And no worries… this blog isn’t going anywhere. I think we all know by now that my thoughts and opinions are my own, right? I’m still still blogging and tweeting and writing Well Read, and The ToolBar will be off of hiatus soon. I have stuff planned. Stay tuned.

Picture of Nike’s main campus by shemp65 on Flickr.

Wednesday

11:00 – Facilitating the Storyline Creation Station

12:30 – Panelist-ing for the Authoring Tools/HTML5 TK Chat

2:00 – Moderating the Gamification TK Chat

Thursday

11:00 – Facilitating the Storyline Creation Station

12:30 – Moderating the Experience Design/Activity Streams TK Chat

Other than that, I know I’ll be at the general sessions and I’ll be at TechKafe a lot. (By the way, if you have an iPad stylus you like, meet me at TechKafe and let me try it out!)

Looking forward to meeting lots of new people… Find me on Twitter and say Hi!

And whether you’re at home or in Vegas, remember to follow the backchannel with hashtag #astdtk12.

Update: Remember the conference app!

• Linking to other pages within the course. This is a huge step up in interactivity because it enables branching. Woot!
• Interaction templates. Think Engage/Quizmaker-type interactions and other common types. You can also create your own.
• Characters and clipart. They’ve licensed eLearning Brothers and other clipart packages to provide a variety of characters, clothes, and poses, as well as general clipart. I really like the design of the “People Browser”; they’ve put a lot of thought into the usability of it, particularly the filters that remember your choices on a course level so that it’s easy to come back and choose a different pose of the same character you’re using.
• New, extensive template library.
• Tables and shapes. Just what they sound like.
• Various usability additions such as find/replace, new keyboard shortcuts, a color picker, and the ability to change formatting on lists.
• Easy reviewing on a mobile device. I think you’ve always been able to email a link to a course for review, but now you can also pop up a QR code, point your device at the screen, and review. Just like that.
• Ability to copy and paste pages between mobile and regular versions of a course.

Other enhancements since the review include publishing to SCORM Cloud and, most impressively, a much more developed separation of the content layer from the navigation and visuals. If you aren’t familiar with it, so I’m going to suffice it to say (for now) that if you have content that resides in several courses, it’s possible — and easy — to update it once and have those changes reflected in multiple places.

All in all, this software is becoming more and more interesting to me. It still lacks variables and highly customizable actions, but for people who want easy, usable, reviewable online, and HTML5 publishing, I like how it’s shaping up.

Update: An earlier version of this post stated that Claro included an eLearning Art package instead of eLearning Brothers. Thanks, dominKnow, for notifying me of the error!

And I just came across some excellent blog posts written by their technical director, Alex Mackman (@AlexAtCMGroup). In the age of the Flash vs. HTML5 Ring of Death, I really value well-reasoned opinions and correct information, and he’s giving both. Flash and HTML5 for eLearning is the most recent.

I should note: Luminosity Studio publishes to both HTML5 and Flash.

And we have another special guest episode: Brian and I talked with my boss, Diane Elkins, about accessibility: philosophies, design, and tools.

Brian drank Sailing Santa, I drank Collaboration #2, and Diane drank apple cider and Captain Morgan.

Well Read will highlight books that are outside of the traditional learning milieu but that have an impact on our practice. The idea is to explore the many aspects of our work through experts in other fields, then apply this expertise in a meaningful way to our challenges. Kind of a Liberal Arts approach to the field of learning.

One of the first topics I wanted to explore was the creative element of learning design — and in particular, how to help creativity thrive with the fluorescent lights and deadline pressures that most learning designers labor under. So the initial installment explores The Creative Habit with choreographer Twyla Tharp.

I discovered when writing this first installment that there were far more takeaways in the book than I could address in the normal column length, so I encourage you to read the book and add to the comments what you found you could apply to your own work. And if you have ideas for future installments, feel free to leave a comment here or get in touch on Twitter (@jkunrein).

Enjoy!

In this special episode, Brian and I grill Julie Dirksen on usability, learner experience design, and her new book, Design for How People Learn.

Brian drank St. Arnold Christmas Ale, I drank Dead Guy Ale, and Julie drank Woodchuck Dark and Dry Cider.

