The Doorway to Professional Learning Communities - Blogs

Assignment: Application: Blog


Bill Rerriter (February 2009) included in his article Learning with Blogs and Wikis, that Richard Elmore, professor of educational leadership at Harvard wrote,

 "As expectations for increased student performance mount and the measurement and publication of evidence about performance becomes part of the public discourse about schools, there are few portals through which new knowledge about teaching and learning can enter schools; few structures or processes in which teachers and administrators can assimilate, adapt, and polish new ideas and practices; and few sources of assistance for those who are struggling to understand the connection between the academic performance of their students and the practices in which they engage." 

Now it is 2016 and we have a tool called a blog. This tool helps create social communication and the sharing of information amongst all different kinds of groups with all different kinds of interest. In my case searching out blogs that contain information on instructional design would interest me the most since I'm an Instructional Designer.
This week our assignment was to create a blog, set up an RSS feed and then go out and find blogs that would be beneficial to Instructional Designers. We were also required to critic three blogs that we found would be useful to us.

The three instructional design blogs that I will be taking a careful look at this week are: eFront, Experiencing E-Learning, and Upside Learning blog. Below I have included the url links to each blog. Click on the link to open blog in a new window.

• eFront: https://www.efrontlearning.com/blog/category/best-practices 
• Experiencing E-Learning: https://christytucker.wordpress.com/ 
• Upside Learning: https://www.upsidelearning.com/blog/ 

Let’s start with a quick overview on the type of content offered on each blog. eFront is owned by Epignosis, which is a leading technology vendor that specializes in eLearning solutions. What interest me on this site is the categories of blogs they offer such as: best practices, eLearning, and resource tools just to name a few. They also have a section called Featured Posts and they talk a lot about open source tools. 

Next, we have Experiencing E-Learning. This blog is created by Christy Tucker. I came across her blog a while back. Christy shares a lot of knowledge about working from home and telecommuting. She includes information like the going hourly and salary rates for instructional designers, tools for making freelancing easier and more efficient, and she shares other blog links that relate to the industry of instructional design. 

Finally, we have Upside Learning blog. Upside Learning is located in India and covers content like: eLearning, learning management, and mobile learning. They also offer a featured posts section and address topics like captivate 9 responsive eLearning, the importance of learner engagement, and currently is running a blog post about eLearning Caught in the Phenomenon called Pokemon Go. 

I found each of these blog sites to be well laid out and user friendly to navigate to the posts that interest me. Each one seems to offer a slight twist to the same topics being covered which will help me in thinking out of the box for new learning solutions. Yet, each blog also seems to have their own focus areas of content. Some examples of these are Experiencing E-Learning focuses on instructional design freelance work. eFront focuses on free open source tools. While, Upside Learning is focusing on the technology end of eLearning. 

For the reasons provided above on the content each offers, I feel that subscribing to them will offer me a fountain of updated information for my industry.

References

Ferriter, B. (2009). Learning with Blogs and Wikis. Educational Leadership 66(5), 34-38.

Epignosis LLC. (2016). eFront. Retrieved from https://www.efrontlearning.com/blog/

Tucker, C. (2016). Experiencing E-Learning. Retrieved from
https://christytucker.wordpress.com/

Upside Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (2016). Upside Learning. Retrieved from https://www.upsidelearning.com/blog/