Interesting post from the people at Kineo who’ve used Google Trends to provide an update on Trends in eLearning. Worth a read – some interesting trends associated with patterns of searching to do with mobile learning, open source LMSs, podcasting etc.

The graph above is the one published by Kineo that shows a gradual decline in searches on the term e-Learning – but when I checked using the variations of “eLearning” and “(e)Learning” the results were different – not decline. Perhaps it’s just an illustration of the way in which e-Learning is declining as a way of spelling? (Interestingly, Online Learning shows a similar overall trend to e-Learning is search volumes.

Out of interest, I tried some searches on the terms “synchronous” and “asynchronous” which showed a similar decline to the graph above – as did the terms “SCORM”, “Interoperability”, “videoconferencing” and “instant messaging”.

By comparison, terms such as “Learning Communities” and “Communities of Practice” show a steady interest with a slight increase over three years.

Most interesting were searches on the ‘social software’ products such as “Skype”, “Flickr”, “MySpace” and “Del.icio.us” – all of which showed a dramatic increase in searches since 2004.

Perhaps this will inspire others to publish the results of their own research using Google Trends – although it is important to note the footer on the Google Trends page:

Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results.