Thanks for stopping by, Julie! We had a blast and we hope you come back soon.

Short version: I loved it. Buy it. Great job!

New features include:

• An option for publishing accessible courses that turns on alt tags, turns off “web 2.0″-style popups, and makes video controller buttons more easily read by screen readers. All of these can be done individually within the program, so it’s more of a failsafe for developers who are already aware of accessibility guidelines than a “now-there-is-a-checkbox-that-makes-my-course-508-compliant” thing, but it’s nice to have.
• Ability to add text blocks to forms
• Ability to add streaming audio
• Ability to select font size, type, and color for imported questions

…And the biggest feature is ReviewLink, currently in beta. Diane Elkins wrote up a comparison among ReviewLink, Adobe Captivate Reviewer, and Rapid Intake REVIEW on the E-Learning Uncovered Blog.

You can see the webinar demonstrating these new features here.

Have you ever seen better-looking panels? I think not.

I’ll still keep up here now and then, and I’ll link up all posts below…

Dec 7: What Do We Mean When We Say HTML5?

Dec 14: HTML5–What’s the Urgency?

Dec 23: Gearing Up for a Laptop-Free TechKnowledge 2012

Dec 30: Looking Forward to TechKnowledge 2012!

1) Don’t panic. This doesn’t mean someone is going to reach into your phone or computer and take away software that you — or your learners — already have. How long has it been since Internet Explorer 6 has been in active development? And yet… it’s still around in more organizations than I want to know about.

2) Having said that, mobile devices and mobile browsers get upgraded more frequently than desktop/laptop ones, so there’s an increased chance that your — and your learners’ — next mobile devices won’t play Flash content.

I’m still seeing a lot of posts covering this issue that are either very sensationalistic or self-serving, in my view. But what I find most interesting in the whole “HTML5 vs. Flash” debate is that people are mostly arguing about when the future is getting here. There is very little disagreement that the future is HTML5.

It seems like a long time in advance to make this announcement; I can’t remember that happening before (but feel free to correct me), so I started reflecting a bit on the timing.

A year and a half ago, I wrote that software that has delivered HTML content all along (including Lectora), was poised to seize huge opportunities in the market. Since then, Trivantis hasn’t released many improvements to Lectora that either take advantage of new-in-HTML5 parts of the HTML spec or improve existing capabilities so that they work better in mobile browsers.

In the meantime, rumors of Storyline’s ease-of-use are rampant, and since it’s a new tool that will publish to HTML5, it’s reasonable to expect that it is developed with modern technology — particularly mobile devices and browsers — in mind. And Storyline was widely rumored to be launching at DevLearn in early November.

Gotta think it was smart of Trivantis to let their customers know before DevLearn that they’re on the job, but the fact that they don’t say anything about features — particularly publishing — gives me pause. If I worked for a company that used one main authoring tool and it was Lectora, I would be happy with the prospect of a new interface in nine months or so, but I would also want to know that Trivantis is finally making Lectora that kick-ass, powerful, HTML5-publishing software I’ve been waiting for.

If you’re interested in getting in on the beta for the new Lectora, sign up here.

…friends that keep me sane.

…a professional network that constantly opens my mind to things I don’t yet know.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

In this long-overdue episode, Brian and I chat about DevLearn 2011, the stuff we learned there, the sessions we presented and some of the ones we attended that are still on our minds, HTML5, Claro, ZebraZapps’ much-anticipated launch, and… probably more.

And… we now have theme music! Big thanks to Scott Unrein for composing and producing it.

It’s in Las Vegas in January. C’mon, cut me some slack… I live in Central Oregon and while our new-fallen snow is lovely, I know it will be old by January.

TK Chats are back! These informal sessions that debuted last year are returning, with an expanded schedule. I’ve tended to really focus on concurrent sessions in the past, but I have some TK Chat responsibilities as part of the planning committee this year and I’m really warming up to their value.  More experts, more learner-driven. What’s not to love?

Games, games, games. With a keynote by Jane McGonigal, concurrent sessions by Dr. Karl Kapp, Rick Raymer, and others.. and a TK Chat devoted to the topic, I think you’re going to have ample opportunities to get past the hype and figure out what relevance gaming/gamification/gamefulness has to your elearning. The conversation is already brewing on the TechKnowledge 2012 Conference Blog.

