Week 1 assignment: Blogs I am following

1. The eLearning coach http://theelearningcoach.com

Connie Malamed provides strategies and tips for successful elearning. She covers any topic related to online learning: writing tips, learning objectives, testing , how to interviews subject matter experts and much more.
I feel like this blog brings many different types of strategies that will be useful to the distance education courses that I facilitate. Her ideas are great but she also interviews "experts" on specific topics. This is a great way to get varied information. I also think this makes her blog valuable because it is ever changing.

2. Flirting with eLearning http://flirtingwelearning.wordpress.com/

Nicole Legult has created a blog about instructional design and elearning. I was drawn to a post about 8 Things to Consider before Designing an eLearning Course also 40+ tips on making Power Points. I like how she breaks down the information or makes pro/con lists. I find this is a great way to extract information.
I use PowerPoint's in all of my courses so getting new ideas or even refreshers on the information I have already learned is helpful. She also has ideas about how to use images, whether it is photos or clip art. How information is presented is extremely important. Learning strategies on how to present the information the most effectively is exciting!

3. Onlignment http://onlignment.com/blog/

Learning consultants, Clive Shepard, Barry Sampson and Phil Green have collaborated to create information on organizational learning, learning and communication technologies and online communication they call their creation the concept of “onlignment”. What they call the art of online communication.
This blog is different from the other two blogs I chosen to
follow. It is more formal and refers often to the information in their e-books. They discuss being a learning architect and what this means. I appreciate the information about creating
quizzes, how to discourage cheating and giving adequate feedback. In the distance education classes that I teach cheating is a concern. I have used a few ways of hopefully preventing (changing test questions year to year, having time limits, etc) however, it is good to read new ideas or see if I am on the right track of deterring cheaters.