Welcome to my new site! It’s been quite a few weeks in the making and I’m happy to finally launch it.
I started writing on the Learning Snippets blog about 18 months ago and over that time I’ve changed and evolved (actually, I still am) and as a result I wanted to update my site to reflect this. I wanted to do more with my blogging and sharing, so I decided that I needed a new space to achieve this goal. Getting to this point will be a post in itself in the not too distant future.
About the same time as I started writing my blog I also started reading other blogs written by people in the learning field to see what they were talking about and to get a sense of what blog writing was about. As I read, it seemed to me that everyone seemed to know everything about everything! But over time, I found that the writers tended to have a ‘speciality’. Yes, they are across a range of aspects related to learning but they tend to have one area they are particularly passionate about that comes through. This was somewhat a relief because at first, I struggled with trying to know and be everything. I felt pulled in all directions and it wasn’t until I genuinely thought about what is it that I’m passionate about?
It’s eLearning.
There are a lot of opinions around about eLearning both for and against. There’s a place for all forms of learning whether it’s in the classroom, on a computer or mobile device, informal, social or whatever. The key is to use the approach that is fit for purpose and will achieve the best outcome. There’s also a bit of talk around about how we should drop the ‘e’ from eLearning or debating how to spell eLearning (e-Learning, E-Learning or E-learning) and my view is that if these were the biggest challenges facing eLearning as it is today, we would be in a pretty good place. However, these types of discussions are nothing more than a distraction from the real issue which is to develop courses that enable people to perform better.
What we need to focus on is constantly improving the standard of eLearning courses and the experience of people who take them and to improve their performance. Many people complain that they don’t have time to complete eLearning courses and they view it as something that they have to do but why not make them so engaging, so useful and so good that people will want to take them? Why don’t we aim to raise the standard and skills of those who develop these courses? This is what we should be focusing on. It’s no easy task but is something that I will be doing more of. This will be my thing.
As well as wanting a more modern and customisable site, the name: Learn. Show. Repeat. represents my new way of thinking. One of the strongest influences for me to date has been the practice of ‘Show Your Work’ which I first heard about via Jane Bozarth. It’s basically showing what you did and how you did it. I tried it a few times in the past which you can see here: Showing My Work #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. It’s a terrific way to open up and pass knowledge to others who may need it.
A few months ago, I started participating in David Anderson’s eLearning challenges as a way to develop my own eLearning skills and to interact with other designers. David has generously been helping me out with the showing part by storing my published Storyline demos on his server (thanks David!) and giving me a link which I can then share with others. But I wanted to be able to do this for myself so, along with registering a new domain name; I set up my own account with an external hosting provider and changed from a WordPress.com site to a WordPress.org site. Special mention to Helen Blunden and Jackie Van Nice who helped me out and provided some very handy advice with switching over to a self-hosted site. I also wanted to keep all of my demos in one place and accompany each entry with a blog post about how I created it. This was another reason to update the site.
You’ll notice that there are more pages now – a Portfolio page that shows my eLearning challenge entries created with Articulate Storyline and a PLN page that lists some of the people, communities, blogs, websites and books that have helped me in my journey in the learning field. Like me the site will continue to evolve and change over time. You can also make contact with me directly if you need to.
When I started writing on Learning Snippets, the tagline was: A diary of sorts about what I’m learning about learning and that’s still a big part of what I want to do. But I also want to do more showing and reflecting and sharing experiences with the aim of improving my skills and those of others too.
I’m looking forward to the next phase of my learning journey; you’re most welcome to come along for the ride.
Comments
24 responses to “A New Beginning”
Fantastic post, Matt! I appreciate that you were able to reflect upon and cover so much of your own journey in such an apparently effortless way.
I also loved what you mentioned about thinking everyone else knows everything about eLearning. It’s easy to feel that way, but we’re all so unique in our gifts that there’s never a need for concern or competition; we’ll always be able to shine in exactly the ways we’re meant to – which is why sharing what we do only makes sense.