I’m guest blogging for Learning Circuits in December, so I’ll share more of what I’m looking forward to there as the conference approaches. I hope to see you there… and at TechKnowledge!

(Warning: TK Chat schedule is still in flux. So now you have a sneak peek into the plans, but don’t set your watch yet.)

The Last Airbender. An avatar.

Here’s the bottom line, readers: I love you. And I don’t want you to get called out by “people who know”. Ya know?

So here are the common definitions for the word avatar:

1. A representation of Vishnu.

2. A personification or embodiment of an ideal. (This is the Avatar: The Last Airbender definition.)

3. A representation of oneself. (This is the James Cameron’s Avatar definition. It also describes a character you control in an online game or virtual world.)

There is very little elearning with avatars by those definitions. A learning agent is not an avatar. Neither are characters in a scenario.

We already have a lot of jargon in our industry that muddies the waters for both solution providers and purchasers. Especially as character packs gain popularity, I’d love to see us have more clarity around this term.

What is the best version of IE to begin practicing with? IE10 seems to be out in developer version only and was wondering if you felt IE9 would be sufficient.

If you’re doing internal corporate training, you need to first focus on the browsers that your company provides or allows. There’s no point in developing something for IE9 if your company standard is still IE6 (and I really hope it’s not).

caniuse.com is an excellent resource for checking browser compatibility with modern web technologies. If you have the ability to influence browser adoption at your company and are asking which one to recommend, compare browsers based on specific technologies that you want to deliver (or that your authoring tool delivers). You’re going to find that often, the answer to “which version of IE?” is “not IE”.

My guess, though, is that most of us are in a situation of just delivering to the browser(s) that our companies allow and/or provide. The trend I’ve seen with clients is that companies are allowing and accommodating different operating systems, different browsers, and different versions, including those that might be on different devices (such as tablets). That means testing our content in multiple environments and choosing tools and processes that enable us to deliver to those environments successfully.

Our Takeaways from DevLearn 2011 (with Diane Elkins)

DevLearn 2011 – Notes from One ID Challenge and HTML5 Authoring Tool Review.

And just a few more shout-outs before I’m done…

Props to David Kelly for taking on the monster task of assembling the vast resources shared at this conference. Great job!

Thumbs up to Nick Floro for spreading the good word about HTML5 and elearning on the big stage — the Ignite! session. (I gave him a one-woman standing ovation. Guess that pretty much solidifies the I’m a Big Nerd thing.)

Congratulations to Michael Allen and his team on the release of ZebraZapps! I encourage everyone to check out this amazing authoring software.

And though I know it’s been said 1001 times, thank you to Brent Schlenker and the eLearning Guild for putting together an amazing event. I’ll be back.

Update: How could I forget? Cammy Bean does a super job of liveblogging sessions and she did a lot of them at DevLearn. Not being as awesome of a note-taker as I want to be, I’m so appreciative of people who capture their takeaways well. Thanks, Cammy!

So, for regular readership and those who might have wandered here because of that session, here’s the super-short version:

I created two versions of a course with only a slight difference in multimedia, then invited participants to take the course, tracking behind the scenes which participants were given which version. I reported on the differences in:

• immediate understanding of the content (level 2 for those of you who roll that way)
• self-reported engagement measures (level 1)
• LMS-reported engagement measures (whether the learners finished the course, how much they explored the optional areas)

And what aspect of multimedia did I test? I specifically focused on the use of a fully animated learning agent* — one that moves her lips and gestures with her hands — versus a static (image-only) one. And I found no statistically significant difference in positive outcomes. Zero. Zip. Nada. Bupkus.

So basically, if you’re thinking about sinking a lot of development time or money into developing fully animated learning agents in hopes of increasing engagement or retention, I think this is research that you will want to read. Some vendors of those tools distribute research that others have done, supporting the use of learning agents in some situations, but nowhere in my background research or in this project did I find evidence that animation — lip synchronization, hand gestures, body movements — increases positive outcomes.

You can read the full report here, and I would love to receive your feedback, comments, and questions below.

* A learning agent, also called an animated pedagogical agent (and sometimes dubiously called an avatar), is a character that guides the learner through the course, somewhat like a teacher, although learning agents can be interactive or merely multimedia. 

