week1 walden assignment

It is a good thing that we had some parameters to work within for this assignment or, being the computer professional that I am, I would still be redesigning my blog page layout for the 100th time and not have the actual assignment finished.


I don't like the template I chose but I'll fix that later.

One thing I learned about myself this week is that even though we had suggested readings and places to look at articles on Instructional Design I had to go do my own searching and poking around in google and yahoo and other places. There is so much information available that it is easy to bog down and get lost in documents that I truly have no interest in but keep reading anyway because I think to myself "there might be something good in here".


I also took the occassional jog off into looking for a new pumpkin pie recipe and paying some bills on-line.


Hence the importance of this assignment. 1.) Knowing how to subscribe to RSS feeds and get information sent to me from sources I have already evaluated for quality of information pertinent to my interest. 2.) Sharing the links with my fellow classmates via my blog so they may save themselves some time and effort as well. 3.) presenting my own ideas and having my colleagues provide feedback

I read the article by Bill Ferriter Learning with Blogs and Wikis and checked his page at
http://www.pageflakes.com/ he has a lot of good reference points for teachers. At the beginning of his article Bill points out that today Teachers don't have the time to pursue their own Education goals and points out the value of using Blogs and wikis for education and training.

In my opinion it is not just teachers but any professional that uses computers as part of his/her daily work routine has the same problem. We have become so used to having information at our fingertips at lightening speed that we overload ourselves with information and expect all tasks to be performed that quickly.

Although this topic was not part of our resource list one of the things I am very interested in is what kind of job opportunities are available once I become an Instructional Designer. This is not a blog so I added a link to Instructional Design Jobs Simply Hired in my favorite link list. I'm sure there are other job databases that list Instructional design jobs but this is the first one that popped up for me.

I also added a link to linkedin (this is not a blog either) but it is a great place to create an id to connect to other professionals in your area of expertise. http://www.linkedin.com/ there are several groups under Instructional design. You can check it out to see if you are interested in joining a group.





here are the 3 things I added to my blog list:

"Informal Learning Blog" - I am particularly interested in it as it discusses how Instructional design could be imcorporated with the Agile Development Model that many companies including my previous employer IBM have started using for Project Development.


"Instructional Design and Development Blog" - The one dated Nov 2 tell about places other than youtube to get video for classes. good information that I want to bookmark for future reference.

"Here There and Everywhere - Training Multi cultural Virtual Teams" - wanted to read this one because I trained people in the U,.S. Europe and Asia on my last assignment and I wanted to see if this article addressed any of the issues that we came across.