged as useful tools during the past 12 months.
However, SecondLife I still don't get but nor do others, Google Notebook was quietly left to die,
Etherpad sparkled with usefulness then disappeared and Google Wave is very, very alpha and I'm waiting for the lightbulb moment with it.
And next year?
But... next year will be another year of ed tech loveliness, I'm sure. Funding crisis in HE or no, there's always interesting stuff happening and with luck... we'll find ways of making learning more interesting, relevant and (dare I say it?) engaging for everyone concerned.