It looks like the converter is now at “Preview 2″ stage. Here’s the press release from Adobe, including a link to download. I’ll definitely be carving out some time to try this out in the next couple of days. Feel free to let me know about your experiences here!

The trend — or maybe it’s too soon to call it a trend, and I hope it doesn’t become one — is that vendors are claiming that their software “publishes to HTML5″, when in fact it just takes the content — which may well be interactive — and publishes it to video. Which pretty much makes it worthless.

I sat in on the HTML5 Morning Buzz at DevLearn and also presented on HTML5 authoring tools (and I will do a longer post on that soon, I promise). I can tell you there’s still a lot of misinformation floating around, and (shocker) it looks like there are some vendors trying to take advantage of it.

I try to keep onehundredfortywords readers pretty well informed about HTML5 in the elearning world, but here’s another point to take to heart: Any authoring tool and any output is only good if it serves your design, which serves the learning/business need. Flawless publishing to HTML5 doesn’t do you any good if the tool isn’t capable of creating — and publishing — the interactivity you’ve designed.

5 Things You Should Never Do In Your Presentation. From Ethos3, a new resource for me but one I’ll be returning to.

The latest episode of Back to Work. Merlin and Dan share thoughts on presentation culture, for presenters and their hosts.

The DevLearn Conference Backchannel. The eLearning Guild has taken an extremely proactive approach toward spreading the knowledge shared at DevLearn. Contribute and make it easy for everyone else to do so by using #devlearn or #devlearn-xxx (xxx = the session number). Presenters, encourage participation by including your session number and your Twitter name on the first slide of your visuals.

See you next week!

Update: One more great one… Writing (And Reading) Conference Session Descriptions, by Clark Quinn, in eLearn Magazine. This is a topic rarely addressed, and Clark gives some great tips.

Photo credit: Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas! by Amyn Kassam. Altered under a Creative Commons license.

Update: Regular PDF version here.

In the article, I look at two “mature” tools that have been on the market for years — decades, even — and two that are brand-new. Lectora and ToolBook are the ones you may already have, and Claro and mLearning Studio are two new ones that you may want to consider if you’re interested in developing for HTML5 delivery. I’ll be continuing to develop this topic at DevLearn in a couple of weeks, on Learning Circuits in December, and beyond… so as always, let me know if you know of new tools that come onto the scene.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Kelly Meeker, OpenSesame’s community manager, about her job. If you’re not familiar with OpenSesame, it’s a marketplace for elearning. Kind of like the Apple app store. Except for elearning.

~

OpenSesame lauched at DevLearn 2010 and when I heard about it, my first thought was, “That’s a business model that depends on huge community awareness and involvement; you can’t get the purchasers without the providers and you can’t get the providers without the purchasers.” Is that a challenge, and if so, how has it influenced your approach to community management?

You have correctly nailed the big challenge for us, which is that we have two major audiences and we have to develop both at the same time… we need a strong and lively community of sellers who are adding awesome elearning courses to the marketplace in order to have customers who are interested in talking to us, and obviously we need to have some customers in order for content developers to add their content to the site. So that is a big challenge and something we’ve been aware of from the beginning.

We started out in terms of our community building approach by thinking about where people are hanging out and how we could take part in that community in an authentic and helpful way. It’s always been our objective in all of our community building to be helpful and useful and honest and never behave in a salesman-like way. That’s our #1 objective: to be a member of the community.

That’s our wide approach, and on a more tactical level, we’ve done a lot of research on where people are in the physical world and where they’re hanging out in terms of conferences people are engaged in and what we can do to be fun and take part in those conversations. And then where people are hanging out in the virtual world, social media conversations are a great place for us to engage, and we’ve made a lot of great connections in both the buyer and seller communities, both online and off.

It’s really funny that you mentioned that authentic interaction, because one of the first exchanges I ever had with you on Twitter, you said to me, “HAVE YOU NO SOUL?” I thought it was really funny that someone would say that who was a marketer and didn’t know me, because you were interacting in such a down-to-earth way. Has that ever been a bad thing; has it ever come back to bite you?

