E-Learning Curve Blog is ‘Blogger of the Week’ on E-learning Planet

I’m delighted (and very proud) to have been awarded the Blogger of the Week accolade from E-Learning Planet.

This multi-faceted site includes e-learning forums, information on e-learning jobs, reviews on e-learning products, and so on.

According to the site, they “post information that covers all aspects of e-learning” including:

• An e-learning blog.
• Facilitates collaborative learning between e-learning professionals through its forum.
• Conducts frequent online contests for e-learning professionals.
• Provides free online training and assignments for instructional designers and graphic designers.
• Selects its favorite blog post and blogger from the e-learning blogosphere on a weekly basis.
• Selects active participants in the planet’s forum.

E-Learning Planet select the Blogger of the Week based on the following parameters:

• The number of informative, innovative, and self blog posts in a week
• The number of positive comments from visitors

Previous Bloggers of the Week include Donald Clark, Tony Karrer, Harold Jarche, and Jay Cross. I’m not sure I deserve to be in such illustrious company, but I’ll take it!

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The E-Learning Curve Blog Joins the eLearning Learning Community

I’m delighted to announce that the E-Learning Curve Blog has joined the eLearning Learning community. eLearning Learning is

a community that tries to collect and organize the best information on the web that will help you learn and stay current on eLearning.

In a response to a Learning Circuits Blog Big Question a few months ago, I described myself as a ‘learnivore:’

I continually acquire new knowledge and information through my Web-, book-, podcast-, and presentation reading, blogging (reading and writing), academic study and research, and work-based learning-related tasks. These activities are drivers for the information I try to take on board in my attempts to enhance my skills, abilities, and expertise.

This sounds great in theory, but in practice it means that I must carefully manage my time to ensure that I can stay current with the best that all of the above (especially the e-learning blogging community) have to contribute. For the last 18 months, I have used Google reader, Foxmarks, del.icio.us and Bloglines to manage my RSS feeds and interesting links. All of these utilities are great, but having four tools to aggregate and store content is inefficient, particularly as I don’t just subscribe to e-learning blogs. eLearning Learning enables me to access a range of regularly updated e-learning content with the click of a mouse button.

In my view, eLearning Learning’s value is threefold (see Figure 1):

1. It’s a single location when you can access the cream of e-learning blogs and commentary from a diverse range of contributors
2. Those contributors write some of my favorite blogs including Clive on Learning, eLearning Technology, elearnspace, Informal Learning, Jane Hart - Pick of the Day, Kapp Notes, Lars is Learning and the Rapid eLearning Blog… as well as a bunch of really interesting blogs I’m looking forward to getting to know.
3. It’s an easy-to-use, web-based interface – perfect (and appropriate) to view content from the main page area, by keyword or blog name. Similarly, find content using the search functionality.

The easiest way to discover the site is to simply go there and check it out. In the meantime I’ve created a (very) short demo highlighting some of the features: just click on the image to view the presentation.

Figure 1. eLearning Learning homepage

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A Christmas Message from the E-Learning Curve Blog

Nollaig Shona daoibh go léir agus Athbhliain faoi shéan is faoi mhaise daoibh, agus go mba seacht fearr sinn go léir ag an am seo ar an bhliain seo chugainn!

A peaceful Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year to you, and may we all be seven times better off at this time next year!
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A Year in E-Learning: One Blog’s Progress

Welcome to my blog, The E-Learning Curve.

So began my first post to the E-Learning Curve Blog on this day in 2007. Upon reflection, I don’t think that I really had any idea about what I was letting myself in for, in terms of the discipline and commitment, not to mention the sheer effort required to create and maintain a high-quality blog about Electronic Learning & Development.

I don’t think that I had any real knowledge about how the blog would unfold either; I guess that for me, that was part of what attracted me to the idea of keeping a blog in the first place: I wanted to see what would emerge over time.

In that sense I was lucky: in it’s first year the E-Learning Curve Blog transitioned from a world with a stable economic climate, to the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis, through the tipping point of the Credit Crunch, and now, the Great DepRecession* of Aught Eight.

This has given me the opportunity to discuss e-learning in society-at-large, and in the workplace in particular. What better opportunity is there for learning professionals to introduce the benefits of education than now? From my own experience over the last year, I have seen attitudes to e-learning change - for the better – as individuals and organizations I have worked with have finally begun to let go of the idea that e-learning today is not about “Webified” instructor-led courseware, or worse, dull and boring Authorware-style page-turners, but is an effective means to deliver knowledge and information across many channels, and takes a range of technologies under its aegis.

The emergence of the Read / Write Web into the broader consciousness has demonstrated that learning online can be as immersive an experience as a face-to-face training experience.

What better time, then, for individuals and organizations to look at educational strategy and learning technologies than in a period of profound change – these are the times that test the mettle of ideas and concepts and where they prove their value; if the reality lives up to the perception, if the potential can be realized.

What have I learned?

In a response to a recent Learning Circuits Blog Big Question, I once described myself as a 'learnivore' - a bit of a naff term, but accurate. Writing and maintaining a blog is one of the best motivators I know to continue developing my professional knowledge - to discuss the kind of topics I like to cover requires a comprehensive and in-depth knowledge of the subject of e-learning and all that understanding e-learning entails.

As a constructivist, I would assert that the practise of blogging is a excellent example of Bruner's Learning Spiral: the act of writing a blog post transforms information and enables the construction of knowledge, based upon my extant cognitive structures or mental models. These cognitive structures - what Roger Schank calls “scripts” in his Dynamic Memory Model (1982) - provide meaning and organisation to experiences and allow the individual to go “beyond the information given” (Bruner, 1974).

My view is that the e-learning blogosphere is inhabited by a population of knowledgeable, dedicated, and critical (in the positive sense) contributors, and if you want to be in that company, you have to know your stuff; of the blogs I read - see the nav panel to the right - the bar is set pretty high.

Top Ten

On a more practical note, here’s a list of the top ten topics according to the readers of The E-learning Curve Blog, courtesy of the fantastic blog analysis tools available on Statcounter – not just cool because they’re Irish.

1. Definition of E-learning
2. Economic downturn and the challenge to e-learning
3. The principles of constructivism
4. Non-formal learning in the workplace
5. Evaluating Non-formal Learning
6. Open Source E-Learning
7. E-learning & Knowledge Management
8. Using Kirkpatrick's Four-level model
9. Applying the e-learning curve in the corporate environment
10. E-Learning and the Economic Downturn: A Salutary Lesson

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* DepRecession: A portmanteau word to describe the current Recession and / or Depression. Also has the benefit of being an homonym for “Deep Recession”

FOGRA: Googling “elearning blog” about a week ago, this happened:

Certainly an unexpected (but rewarding) first anniversary present!

Thanks to all who’ve read, contributed to, and debated the topics covered over the last twelve months, and I hope you'll continue to engage with me in the times to come.

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References:

Bruner, J. S. (1974) Going Beyond the Information Given. New York: Norton.

Schank, R. (1982) Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Reminding and Learning in Computers and People. Cambridge University Press.

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