2008 Milestones Retro

The end of each year is an ideal time to reflect upon personal progress and look back at the milestones, the achievements, the events that have made the year. It's a time to consolidate, to be thankful, and in the act of looking back, to also look forward to what the new year might bring. It's a time to make plans in the light of past successes (and failures) and to celebrate and take stock. Here are my top ten milestones of 2008.

The no 10. achievement of the year is presenting papers in one year at each of what I consider to be the four most influential e-learning conferences in Europe. EDEN (Lisbon, Portugal), ALT-C (Leeds, England), ICL (Villach, Austria) and Online Educa (Berlin, Germany). I attended all of these and another dozen or so conferences this year, and have met some incredibly smart and passionate academics and professionals, all of whom have inspired me to push forward myself to extend the boundaries of e-learning. I'm very grateful to all of them for their enthusiasm and energy.

My no 9. achievement for 2008 was an invitation for me to edit the proceedings for the ICT and Learning for the Net Generation IFIP conference which was held in Kuala Lumpur in July this year. Working with so many excellent and well known researchers and writers was stimulating and rewarding, and the finished product, complete with ISBN will be a part of the archive of accumulated knowledge in the field of computer based learning.

At no. 8 was a personal honour for me - an invitation to participate in the inaugral Open EduTech Summit which was held in Barcelona in October. Being numbered as one of 40 worldwide experts on open learning and distance education, was indeed an honour for me, particularly when the complete list of those invited is reviewed. I was fortunate to meet with and work alongside some real luminaries in the field such as Mark Bullen, Vijay Kumar and Sugata Mitra.

My no. 7 this year represents another personal honour. This month I was delighted to hear I had been nominated in two categories of the Twitter 'Shorty' Awards - the #education and #nonprofit categories. I don't stand a cat's chance of winning but just being nominated for one award, let alone two, is humbling - but shows that there are people out there who value what I write when I am on Twitter. Whatever the outcome of the awards, I will continue to be a twit for the forseeable future!

No. 6 was the news in September of my promotion within the Faculty of Education to co-ordinate all Education Development and Technology Mediated Learning activities, here at the University of Plymouth. I already convene the University's e-learning research network, but this role now gives me the opportunities to explore new and emerging technologies and how they can be applied to support and enhance learning across an entire faculty. I also now chair the Faculty of Education's Information Technology Committee.

At no 5. is the imminent publication of my fourth book, an edited volume entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', which will be in the bookstores for the first week of 2009. The cover of the book can be seen (above) for the very first time. This book is the second I have published with the US based Information Age publishing house, and my fourth on e-learning to date. It is an achievement for me on a number of levels, including the honour of working with great writers such as Howard Rheingold, John Traxler and Palitha Edirisingha.

At no. 4 was a very recent achievement. I was delighted to be nominated in 2 categories in the prestigious Edublog Awards (the 'Eddies') - best individual blog and most influential blog post. When I look at the competition for these awards, I realise that there is little chance of me winning, but as I have already said, the nomination means a great deal to me personally and professionally. I try to write blog posts that are both entertaining and informative.

At no. 3 is my election as chair of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 3.6 on distance education. I was honoured and thrilled to be elected to lead this reputable and highly respected group of researchers and academics. I hope I live up to expectations of the group to contribute toward IFIP's continued success.

At no. 2, I was very pleased to be invited to take over the editorship of a very highly respected journal, Interactive Learning Environments, after serving as Book Reviews editor for two years. I am daunted but excited at the prospect of steering the journal over the next few years, but I have an excellent team of associate editors and a stirling editorial board behind me to help me to ensure that ILE continues its success story.

At no. 1, and my most valued achievement of 2008, is my award of a lifetime EDEN fellowship. I was notified of the award earlier in the year and had to keep it fairly quiet until it was presented at the annual EDEN conference in Lisbon, in June. As one of the awarding committee remarked to me later, 'Someone can be president of EDEN for a short time, but a fellowship is for life'.

It has certainly been a very busy and rewarding year, with plenty of great events to remember, wonderful people to recall meeting for the first time, and excellent things to reflect upon. Here's to a successful and fulfilling year for all of us in 2009! Happy New Year everyone!