I honestly don’t think it’s ever bitten us back… I think people appreciate being treated as humans beings and having a conversation from one actual person to another. I think most people who I talk to on Twitter on a regular basis know that I’m Kelly – that the person who’s tweeting from @OpenSesameNow is Kelly and she writes a blog and you might have met her at a conference or a meetup. And that’s how I want to interact on a personal level on Twitter… I don’t want to be just the voice of a brand; that doesn’t appeal to me and most people don’t want to talk to an anonymous company name; they want to talk to someone who has something to say of interest.

I think you caught me at my very sassiest, though; because it’s hard to read tone, I normally try to stay away from anything that might be even marginally offensive. I’m normally pretty sarcasm-free. You see conversations that go wrong in social media all the time just because someone doesn’t understand that somebody else is joking. So normally my rules are: No politics, no sports teams, no religion, and try to keep sarcasm at a minimum.

Well, I think at the time, Brian [Dusablon] and I were already having a pretty playful Twitter conversation, so it was probably a safe bet, but those are probably smart rules anyway! So you mentioned your meetups… I know you’re on Twitter pretty much 24×7 as far as I can tell…

(Laughing) It’s on my iPhone!

..and then you guys have the meetups in Portland and you’re at a lot of conferences. Where else are you engaging people that you think has been a good payoff?

Let’s see… the conferences have been great in general. I think you’ve seen… we do our hoody game where we give away a bunch of OpenSesame hoodies and use them to play a game in which people can win iPads and iPods and stuff…

(Laughing) Hmm, I think I’m familiar with it…

Yeah, I was about to say… We’ve given away about 5000 hoodies in the last year and that’s been one of the really fun and successful things, and it’s just so great to meet people in person and not just engage on Twitter, as much as I enjoy Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook and Quora and all the other communities I’m in. And we have been organizing the regular monthly Portland-based elearning meetups and we’ve also been trying to do some on-the-road meetups when we’re going to conferences. We had a great thing at B.B. King’s Blues Club in Orlando during ASTD ICE and Dawn Mahoney and Shannon Tipton came and we hung out for a couple of hours and it was really fun. These are people I talk to on Twitter a lot, and it was fun to find out that we really enjoyed each other’s company in person, as well. It’s kind of a treat to meet people in person.

So, this series is all about highlighting great things that people are doing in instructional design and related topics, and not only do I like some of the things that you’re doing, you mentioned in a comment on a previous post some of the people who have influenced you. Would you like to expand on that?

Oh, sure! I had mentioned Aaron Silvers because from a community management perspective, he’s so great at listening to all of the conversations that are happening in a wide variety of different areas and participating and referring people to other sources and answers; he always seems to know what link to send… it’s just a magical skill of his and I’ve benefitted incredibly in terms of creating my own reading list and getting up to speed on technical stuff.

I also met him in person at TechKnowledge in San Jose in February and he very graciously introduced me to a lot of people who were there. So from an in-person community management perspective, he introduced me around and helped me feel at home, which was great because a lot of people there already had strong ties. He does an amazing job for ADL, introducing people to what the SCORM standard is in a human way, and not just in a here’s-some-technical-documentation-scary-manual way; he really helps people find the answers they need in a targeted way, which is one of the most important roles a community manager can fill when they’re advocating for an organization or product. He’s like the Godfather.

That’s… so very true and I’m pretty sure he’s going to love that! Why don’t you wrap us up by giving your top tips for community building?

The first thing I tell people when they ask for advice on this is to be yourself and not be afraid or feel limited by speaking for a brand or organization or company. People want to talk to another human being and not a disembodied marketing bot. So don’t be afraid to say things that reveal that you have a personality, other than just speaking for your organization.

The second thing is that it’s fine if you have a message to get out there, but it’s really important to help other people get their questions answered and get the help they need and connect them with other people. I always tell people who are wondering how to get involved in social media… a good rule of thumb for me is that at least 50% of my communication should be a reply or an answer or a helpful something-or-another… not that I’m counting all my tweets to see if they abide by a formula, but it’s a good reminder for me that people don’t just want to hear me pumping my own blog posts or whatever out into the world. They also want me to listen to what they’re saying and respond. So to me, the 50/50 rule is just a helpful thing to make sure I’m listening.

