D Foster Associates

As part of an ongoing project I have with the New England Learning Association (NELA) the new NELA Blog was launched today.  The goal of the project is to extend the interaction and learning of the NELA community by creating ongoing discussions and involvement that occurs both before, during and after the events take place.  As part of this project I will be moderating and hosting the blog.

One of the bit issues that Allan Cole, the Founder and Executive Director of NELA had when discussing the goals of the blog was how to make it not just turn into a re-hash of everything else that is available on the web with a cut and paste of links to other blogs.  We came up with three key concepts.

1. Take advantage of NELA’s live events, but extend them by creating discussion before, during and after the event.  This will be done by posting questions or resources for members to read prior to a talk, and then by generating discussion after the talk to gather member’s thoughts and examples of how they will implement what they learned from the talk in their own projects.
2. Rather than just sharing press releases from NELA’s partners, the focus will be on getting partners or members to share real-life lessons learned from a project, or even their biggest mistake or wrong assumption and how they would avoid that in the future.
3. Take advantage of NELA’s global connections to help members learn about what is happening in the eLearning industry around the globe.  By fostering these connections members will get information and feedback not just from their local peers, but also from people with a different global perspective.

Allan and I feel that this will make the blog unique and more importantly a valuable resource to NELA members.

So, stay tuned, it is bound to provide some interesting feedback and lessons learned as it evolves.