The site looks great, of course, and I’m excited to see your new features. And thanks so much for the shout-out! It’s not easy making a site switch like that and always seems to take a village. 🙂
Congrats on the new site, new format, and new day in your journey.
Thanks so much Jackie! You advice was most helpful 🙂
Glad you made it to the self hosted realm of blogging! 🙂 I love the setup also, works great across all my devices. Looking forward to all your future blog posts.
Cheers Nick and great to hear that it’s working across your devices. It was working well during testing so I’m glad that it still is 🙂
So glad to see that you’re continuing your writing and training-teaching-learning journey here; looking forward to following what you’re doing.
Regarding the need for standards in online learning: if you haven’t already seen it, you might enjoy the Community College Research Center report “Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas” published in February 2013: http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/adaptability-to-online-learning.pdf. It’s a well-researched look at the topic. The “Serious Elearning Manifesto” (http://elearningmanifesto.org/) and “Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in a Digital Age” (which has gone through a couple of name changes and is accessible through http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2013/01/23/bill-rights-and-principles-learning-digital-age-full-document-plus-b) are also works I very much admire and may give you plenty of food for thought (and writing).
Thanks for your comments Paul, much appreciated and also for the great links! I’ll definitely take a look at them (the eLearning Manifesto was the only one I had seen before). I’m always on the look out for those kinds of articles. Cheers 🙂
Looking forward to your insights! Congrats on the new site Matt.
Thanks Jeff! It’s folks like yourself and other eLearning Heroes that continue to inspire me with their eLearning talents and generosity in sharing their knowledge. I’m hoping to keep that going via this blog as a way of giving back to the community that has helped me a lot.
Congratulations Matt!
Great design and I am sure that you will share with the eLearning community invaluable eLearning articles! Looking forward!
Matt I highly encourage you to submit your rss feed at the Top eLearning Blogs => http://elearningfeeds.com/top-elearning-blogs/
We will be more than happy to share them across our eLearning network.
Keep the good work coming!
Have a wonderful day,
Christopher Pappas
http://elearningindustry.com/elearning-authors/christopher-pappas
Thanks Christopher! I will certainly be sharing posts and ideas with the eLearning community and this site will help me to take that to another level. I filled in the RSS info to the Top eLearning blogs earlier today, thank-you for all the sharing and promotion you do across the community. All the best and will talk soon. Cheers, Matt
Congrats on the new site, Matt. I know you’ve worked hard putting this together and it totally paid off.
Thanks for the mention re: the challenges. You’ve contributed some of the most memorable demos over the past year so it’s really me who should be thanking you. Thank you:-)
As much as I enjoy hosting demos for users, I think you made the right decision to move everything to your own playground. Let me know when you have everything up and I’ll redirect the challenge/recap links to point to your site.
Keep up the good work. I’m looking forward to your posts… And learning how to finally spell “e-learning”.
Cheers David! No worries at all about the mention, you do lots of great stuff in the community and promoting people’s work so I’m keen to let others know about how great and talented the Articulate Community is and hopefully encourage them to join in – it’s really worth it!
All of the demos are on my server now, thanks for the offer to point them over I appreciate it! (no rush though, just when you get a chance).
Greetings Matt,
One looks forward to your blog developing and sharing your passion and professionalism.
Thanks Bill! I’m looking forward to it too!
Beautiful reflection, Matt.
Well done on the new look for a new beginning.
Thanks Ryan, much appreciated! E-Learning Provocateur was one of the first blogs I started reading and has helped me a lot with my own blogging, so thank-you 🙂
Matt –
I’ve enjoyed reading your Learning Snippets writings and am looking forward to your postings here. You’re doing a fantastic job of modeling L&D blogging and I hope to one day switch gears on my own site. Beautiful WordPress theme! Cheers!
