Just perused this 91 page PDF (now available as HTML) produced by Teemu Arina and Timo Tervo of the FLOSSE Posse. This is an excellent overview of many trends affecting online learning. It covers everything from the long tail, power law, connectivism, small world networks, blogs and wikis. It’s a bit short on detail, but if you’re familiar with these concepts, then it’s a fast read. If you’re not familiar with these concepts, then read the references.
The second part of the presentation covers the results of a workshop on open source in education and discusses a number of future scenarios that were ranked by the participants, for instance:
Rip, Mix and Learn is the new metaphor for constructing learning objects
Amateur audio and video enters learning
Connectiveness a core competency
ePortfolios focusing on capturing informal learning appear
These will give you an idea of what has traction on the other side of the pond in the OS world. Most of the paper is CC licensed and there are a lot of interesting diagrams. Definitely a keeper for your digital archives.
