IDT Resources and Blogs: Scratching the Surface!

The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) is an invaluable resource for the IDT professional. You will find the most extensive amount of training and IDT information available on this well established website. While their site partially intends to promote their training programs and conferences, there is an incredible amount of “free” information available on this site for non-members. That said, I highly recommend becoming a member of ASTD as membership will get you significant discounts on their programs, give you access to a wealth of in-depth articles and a subscription to their monthly publication, T+D magazine. T+D magazine, available online and in traditional print, never fails to provide meaningful articles by industry leaders on cutting edge learning technologies, best practices and cutting edge approaches to training (both f2f and eLearning). You will also find practical information on the challenges of IDT and training professionals with recommendations and innovative solutions. ASTD is the leading professional organization in the Training and Development industry. Be sure to check them out!

 The Instructional Design & Development Blog is a well developed site through DePaul University. There is some excellent blogging going on there amongst students and professionals of IDT. Some of the interesting categories include Pedagogy (the art and science of teaching), Web Tools, Digital Living, Video & Audio and Library. Bloggers share their experiences with various development tools and provide recommendations, tips and tricks. This is an active and interesting blogging site.
 If you've spent any time reviewing blogs, you realize that - generally speaking - you must be a tad skeptical and always consider the source when reading or gathering information. Everyone has an opinion and it's a good idea to consider blogs a place where people share them! That said, educational and professional forums and sites like ASTD's tend to provide more reliable and valid content. The point is, it's important to keep your "critical thinking" cap on when exploring the world of blogs and forums.

The Innovative Learning website has an impressive collection of information and resources. The site provides clear and concise information about various aspects of instructional design, online learning, instructional technology and Teaching and Learning. A list of Educational Blogs is available with a link to the Innovative Learning blog.

Another site I ran across was Instructional Design Central. They provide a well rounded list of IDT resources on everything from ID History and ID Models to ID Jobs. The IDC Forums and Blogs offer a place for discussions and exchanges on ID Design Resources, eLearning Technology and Tools and ID Theory & Models. This seems to be a fairly new site but appears to be a good place to share information or post your IDT related questions for discussion. The Blogs and Forums sections of the site has the potential to be quite helpful – particularly for those new to wiki’s/blogs and IDT. The site is well organized and easy to navigate. The non-intimidating simplicity of the IDC site, wiki discussions and blogs might be good place for folks that are new to blogs and wiki's to get their feet wet.