Things change - my blog aggregator closed down. Apparently they decided that their business is irrelevant in this age of instant information. To find a replacement, I went to Jane Hart's Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, but ultimately decided just to set up an iGoogle home page.

I'm active on LinkedIn, but so far I haven't been compelled to tweet or follow twitter streams when sitting at the computer. Some of the online discussion groups I participate in include the eLearning Guild, ISD Now, Creative Designers and Writers, Multimedia and E-Learning Professionals,  Instructional Systems Design Professional, and Instructional Design and E-Learning Professionals Group. I also like to create art or designs for e-learning. And then there's my whole life away from the computer, which involves tennis, bicycle commuting, skiing, and gardening. It's best to have a healthy balance in where my energy is directed!

After years of using the CourseBuilder extension for Dreamweaver, I just recently learned how to really use the Action Manager to judge interactions. This is useful for creating a scored quiz on one html page. On a related note, I've found a great book to help me advance my understanding of JavaScript, called Programming for e-Learning Developers by Jeffrey M. Rhodes.

To see an interesting use of audio in e-learning, check out a Flash file from a course I designed and built. Note how the sound of the voice from the text to speech converter (first link) contrasts with the sound of the human voice (second link). In this sample, I used the artificial voice to advantage. In most cases, the quality would not be acceptable for more extensive use, as in narration.

I recently enjoyed helping ASTD-Md. celebrate its 60^th anniversary. The event included the annual conference session featuring Bob Pike. Self-described as one who “trains trainers to train,” Bob demonstrated many participant-centered techniques as he led us masterfully through the session. He encouraged us to join the professional association because its like Cheers, where everyone knows what you do. Certainly this event proved to be a good learning and networking opportunity.

While presenting at DevCon 2009 in Salt Lake City, I had a nice live blogging experience. Check out Mahdi's blog as he progresses through a series of conference sessions. It's all captured in fine detail with pictures to tell the story. Speaking of graphics, scroll down the blog to read about the first session of the day, which was my session called "I See What You Mean! Visual Design in eLearning."

Visit my SlideShare site to vote for my PowerPoint presentation called 'One Presenter's Story' entered in the Tell a Story contest. I hope I win for best creative design.