Education and Training

This site contains education and training related special features. This is a major interest area for Ndarala professionals whether as educators and trainers or in providing advice to the sector.

In addition to their client work, our professional also participate actively in discussions, especially on-line, on professional matters. In this context, selective links with comments follow on some sites that we have found to be of special interest. There is a focus on blogs because increasingly this the way in which experts, and many not so expert (there are over 51 million blogs world wide), make their views available. We use selected blogs as a way of keeping in touch as well as debating issues that happen to interest us.

Blogs dealing with e-learning and the on-line world include:

• Learning Circuits Blog: sponsored by the American Society for Training and Development, this blog is a good way of keeping in touch with issues in the world both of e-learning and of training from a US perspective.
• eLearning Technology: written by Dr Tony Karrer, CEO of TechEmpower, this blog useful in looking at some of the technical and training issues associated with the application of e-learning in bigger organisations.
• eelearning: written by Dave Lee, this blog is a more eclectic and general blog dealing with training and related issues with a special focus on the on-line world.
• Corporate eLearning Development: Brent Schenkler is an enthusiastic technical expert whose blog includes a lot of material that makes one think.
• Managing the Professional Services Firm: this Group blog includes material on training and people management in a professional services environment. 
• Personal Reflections: Jim Belshaw's personal blog containing frequent musing and links on education and training issues.

Moving from training specific blogs, Academia online by Andrew Leigh is the simplest explanation we know as to the potential importance of the e-world to individual academics. Richard MacManus's Read/WriteWeb is an excellent blog on next generation web and media containing a range of useful material and comments.

Turning now to blogs as such, there was an interesting debate on Learning Circuits about the role of blogs as a knowledge management tool, in the development of communities of practice and as a training related communications device. Mobile Blogs, Personal Reflections and Learning Environments by Paul Trafford is an interesting article looking at the role of blogs in higher education from a UK perspective.

Other education and training related articles on this site include:

• Developing Ophthalmic Competencies, a case study on the development of ophtalmic competencies in the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists
• Case Study: Potential use of Blogs as a communications device within specialist medical colleges
• People Management in Professional Services - a training primer looks at some of the issues associated with improved training in professional services firms