Hi Melissa, it’s great to hear from you! Hope you’re going well 🙂
Thank-you for your lovely comments and for reading along, I really appreciate it. The theme is called Highend and I think it’s pretty cool plus you can do a lot with it too.
[…] Welcome to my new site! It’s been quite a few weeks in the making and I’m happy to finally launch it. I started writing on the Learning Snippets blog about 18 months ago and over that time I’ve cha… […]
Nice job Matt, I love the name of your blog, great idea. Yes, as a musician, I’ve learned that you don’t have to be the best at anything in particular, just put your best self forward. I heard a quote from Roy Disney recently where he said his uncle Walt never tried to achieve perfection, he just always focused on making things “better” than before, and that’s something we all can do.
Thanks Dan! That’s some great advice and making things better is something that I’m aiming for 🙂
Matt!! I haven’t been online that much lately and stumbled upon your new site quite incidentally!! Well done – interesting to hear that you have decided to focus on eLearning. I have to admit one of the things I enjoyed about your learning snippets blog was the diversity in topics covered – i hope you continue to bring some of these influences (e.g. performance support, ed psych theory, PLNs…) into these posts, even if you do incorporate more of an ‘elearning’ focus.
Working in the corporate elearning space, it sometimes frustrates me a little that “eLearning” has a very narrow focus => self paced online courses. Whereas this is merely one (limited) form of online learning – there is so much more potential in the online world other than just self paced courses. Of course, there remains a lot of potential to increase the quality of self paced courses (lamenting the fact it is STILL common for 30 screens of text + poorly written knowledge check assessment to pass as ‘eLearning’), to make them more ‘performance’ and activity focused. But it would be great to see how we might be able to expand the understanding from elearning = self paced course to elearning = a variety of online learning experiences through our practice. This I know is more complex (& inevitably involves the murky world of organisational and cultural change, politics, & shifting stakeholder expectations…and perhaps a conversation I should have in my own space rather than sabotaging yours!)
Anyway…I do also love the ‘show your work’ / work out loud theme of your new site and look forward to seeing your work, and how it evolves.
Thanks for stopping by Tanya! It’s great to hear from you 🙂
I’ll definitely be still blogging about some other topic areas but I’ll also be looking at eLearning in conjunction with some of those other things that you mentioned.
I definitely agree about the narrow focus of eLearning generally and I think it’s important to broaden the overall understanding as well as its potential, which is something that I want to explore more. In my view, eLearning is one of many tools available to organisations to improve performance and it should often be used in conjunction with other learning experiences. It’s a thing not always the thing.
You mention the potential to increase the overall quality of eLearning – YES! Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of great eLearning peeps out there but in my experience they are in the minority (or aren’t visible). I’m particularly keen to try to do something about this by giving useful, practical tips to (hopefully) bring about some change especially for those in roles where eLearning development is part of what they do. This is also where the show your work fits in by giving some ‘how to’ ideas. I have a few Storyline demos now so I’ll be tapping into them to show how I’ve done things.
I’ve also benefited greatly from different communities and I love being part of them so the site is also a place where I’m sharing resources and names of others who’ve helped me. The challenge is reaching people!
Hi Matt, a ‘very inspiring new beginning’ and your motivation and elearning section resonates well with me.
I am also at that stage where i feel I need to start writing and sharing. I completed my masters in educational technology (online education) about 10 years ago and have been working in the field of medical education, using technology to support and enhance the education and training programs for trainee doctors and medical students.
I have also been using articulate since 2009, self taught, and have just downloaded storyline 2, which Im very exciting about!! Until now I have always found I am too busy actually ‘creating’ to contribute to online communities such as articulate, and their elearning challenges, and to blog and share my insights in elearning. Well your site/blog has inspired me to make the change – thank you!
PS. If you could let me know how you went about setting up an account with an external hosting provider and utilising a WordPress.org site, I would be most appreciative
thanks
Kate