LifeLongLearningLab

As part of my study of blogging, I am also trying to pay attention to the hot conversations. The Marketing Director at my company wants me to find the “high-value” blogs for our industry–talent management. I happen to know that the Human Capital Institute pulls together a number of industry blogs to browse. So, I started there. And since my personal focus is learning and performance support, I focused on the High-Impact Learning blogs. I don’t want to call out any blogs specifically, just focus on the main topics being covered so I can see if there are any trends.

So, here’s what’s hot in High-Impact Learning:

• How Google works
• Online resources for learning more about new technologies–from here I linked my way to a site where you can create your own Harry Potter character avatar. My daughter has been busy for HOURS!
• Data portability–centralizing your identity online:  good thing or bad thing
• Mapping the domain of ignorance with a taxonomy of fallacies
• An online community where people help to grant each others’ wishes
• Creative training ideas mentioned in a recent issue of ASTD’s T&D magazine
• Episode 30 of the e-Learning Lingo podcast series
• Social networking in education–time for the hype to give way to thoughtful research
• Virtual worlds are to become as important as the Web–references a ComputerWorld article about the recently released Forrester Report
• Talent Development–a question from HCI about how interdisciplinary and organizational language is taken into account when developing simulations

And then if I go to my own personal faves, here’s the conversation:

• InspireAction–Effective e-learning? It’s about a lot more than browsers:  Discusses the results of a recent survey of the top e-learning tools by ELearn magazine.
• Karl Kapp–Web Stats Meme Answer: Talks about blog statistics in response to Tony Karrer’s e-learning technology: 2007 Traffic Stats: Hopefully a Meme; AND a callout to me! Nice! I’ll definitely have more to say about this one because it has some good thoughts about blogging stats and reasons people blog.
• Elliott Masie–Learning Trends #499: Classroom 2.0–what will the classroom of the future be like; and Learning in a Recession.
• TrainingDay–Low CEOs?: Talks about different ways of understanding your CEO better
• Learning Circuits–January’s Big Question:  Asks for predictions for the learning industry in 2008.
• Influencer by VitalSmarts–Supporting Your Social Networks: Describes tactics for becoming a valuable, supportive member of your social network
• Will at Work Learning–Neon Elephant Award: Will awards his Neon Elephant Award to Sharon Schrock and Bill Coscarelli who wrote a book “advocating against the use of memorization-level questions in learning measurement and for the use of authentic assessment items, including scenario-based questions, simulations, and real-world skills tests.”
• Tom Kuhlmann’s Rapid E-Learning Blog–How Walt Disney Would Use PowerPoint to Create E-Learning Courses: Tom shows some good strategies for adding animations to PowerPoint, without having to be a trained graphic artist.

I guess I’m not really surprised, but the decided majority addressed issues related to using technologies for education. It took me about an hour and a half to look through all this, and I definitely learned a lot doing that.