Over the years I have been enjoying Janet Clarey's blogposts very much. They are insightful as well as practical. Her writing (and comments) also show her passion for the eLearning related job, and life in general.
Janet is "an industry analyst and researcher. She covers social media, microlearning, e-learning, instructional design, and learning technologies for the workplace." (got this from the about section on her blog). She is a frequent publisher for Brandon Hall (an independent research center specialized in new media for corporations) and she delivers a lot of presentations, I have not seen her perform live, but I sure think she can liven up a room with her knowledge looking at her online dynamics. Brandon Hall research is not completely free for all it's research, but Janet is always willing to share her knowledge and add to any eLearning discussion with relevance and meaning. Her main interest is in corporate learning, but once you start reading her, you will see that she crosses all borders of the eLearning realm.
Her blog features an abundance of eLearning tips and tricks and why I wanted to put her in the picture right now is because of a recent post that got me into design thinking mode. In this post she refers to the D.School (at Stanford) Bootcamp Bootleg free download , which is "a curated collection of material developed by teaching teams throughout the design world over the last five years." This pdf can be downloaded here.
What can you expect to find in the pdf? The editors of the document summarize it as follows:
"The guide outlines each mode of a human-centered design process, and describes a number of methods which may support your design thinking throughout the process. These process modes and methods provide a tangible toolkit which support the seven d.mindsets ̶ shown on the following page ̶ which we feel are vital attitudes for a design thinker to hold." Personally I like the bodystorming technique that is described as one of the methods.
Basically this 36 page document provides you with some great tools that can prevent you from ever getting stuck in an eLearning or writers block ever again.
Now, if you want to stay on top of a variety of eLearning and social media topics like the one above, get Janet's blog onto your blog-roll or feedreader (if you have not done so already, that is).
