Highlighted below are three cool blogs that will be helpful in my work in instructional design and e-learning.
The Tech and Learning Blog is a great online community for K-12 educators. It provides a wonderful advisor style tone and sharing of instructional design best practices, technology and policy. A great element of this blog is it includes postrank which is neat resource that let’s you quickly identify the most popular posts. This blog includes real time, meaningful perspectives of use of technology, sharing both the wows and the woes, strategies for effective instructional design, policy and funding concerns, and how to effectively use technology in classrooms to enhance instruction. Interesting posts this week included highlights of the new “Race to now where” documentary, how ipads are changing the classroom, new concept of Personal Learning Networks and 10 ways technology supports 21st Century learners to be self directed.
The American Society of Training and Development is the national association for training and development and hosts a comprehensive blog that includes vantage point of trends and needs of both the business and education sectors. I like this blog as it tags information into very helpful buckets such as education, schools, workplace, business news, reforms and public policy. For example, this week it had a key blog that HR managers are finding that training is a priority over recruitment. This blog can guide and help me plan for upcoming projects and the ever changing needs of the industry and be attune to areas of growth or crisis that may require training programs.
The Innovator Educator blog contains edgy content about keeping education real for students, parents and educators. I like that it has lots of activity and provides links to best teaching and learning practices and is looking at things from a cutting edge perspective. A sampling of a few of this weeks resources are listed below:
• iSchool – Read how the iSchool provides the Immunization to an Uninteresting Curriculum and how they Allow Today’s Students To Focus So They Become Tomorrow’s Experts at The iSchool
• Science Leadership Academy – Read how the Science Leadership Academy keeps it real here. Find out how they use Facebook to Strengthen the Student - Teacher Connection.
• The Island School – Read how You Can Get a Dalton Education at a NYC Public School at The Island School which is Preparing Students for Success by Helping Them Discover and Develop Their Passions both during and after school.
• Deer Hill School - Watch this video to see this school's approach to student engagement based on the Schoolwide Enrichment model. Each Wednesday afternoon every student can discover and develop their talents. It would be great if this type of learning wasn't only relegated to one afternoon a week.
• Unschooling – Unschooling is a method of learning from life or learning naturally. There are no mandated classes, schedules or tests.
In summary, the blogs above are powerful resources, that use postranks and tags which enable you to quickly and efficiently connect to content that is most meaningful to you. These blogs are terrific examples of professional learning communities that will enable me to remain abreast of the latest innovations and challenges.
-Michelle Cosner
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