My review of 2008: Part II

For the second part of my review of 2008, here is an overview of my personal year - with some added comments about what's coming up in 2009.  In addition to writing daily posts here at this blog and working on consultancy projects for clients, I did a few other things ...

	E-Learning predictions 2008 started with the usual requests for predictions for the year.   kineo asked me and a number of people for their thoughts, as did Lisa Neal, which she published, in eLearn magazine. I've just been asked for some predictions for 2009, so it was interesting to go back and review what I said will happen this year - some I got right.  Let's see if I am as successful this time.
	Top 100 Tools for Learning In late January I presented the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2007 list at the Learning Technologies conference. although by then I had in fact already opened up entries for the Top 10 Tools for Learning 2008.  In April I produced the Spring 2008 List based on 155 contrbutions.  I re-opened the list during the summer and by the end of October,  223 learning professionals from around the world had contributed their Top 10 Tools for Learning.  I finalised the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 list in early November and created a slideshare of the results which I put on Slideshare. This has now been viewed over 18,500 times.  I also categorised the Top 100 tools in, what I called, the Toolset for Learning 2009. In March/April 2009 I will open for entries for your Top 10 Tools for Learning 2009, in order to produce a Spring 2009 Top 100 Tools List,  and then again in late summer 2009 in order to finalise the list in early November 2009.
	25 FREE Tools every learning professional should have in their Toolbox In March I wrote an article for the April 2008 edition of e-Learning Age magazine called 25 Tools every learning professional should have in their Toolbox - and all for free.  It became so popular that I a turned it into a resource in itself and wrote Mini Tutorials for each of the tools.  I also set up the 25 Tools Ning community to support it, which was featured on the Ning blog in June 2008.  The 25 Tools community now has over 550 members  I have also given the 25 Tools presentation a number of times this year at different conferencess, e.g. ALT-C in Leeds in September, at the Learning And Skills webinar in September, and at the online Learning Trends & Innovations conference in November.  In August I uploaded the slideset to Slideshar, where on 27 August it became Slideshare's Slideshow of the Day.  Since then it has been viewed nearly 10,000 times. In the Spring I will update this resource to reflect the outcome of the Top 100 Tools Spring 2009 list.
	iTouch Learning In May 2008 I began investigating the use of the iPod Touch for learning and performance support purposes, and started to put together a list of the top web apps and optmised sites for the iPod Touch for learning and performance support purposes in a  new section of the Centre's website, called iTouch Learning
	Social Media & Learning In  early 2008 as there was increasing interest in the ways that social media tools were helping to generate a new phase of learning - known variously as Learning 2.0, E-Learning 2.0, Collaborative Learning and Social Learning - I decided to change my title from E-Learning Consultant to Social Media & Learning Consultant, to reflect the fact that my focus was now on helping organisations understand and implement social media tools for learning and performance support. I also set up a separate section of my website, Social Learning, where over the year I have been aggregating a number of articles and resources I have written, including a presentation "Using social media for learning and performance support", a Model for Engagement with Social Media, a Quiz to profile your engagement with social media, as well as a number of magazine articles: 10 Tips for successfully implementing social media for learning and performance support in the workplace,  12-step plan to getting engaged with social media (for elearning age magazine in September), and a 3-part series of articles for Inside Learning Technologies magazine:  Part 1 (Social bookmarking, file sharing and social networking) (in October), Part 2 (Microblogging services (in December) and Part 3 (Collaborative working and Learning (for the January conference edition) together with a number of other resources (mentioned below).
	Engaging with Social Media In July I produced a more substantial online learning resource, which I initially called "Engaging with Social Media" although later renamed to "How to do more on the Internet for free".  It  was intended to help individuals experience and/or increase their engagement with a wide variety of social media tools and was based on 40 activities around using social media tools.  In addition to the online materials I also produced a PDF version. There has been enormous interest in this resource so I am currently revising it, and will be relaunching it in January 2009 as "An Introduction to Social Learning".
	Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter In September I compiled a list of 100+ learning professionals on Twitter - to help those who were looking to make connections with others - but soon renamed it to the Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter as hundreds of people wanted to appear on it. I receive daily email requests from those want to be included on the list, and there are nearly 700 names on it. Let me know if you want to appear on it too. I also have been maintaining a List of Twitter Applications and Twitter Reading List (part of the Library of Reading Lists).
	Directory of Social Networks for Learnng Professionals In October I compiled a list of social networking sites suitable for those working in education and workplace learning. There are nearly 100 networks on the list including my 25 Tools community as well as the Workplace Learnng 2.0 Ning Community I set up in May for anyone who wanted to discuss anything related to Learning 2.0 in the Workplace.
	ELearning Guild's E-Learning 2.0 Report During the summer I was invited to join the team working on the E-Learning Guild's E-Learning 2.0 report. The team comprised Steve Wexler, Tony Karrer, Michele Martin, Brent Schlenker, Mark Oehlert and Sanjay Parker. We all wrote articles to go alongside the report, and my article Understanding today's learnerss - which looked at the generational and technological effects on today's new breed of learners - was published in September just prior to the Report itself. In November I attended the E-Learning Guild's conference DevLearn in San Jose, California and helped Tony Karrer run the E-Learning 2.0 Pre-Conference Symposium. In March 2009 Mark and I will presenting the Learning in a Web 2.0 World Pre-Conference Symposium at the eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering in Orlando, Florida.
	Directory of Learning Tools All year I continued to add tools to The Directory of Learning Tools and it now contains well over 2,500 tools, of which over 2/3 are free.  This is where it all started ... The Directory is therefore an important C4LPT resource, and I will continue to maintain it during 2009, so let me know if there are any tools that you would like to add to it.