The third thing is that people love to be asked for their feedback. We’re a new company with new products and we want feedback, so I am always blatant about asking for it. We’re rolling out a new website design soon, so we’ve asked people on Twitter what they think of mockups. I think people want to help and they appreciate that you care what they think.

Kelly will be at DevLearn 2011 (in person!) with the OpenSesame crew. Be sure to stop by and say Hi to them and play the hoody game. Also, check out their new website. They totally put a bird on it.

I wrote up takeaways from mLearning DevCon for the E-Learning Uncovered blog, but also to reiterate here what I’ve said before: The most enriching part of most conferences is the connections and conversations they generate. On that score, this brand-new conference shone; I met Judy Brown, Chuck Udell, and Nick Floro for the first time, as well as David Kelly (a local, not a conference attendee).

On my side of the country this week, I made it to one day of ASTD-Cascadia’s conference, and for the most part was quite impressed by the level of presentation for this regional event. I saw some speakers who will be at TK12 (Todd Hudson, Dr. Steve Villachica), and it was great to meet some L&D pros in my neighborhood!

Coming soon… DevLearn11!

For this episode, Brian and I invited Kevin “Nuggethead” Thorn to pull up a barstool. Kevin is well-known for his charming graphic designs and ability to leverage story in his elearning courses… as well as his tendency to win stuff like Articulate Guru and DemoFest awards. So we were thrilled to talk with him about design tools and processes, software selection, and prototyping. He even opened the Storyline kimono a bit.

Thanks to Kevin for dropping by, and I hope you all have as much fun with this one as we did.

Using Apple products has taught me about usability. About elegance, in form and function. About how I want to design.  The fact that the good stuff is winning is a win for everyone.

Thank you, Steve.

Of particular note to onehundredfortywords readers, I believe, are the new functionality and media for characters/learning agents. In short: The new functionality is pretty cool, but the included characters leave much to be desired.

In it, Brian Dusablon and I create our wish list for a full-course elearning authoring app while I drink Chatoe Rogue Single Malt Ale and Brian drinks Shiner Blonde. (Warning: gratuitous Flash on Shiner’s website… sigh.) Enjoy Episode 6!

And by the way, a special thanks from both of us to the listeners who have left a rating or review for us oniTunes. Cheers to you!

I am pleased to share that I have an article published in Learning Solutions Magazine today. It’s called Overcoming Objections to Elearning, and if you’re starting — or thinking about starting — an elearning initiative at your company, you may want to check it out.

 Please enjoy and add your thoughts!

It's difficult to find images of single huckleberries, probably because they're so small. This one was taken in Mt. Hood National Forest and can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

Last year, after rewatching Tombstone, I looked up the origin of the phrase I’m your huckleberry. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, click that link or go watch Tombstone now. I’ll wait.) According to Wikipedia, it means “I’m just the person for the job”, which is based on an affectionate slang meaning of huckleberry as something small, even insignificant. For some reason, it’s always been particularly evocative for me… I’m sure my love of Tombstone has a lot to do with that.

We often talk about how we are asked to solve not-training-problems with training, but what about training problems for which someone wants an overengineered solution? Have you been asked to create a series of screencasts for something that should be a couple of online job aids? For software projects, could you create a framework — even a menu page — that links to off-the-shelf training instead of creating a whole new series? If the software the company is using isn’t custom, there’s a good chance that the training doesn’t need to be either… unless you can’t find any on the market that meets your quality standards.

Because I’m a custom elearning designer, it may seem odd that this is my perspective, but the truth is, creating yet another Excel screencast is low on the list of projects that keep me on the edge of my seat. And more importantly, if I provide an over-engineered solution, it’s not going to be the most effective or efficient one for the job.

It’s my job to be the ID expert — to propose and provide just what the situation needs. And sometimes that means not baking a pie… sometimes, all you need is a huckleberry.

Edited on 9/8.

Here’s what I mean: ADDIE is a project management model. And while it doesn’t inform interaction design, the other models in this series don’t tell us much about managing projects. And project management is an important part of most IDs’ jobs.

I’ve seen an increasing awareness in the last few years that elearning projects benefit from some of the same methods as software development. Just two examples: Michael Allen has long promoted successive approximation (again, read Designing Successful E-Learning for more). And my coworker, Tanya Coomes, just made another contribution: her visualization of elearning project planning à la SCRUM.

