jill/txt

I recorded a short video lecture on using blogs in teaching yesterday, for an hybrid online/f2f course in e-learning for teachers of social work in higher education being developed by Høgskolen i Bergen, along the lines of their Virclass.net. When the video’s ready, I’ll be able to post it here as well as give you guys a link to the actual learning module, which will be freely available online.

They also asked me for some links to good e-learning blogs. And I discovered that I really don’t read many dedicated e-learning blogs, although many of the blogs I read include posts about teaching and learning - as my own blog does. So I asked my Twitter-friends (yes, I’ve been twittering more after Jon Hoem and Thomas Brevik berated me for not using the social communication of 2009…). Here are a few of the blogs I’ll be adding to my RSS reader:

• Steve Wheeler: Learning with ‘e’s. Steve Wheeler is a senior lecturer in education and information technology at the University of Plymouth - he writes about his research, about stuff he does with students, and more, and in a humorous style.
• Cathy Moore’s blog Making Change came recommended for those interested in e-learning in the corporate world, and there are some interesting recent posts - now I kind of want one of those bird-scanning things!
• I really like the look of Kim Cofino’s blog Always Learning. She calls it “a place to reflect on my teaching and learning as the 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School Bangkok in Thailand.” Recent posts are characterised by how generously she shares interesting techniques, videos and ideas she’s found, and throughout, she explains how to do what she does. Definitely going in the feed reader.
• Jorunn also recommends Steven Downes (despite the odd blog format) - I’m not sure I can get past the format, but will try and have a look.

And then finally there’s the Edublog Awards, with a selection of the best blogs about education and learning in a number of different categories over the past several years.

But I think maybe the find I’ll use the most is this Flickr group of photos with quotations about learning - CC licenced and ready-to-go for that kind of presentation I always want to make (but that often ends up less perfect in the daily grind of things). There’s some inspiration here - and also the pool makes me want to go through my own presentations and find a few slides I could add! The photos in this post are from the pool - and I found it through Kim Cofino’s post about how she makes her presentations.

Do you have any more great e-learning blogs I should let the students know about? I couldn’t find any blogs about social work or teaching social work - there must be some but it’s just really not my field.