Here are the first five:
1 baby duck syndrome
This is when some shiny new piece of technology comes along, and everybody immediately declares it the best thing ever. Those suffering from baby duck syndrome immediately ´imprint´ on the new technology, and have issues with ever letting go. Even when flaws become increasingly apparent, those suffering from baby duck syndrome will defend the technology to the bitter end. I learnt about this cool term via an item in Stephen Downes´ (very addictive) Online Daily.
2 cyborg anthropology
An entire area of study which investigates (and rather scarily experiments with) how we can integrate machines/technology into the human body. I’m waiting for the French chip to be developed, so I can graft it into my memory and give being up the really hopeless learner of my French class. I learnt about this term in my MOOC (see below), and the field has apparently been around for decades (see this video), although it was all news to me. I do love the term though.
3 the heavy metal umlaut
Trawling around Wikipedia recently, I was reminded of the heated discussions that arise over obscure things. Like the heavy metal umlaut. The what? It’s the use of those double dot diacritic marks over a vowel, much beloved of heavy metal groups such as MotÖrhead. Check out more on this fascinating topic, and bore those Christmas dinner guests rigid.
4 MOOC
In a misguided attempt to get some professional development via anything longer than a tweet, I signed up for a MOOC in September. I promptly dropped out at record-breaking speed, unable to keep up. Some of the information I managed to follow did slowly filtered through though. The course was directly instrumental in me writing series of blog posts about Webs 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and extended web, for teachers. So really, I was a model MOOC student – I repurposed course content into meaningful artefacts for myself and the wider community. How cool is that? You can do almost nothing on a course, drop out within minutes, and still feel good about it all.
5 cyberbullying
This is a term we’ve all known about for yonks. But I learnt that the issue of cyberbullying is not restricted to undersocialised teenagers. It was not my 14-year-old daughter who reported a case of cyberbullying in school. No, it was my 40-year-old-+, extremely tech savvy colleague Gavin Dudeney’s experience of cyberbullying which was a real eye-opener. If you haven’t read his blog post about his recent experiences, you need to do so immediately. It just goes to show that we are all potential targets, and that there are some very unpleasant people out there. But the (cool) flipside is that his entire PLN turned out en masse to offer their support. The post has 127 tweets and 101 comments to date…
What cool things have you learnt in 2010? I would love to read about them in the comments section below!
Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
December 2010
I learnt a whole host of really cool things through The ConsultantsE in the second half of 2010 – starting from what it feels like to be an elearner through to experimenting with moving my face to face newbie bloggers class totally online. Thank you both for two very stimulating online courses!
2010 was also the year when I learnt how not to trip over all the spaghetti involved in setting up a portable IWB, projector and laptop at the start of each class. Hoping to move up in the classroom tech world next year with a fixed projector and ebeam 🙂
Have a great holiday and an even better 2011
Ceri
Thanks, Ceri! I know what you mean about tripping over wires – I invariably fall flat on my face giving talks by tripping over the mic cable. The basic rule seems to be the larger the audience, the more spectacular the fall. Happy 2011!
About ten years ago I was at a conference where Kevin Warwick gave an inspiring keynote presentation. Kevin had a chip implanted in his arm in 2002 and is a huge influence in cyborg experimentation. His presentation was amazing but he told a story that has stuck in my mind forever. In the early days of experimenting with robots he programmed an upside down bathtub, using an infrared senor, to follow him round the streets. During the first outings the bathtub obligingly followed him for miles and lots of interesting data was collected. On one particular outing though the bathtub “spotted” the setting sun and took off on its own chasing this huge infrared source. The way he presented it and the image he conjured up was so funny it has stuck with me. He is a very entertaining speaker though and if you get the opportunity to hear him it will be well worth the time 🙂
Things I have learned this year… having bought an iPhone last Jan and an iPad later – that I need to learn lots more about Apple computers and their operating system and software! I have made a mock up of an iPhone app 🙂 I enjoyed that but did not have the content to make it for real.
I was experimenting with QR codes for treasure hunts for children earlier in the year.
I learned to terraform virtual landscapes by creating a virtual world on my computer.
As part of the team we started experimenting with a class set of ipods – learned just how easy children find using them for all sorts!
I used Adobe Connect for the first time that is great software!
I feel as though I am always learning but can’t think of anything much now 🙁
Hi Carol, you clearly learnt lots of very interesting (and nerdy! – good for you!) things in 2010! I loved the story of the upside down bathtub, clearly not the most discrete object one could choose to have following one around the streets. I first saw Kevin Warwick in a You Tube video early this year, when I first learnt about this (to my mind) very catchy phrase cyborg anthropology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_l7SY_ngI Pretty eye-opening stuff.
And here’s to more learning in 2011!