What else would you recommend to IDs looking for project management resources?

I just finished listening to the second episodes of The Overcast and The Undercast, two new series from fellow Emergent Radio podcasteers Aaron Silvers and Brian Dusablon. Now it’s your turn.

Each episode of The Overcast deals with an organizational issue from a management/leadership perspective and is accompanied by an episode of The Undercast, which deals with similar issues from a worker bee perspective.

The first episodes cover TechWeek and the importance of having a great story.

The second episodes cover ImplementationFest, the Learning Registry, and lots of other good stuff.

These guys are brilliant, they’re doing great stuff to push the industry forward, and they’re fun to listen to. Which is pretty much what Emergent Radio is all about.

This is not something I would normally post. It irks me when people write about bad news just for ratings and retweets, so I don’t do posts like this unless I feel I have something to add to the discussion… or at least have something I just want to share.

I was one of the many people who were saddened by the news that Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple. Not shocked, but saddened. Because we know why. And we know if it can happen to one of the most powerful, vital, willful people in the world…

I hate that this is going to sound like a eulogy, because now is not the time. But it’s what I want to say. Thanks for the inspiration, Steve. Thanks for making good stuff.

Update: I have to admit, I’m a little embarrassed for being mushy. I’ve reworked this post several times in an effort to better say what I mean. But there are many others out there reading stuff that resonates with me… from cheerful remembrance to company analysis. I’m going to keep a short list here of some of my favorites.
Aaron Silvers: Influence (which influenced this post and some others below)
John Gruber: Resigned
Brent Schlenker: My Journey to Apple Products
Brian Dusablon: A Brilliant Man Makes a Graceful Exit
Shawn Blanc: Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple CEO
Scott Unrein: A Bicycle for Our Minds

As organizations start focusing more on social learning, I see more instructional designer roles that include community management. So I thought I’d highlight a few things about a very active and successful community in our field: the community of Articulate users.

First, no one can deny that they have rock star community managers; Tom Kuhlmann’s Rapid E-Learning Blog has over 80,000 subscribers and his and Dave Anderson’s demos at conferences pack the aisles. But the community — online and offline — is much more.

I think Articulate has embraced that people are good and that they want to help others, and building on that, they’ve created an easy-to-use place for people to share their issues and help each other… including sharing files (something that other communities have typically shied away from). They’re encouraging expansion of their tools through the developer’s forums. They have several staff members who actively engage with the community — including executives from time to time. Even the design of the community landing page reflects their focus on authenticity and engagement with community members:

And the result is that they have a small army of designers and developers helping each other troubleshoot, learn, and improve each other’s elearning… not to mention talking up new products. Nancy Duarte writes in Resonate that your audience members are the heroes of your story, because they will become the champions of your idea. Articulate has applied that same concept to community management.

What do you think? What do you like or dislike? Who else’s community management skills do you admire?

Also, I drink Conflux #2, a superb collaboration by Deschutes Brewery and Boulevard Brewery, and Brian drinks just another brown ale.

Enjoy Episode 5!

Some time ago, I reconnected with an old friend via Facebook. Of all of the very smart, geeky, computer-loving people I went to school with, his mind was probably the most engineer-like. When he found out what I do for a living, he expressed some negative opinions about how most elearning is designed and built. He said elearning designers could take some lessons from how Google does instruction.

Google has a reputation for being an engineer’s engineering company, so it’s hardly a surprise that their design appeals to my friend. I find Google’s style very instructive for designing for engineers, but I also think it’s just a good all-around lesson in performance support. Here’s an example:

Over the last few years I’ve set up Google Apps for several organizations. Google takes new admins through a setup wizard, and while I’m not ordinarily a fan of “wizards”, they’re much more helpful than traditional elearning when you’re doing something you do rarely or will only do once.

Over time, the setup wizard has gotten prettier and has added niceties like instructional videos, but it has kept what I like in the basic documentation:

• Instructions are clear and to the point.
• When a link to another help file is appropriate, it’s there.
• It’s interactive, but not so that you stay “engaged”. The interactivity is designed to give you only the information you need, only when you need it.

