Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Mozilla, Agile Learning Design, and Everything else

It was an active year for my reading, research and writing (106 blog posts in 2012). I feel I learned a whole lot. I particularly like that I had an opportunity to deep dive into open and digital badges. I believe my year of learning can be broken into three main themes; First, my work with Mozilla Open Badges and Badge systems in general; Second, my further proving out an Agile Learner Design methodology; and Third, everything else I thought about.

Mozilla Foundation
Its difficult to express the gratitude I have for the time I spent on contract with the Mozilla Foundation. In the six months I spent with Mozilla I did a whole lot, and I learned a whole lot;
  • Created a lot of learning resources for on-boarding the newbie open badges user / implementer
  • Completely updated the Open Badges FAQs by reading through the related google group end-to-end
  • Went deep into Webmaking with my kids and some of the youth on Bowen Island
  • Engaged in a number of discussions on curriculum design and building communities of practice
  • Dug into some emerging open technologies like WebGL, WebRTC... and how they fit within an virtually unlimited bandwidth network
  • Played with popcorn.js and wrapped learning resources to highlight formative and summative learning events
  • Deepened my understanding in using distributed technologies to facilitate meetings and collaborative efforts. With a good understanding of the nature of the engagement the appropriate technologies and approaches can facilitate a very collaborative effort and keep a comprehensive record of the event. These records can be indexed (and therefore searchable) and used for later reference or as resources for subsequent events. All done with open and free technologies and approaches. Mozilla is very good at all this!
Agile Learner Design
My focus on an Agile Learner Design methodology for creating and determining your own curriculum got a renewed focus this year. It all started with my last post of 2011 where I revisited and summarized Agile Instructional Design. I have come to the conclusion that what I am doing isn't focused on instruction, but upon the self-directed learner. Therefore, what I am doing is developing an Agile Learner Design methodology, not an Agile Instructional Design methodology. An important distinction in the fundamental focus of the methodology. To build upon my last post of 2011 I kicked off the year by looking at some of the existing research and approaches to self-directed learning. And looked at some of the approaches that I would consider similar to ALD. I also considered some of the people and approaches within my inspired learner series of posts, because it is these inspired learners that drive me to further develop ALD.

The Agile Learner Design (ALD) Methodology
ALD Reference Materials

ALD Examples and Inspirations
Everything else
Outside of these two main themes for last years postings came everything else. And if there were any themes they would have been either community building or mobile web development.So here is a list of the other learnings / explorations I had from last year.

Online learning communities
School of Badges 
Learning Approaches
Screencasting
Mobile Web Development
Polling for posts


So there you have it. My 2012 in review. What I'm looking forward too in 2013;

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