eLearning Learning - Now Launched

Tony Karrer graciously asked me to participate in the launch of a new tool called eLearning Learning. I've added to my blog sidebar and you will be able to use it to see the most common terms, tools, and concepts that I blog about. Each of those links within the tool (widget) can then be break down further in to more specific content. As you follow a link you will first come to the content that was created by myself, or fed into the eLearning Learning site. As you scroll through that you will come to content created by others. If you use one of the links available to you now on the eLearning Learning site you will be able to further into the first topic link (i.e. Learning > Learning-Blogging, or Learning-Technology, etc.). The break down goes on and on.

"This is the beginning of a community portal where the community will help to collect and organize the best content from blogs and web sites. The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding eLearning." - Tony Karrer

Currently the content is mostly feed in through blogs, but will be expanded in the future.

If you want to try out the tool on some live blogs there are a few launch sites you can take a look through and play with:


Tracy Hamilton - Discovery through eLearning (mine)

Collin Kromke - Web 2.0 Work

Kevin Jones - Engaged Learning

Wendy Wickham - In The Middle of the Curve

Tony Karrer - eLearning Technology

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Blogging - (my name in print)

Tony Karrer has an article published in this month's T+D (Training and Development) magazine (click the magazine cover to launch the reader). His article is based on blogging, but more specifically the learning and networking benefits that can come from starting your own.

I was honoured earlier in the summer when Tony asked me for my perspective on blogging. Now to see it in print; well I'm giddy with excitement. It's a great article with other perspectives from Karyn Romeis, Jay Cross, Wendy Wickham, and Brent Schlenker.

This is a bit of a tangent from the idea of blogging, but....I love the technology it takes to reading a magazine like this online. It's really cool (yes, my name is Tracy and I'm a techno-geek, "Hi Tracy"). It's a great method to get, traditionally, boomers to read printed material online. Being able to see the pages, go to the table of contents, flip through pages back and forth, and zoom in and out (picture your dad holding the newspaper at arm's length). I can not get my colleagues (boomers...sorry but it's true) to read anything online; I've got to print it out for them if I want them to read something. It makes the online reading experience more interactive and more like real life.

However, back to the article....

Some of the ideas and quotes from it that really struck for me are:

"Bloggers continually search for interesting information they can post. When they post information, they must synthesize that information, formulate additional questions, contrast and make sense of differing viewpoints, and identify patterns and trends." - Tony Karrer
I learn something new every day.

"The one thing I have really notice and experienced about the blogging community is that everyone is extremely friendly, open, and willing to share ideas and mentor one another." - Tracy Hamilton
I learn something new from my online mentors.

"If for no other reason than your job is changing, and you might want to be engaged in the process of what your new job will include." - Brent Schlenker

I'm tracking my progress.

The starting point...is to learn how to use blogs as individual work and learning tools and then become evangelists about these technologies, methods, and habits." - Tony Karrer

I'm tracking my development, sharing my experiences, and hopefully teaching and mentoring others.

Headlines That Got Me To Read More

Well a week off for me a short bit ago and catching up on emails, voicemail, meetings and life has put me a bit behind with reading my feeds. I thought since I am behind and some items I'll just post some of the headlines/links that I found interesting from the last 2 weeks.

Laser Printers a Health Risk? - Discovery
Finding a Use for Facebook - Wendy Wickham
Free eSeminar: eLearning and the Science of Instruction - B. J. Shone
In Box Zero - 43 Folders - Increase your personal productivity - Brent Schlenker
31 Days to A Better Blog - Cammy Bean
Booos and Yeahs - Coming Back By Popular Demand - Common Craft (made me laugh - yeah!)
Bebo helps student bloggers! - Judy O'Connell
Memes - why do we do them? - Karen Romeis
Search Mash-Ups - Mike Qaissaunee
Email a New Reader of Your Blog - Nancy White
Study: Food in McDonald's Wrapper Tastes Better to Kids - Stephen Downs (I heard this on the radio and thought - yep, makes sense)
LEGO turns 75 - MAKE Magazine
Egypt's Largest Pharaoh-Era Fortress Discovered, Experts Announce - National Geographic

Creating a List of Things to Do

I keep having a post that Wendy Wickham wrote this week pop into my head. It referred to several things she wanted to try to attempt over the coming year. At eLearnDevCon she came up with wanting to:

1. Build an educational game.
2. Seriously upgrade my Flash and ActionScript chops.
3. Figure out how to build Google Gadgets from scratch with feeds from my Moodle tutorials or some other source.
4. Figure out how to build learning for mobile phones.

What I found great about this post was that having not attended the conference I was able to read Wendy's ideas and think...hmmm....maybe that is something I can try too. I could maybe apply that here. I could try that there. I haven't been able yet to explore these ideas she suggested, but something about #3 has been haunting me all week. It's great to read what inspires others and through their excitement become also inspired.