Big ideas for weelearning

Tomorrow night I’m heading off to Bristol for the latest weelearning get together. It’s actually not particularly convenient for me to go to Bristol but I make the trip when I can to attend these sessions because a) I enjoy them and b) they’re always worthwhile. I always come away enthused about something or with a new idea ticking over in my brain and having met or caught up with some great people.

And tomorrow’s session is all about ideas. In fact, the organisers Sam Burrough and Dan Roddy have challenged everyone to ‘think big’ for 2013. I’ve written previously about new year’s resolutions and I like the concept of thinking big, it feels like it’s taking the idea of resolutions up a notch.

So what are my big ideas for 2013? Well I wanted to reflect on the big ideas I have  in my mind and also reference a couple of other big ideas I want to look into and learn more about. Conveniently enough, one of those is actually being discussed by Doug Belshaw at tomorrow night’s session (Doug works for Mozilla and will be talking about Open Badges). Here are some of my ideas for this year/those I’m interested in delving into a little deeper:

* Crowd sourced learning: Clearly I have a vested interest in this through my involvement with mylearningworx. A shameless plug but hey, this is my blog. Can the concept really take off in the UK in 2013? We think so and I’m excited about making it happen!

* Bridging the gap: This is a big one. The Towards Maturity Benchmark study for 2012 was entitled ‘bridging the gap – integrating learning and work’. This isn’t my idea, but it’s something I feel passionately about and believe that the practical application of learning technologies can really help with. Organisations have simply got to become more agile and the effective transfer of knowledge and skills is key to improving performance. Fingers crossed 2013 will hold some great successes on this front.

* Breaking the language barrier: There’s often a lot of jesting about the levels of jargon and terminology used within learning and development. As a marketer, I want to start taking away some of the ‘mystery’ and industry speak. If we want to bridge the gap as per the above, we have to start speaking other people’s language.

* MOOCs: Before you groan because everyone’s talking about these, there’s an obvious link to the work we’re doing for mylearningworx with this concept. Plus a number of people in my PLN have actually started on MOOCs recently so I’m curious to hear first hand about their experiences.

* Giving back: I’ve had tremendous support since starting my own business(es) and one of the things I really want to do this year is to pay it forward with some charitable endeavours of the professional kind. Our technical director at mylearningworx is involved in lots of events like hack-a-thons creating apps and things for charities, and I’m hoping to tap into this vein of activity. I don’t know what it will look like yet but it’s firmly on the list. I’m also really looking forward to hearing Nicholas Negroponte of One Laptop Per Child speak at Learning Technologies 2013 in a couple of weeks as he’ll know a thing or two about this kind of thing.

And finally…

* The 5:2 fasting diet: Not a professionally related idea but it is an idea that is getting a lot of coverage in the press at the moment and is dividing opinion amongst health professionals, scientists and nutritionists. As someone who could have earned an open badge in fad dieting in the past, I’m fascinated to see what some of the longer term studies and investigations find on this during 2013 – or if in fact all the fuss dies down pretty quickly.

I’ll report back after tomorrow evening to see what my key takeaways are and whether or not I need to revise this list! Oh, and if you’re interested, follow the hashtag #weelearning on Twitter.