Welcome to my Instructional Design Idea blog. I am excited to exchange ideas with my classmates as well as professional Instructional Designers. Our first assignment was to visit, review and post links to interesting blog sites. The following blogs offer a variety of information of interest to professional instructors as well as instructional design students.

http://edublogs.org/ Edublogs.org is a great site to find ideas for instruction and to network with other teachers. Edublogs.org starts beginners off with a list of 10 ways you can use blogs in and out of your classroom. I have maintained a classroom blog for two years and there are still ideas in this top 10 list I had not considered.

http://www.sjeds.com/ This link is an example of how a blog is used at my school. The front page of the blog is controlled by the front office. Current news and announcements are found here as well as information for people looking for a school. Down the right column is a list of classroom and resource teachers which link visitors to the classroom blogs. Students and parents are supplied with an id and password to access the teacher's blogs. On these blogs, we post homework, student work, pictures of special events, and announcements. Students like having a central place for announcements and homework lists. Discussion prompts and story starters are posted as well allowing the students to post comments and have discussions.

http://elearningconcepts.wordpress.com/ This is a great blog that contains links to many other Instructional Design blogs. It is maintained by Dr. Mary Nicholas at Bloomsburg University so is packed full of useful links and information. Through her blog I found the video that is posted below. This is a great blog with instructional videos describing the ways different technologies can be used in the virtual or physical classroom.

http://www.internettime.com/blog/archives/001083.html This is an archive of Jay Cross’ blog on instructional design. Jay Cross is an experienced Instructional Designer who helped design the first online learning programs. Pedagogy and design theory as well as practical information for Instructional Designers can be found on this blog. It has not been updated since January of 2009 so is not a site for conversation but rather reference site.

http://ideas.blogs.com/ Blog maintained by Ferdinand Krauss for the purpose of sharing ideas and discussing elements of Instructional Design. A very professional blog with many links to articles on the pedagogical use of e-learning. This is a blog which encourages conversation about Instructional Design.

Finally slash.com is a great place to stay connected to the newest technology. People may subscribe through the RSS feed and specifically chose the fields you are interested in learning more about. This is a great place to learn about the newest technologies that can be used in instruction.