The Doorway to Professional Learning Communities

The first blog that I feel will have relevant content related to my work as an instructional design professional is TLT at Franklin and Marshall. TLT stands for teaching, learning and technology. Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) is located in Lancaster, PA, and has existed since 1787. This blog, as a part of F&M, was formed "for IET staff and others interested in teaching, learning, and technology to add comments, links, etc. about cool technology, interesting sites, new ideas, and all things related to the business of IET — supporting tools to augment and enhance teaching and learning with technology" (Retterer, 2009). The Information Technology Services (ITS)department at F&M, "...through the group Instructional & Emerging Technologies (IET), consults and collaborates with College faculty and students to support instructional technology as tools to enhance instruction" ("Technology Support for Teaching and Learning," 2009). Because our Instructional Design & Technology program at Walden University has an emphasis on utilizing technology in instructional design, I think this will be an invaluable site for staying abrest of technology resources that can be used in an instructional capacity, particularly since new technologies are becoming available at a more rapid pace than ever before.

The second blog that I will follow was developed by Tracy Lee. Tracy and I both belong to the LinkedIn.com group, International Society for Technology in Education. Tracy has been an educator for more than 10 years, and is currently pursuing her doctoral degree at Pepperdine University in Learning Technologies. As Tracy states, "My research interests include social networking as a tool for developing young writers, technology as a learning tool for special needs' students, and the development of new media literacy skills for the 21st century learner" (Lee, 2009). Because I also have an interest in special needs students, I am hopeful that there will be much that I can learn from her research experience in this area. I helped my sister, Miriam Lundell, open the FIRST school for children with Autism in our county, The Chase Academy. It is my hope that these children will be the beneficiaries of what I glean from Tracy.

While searching for and exploring various blogs and resource sites relevant to the field of instructional design and education, I came across The Educator's PLN ~ The personal learning network for educators. I also located a blog by Jamie Bowring. His posting, "Tweets, Wiki's, Blog's and Glog's," caught my eye. I suppose by now you have caught on to the fact that I am really intrigued by where all of this technology is leading us. Because Jamie's blog is brand new, I did not select it as one to follow for this course, but I will follow it just in case he shares more that is of interest to me.

Taking note of this focus on technology myself, I realized that I really needed to find a blog that is specific to instructional design. I came across the Langevin blog. Langevin Services is the world's largest train-the-trainer company. Since a large portion of my professional career has been dedicated to train-the-trainer instruction and design, I chose this blog as my final blog to follow. I believe this blog will have a lot of useful information for me relative to both the design side and the training side of instruction. One post that I found particularly insightful is "Designing e-Learning? Don’t Forget the Basics!" This post discusses "the benefits of applying formal design principles to the world of e-learning" (Koltookian, 2009).

REFERENCES:

Technology support for teaching and learning. (2009). Franklin and Marshall College, Information Technology Services. Retrieved January 10, 2010, from http://its.fandm.edu/iet/

Koltookian, L. (2009, August 10). Designing e-learning? Don’t forget the basics! Message posted to Langevin blog, archived at http://www.langevin.com/blog/2009/08/10/designing-e-learning-don%e2%80%99t-forget-the-basics/

Lee, T. (2009). Tracy Lee's summary. Retrieved January 10, 2010, from http://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyrenee70

Retterer, O. (2009, April 5). Welcome to the new TLT blog! Message posted to TLT at Franklin & Marshall, archived at http://tlt.fandm.edu/