Hi, I'm Karl Richter

I've been a freelance eLearning designer since 2002. I'm a proud learning geek with a passion for the craft of learning design.

Some of the courses I design are strictly online, others face to face, or blended. I consider myself a blended learning specialist and believe that the best blends also include social learning or performance support tools. I'm the founder of a company called eLearning Blends and jokingly call myself the Head Blender.

My Education and Background

I actually started my career as a kindergarten teacher in Seoul Korea. After a year in Korea, I moved to Taichung City Taiwan. I taught ESL to elementary school children for 4 years before going to grad school. I do speak a little Korean and Mandarin, but I'm about as eloquent as Tarzan.

After life abroad, I returned and started going to grad school. I was overseas in the late 90s and had started taking online classes and thought as bandwidth improved that it would be a really interesting space to work in. So I took Educational Technology courses for my masters at night and worked in the school computer lab during the day. During my first semester of EDTEC, I learned there was a 9 month graphic design certificate program that was offered by the city of San Diego (for free). That period of my life was intense and very nerdy, but with 5 hours of graphic design starting at 7 am, then a day in the lab, then classes at night, I was totally immersed in the kind of work I do now.

I completed my MA in Educational Technology at San Diego State University in 2006, then began teaching online courses for SDSU while freelancing with the many wonderful people I met in the San Diego training community.

Some of the classes I used to teach include:.

• Exploratory Learning through Games and Simulations
• The Psychology of Online Learning
• Collaborative Learning with Blogs and Wikis

These days

I gave up teaching when we started having kids. My wonderful wife and I had 4 boys in 4 years so I couldn't manage to keep my business and my teaching going while being a Dad. I love speaking, entertaining, and hopefully inspiring people to get more out of life and their abilities. This course is a reflection of that passion.

You can probably tell from the beach video that I'm a Southern California dude. I currently live in Louisville, Kentucky with my wife, 4 boys, and a dog named Derby. My youtube channel and the courses I've created for this site are a new adventure. I hope you'll participate and join me as I share what I know about effective learning design.

Connect with me

I'm on LinkedIn and would love to connect.

I tweet as @elearningblends

I have a free newsletter that you can sign up for.

As well as a Youtube channel with tips and tricks for eLearning Designers.