I’ve taken a few screen shots to illustrate this last point. Click any image to see it full-sized.

Progress through the wizard is clearly marked; it even remembers your place if you close your browser and come back later. If you skip an essential step, it gives you a clear warning.

When there are multiple options in the process, it lets you decide which set of instructions to see rather than presenting them all. This makes the process feel simpler and faster.

When there is more than one way to complete a process, the alternate instructions are hidden, but clearly accessible.

What do you think about Google Apps’ performance support? Who else does this well?

You may never have heard of the website Rouxbe(pronounced Ruby, but with the cooking pun)… Not being particularly interested in cooking, I hadn’t seen it until my husband brought it to my attention. It’s an online cooking school produced in partnership with the Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver and it utilizes video to teach people the basics of cooking.

Here’s what I love about the videos:

• They’re short, focused, and extremely practical.
• When they explain something that can’t be easily seen, like the molecules in a metal pan moving around in response to increased heat, they find a clever way to demonstrate it (like putting peppercorns in the pan to show motion).
• The navigation makes it super-easy to jump around… yay for demanding learners like me!

I am an instructional designer and I hate instructional video. Including screencasts. Well, I hate a lot of it. As a learner, I like to be able to jump right to what I want. Most instructional video makes it difficult to do that, and a lot of it is too long and just boring. (Whether it’s their intention or not, I think Screenr and Jing/Screencast.com are doing our industry a big favor by limiting their screencasts to 5 minutes, but many videos should be shorter.)

Enter Apple. Now, I know what you’re going to say. Apple is in the business of selling, not instructing. Apple’s products are so simple to use, they barely even require any instruction; your job is tougher. Both of those things are true.

To the first protest, I would counter that instruction should almost always have some aspect of motivation — of “selling” a process, procedure, policy, or belief. (That’s the reason I think Apple’s technique is worth mentioning, even though lauding Apple for design is slightly easier than shooting fish in a barrel.) To the second, I’d say that some things are beyond your control. If you’re not lucky enough to be demonstrating easy-to-use products, at least make the demonstration clear and as good-looking as you can. Don’t give your learners stumbling blocks from the starting line.

Here are a few other things I like about Apple’s instructional videos (for example, the Guided Tours for the iPad 2):

• They jump right into the action. I’ve already clicked a link called iMovie and there’s a title on the page or the opening frame; I don’t need to hear “Today we’re going to learn about iMovie” at the beginning. Once in, every second counts. Good editing means there’s no waiting and no chance to tune out.
• They have high production values. This isn’t always something we have the budget for, but it also isn’t always necessary. Great audio is much more worth the investment than great video.
• They have music. It’s a little shocking how much music affects the mood of a video. Consider buying some good music, even if just stock, even if just a few seconds for the opening and closing.
• If there’s no benefit to using video, they don’t use video, even though they clearly have plenty of resources to do so. Lots of screencasts and videos I’ve seen don’t really need to exist… Clear instructions, well illustrated with pictures or screen shots, would do just as well in less time using less bandwidth.

mLearning DevCon is a brand-new event focused on (hopefully this is the obvious part) mobile learning development. I’m going to share two presentations there:

Bridging the Gaps: Bringing Multimedia to Mobile with HTML5-Friendly Utilities - A complement to some other speaking and writing I’m doing about HTML5 authoring tools, this session will reveal some of the best-of-breed tools for bring elements of multimedia into markup-based courses.

Will This Work on My iPad? - This session is about facing the increasingly common quandry of doing elearning development that you don’t intend to be mobile — but your learners want it to work on their mobile devices anyway.

I’m also presenting two sessions at DevLearn:

HTML5 Authoring Tool Review – This year and last, I’ve written and spoken several times about whether the elearning world is ready for HTML5, and concluded that the most major holdup is the development tools. I’m happy to report that there have been lots of changes in the industry this year, and this session will showcase the latest and greatest.

One Learning Challenge: Three Designers Put Their Skills to the Test - This is a panel with Tracy Bissette of Weejee Learning and Carol Ann Amico of AICPA. We’re all going to receive assignments a few weeks prior to the conference and show designs based on those assignments. This may be the one I’m looking forward to most, as it will offer participants a closer look at the analysis and design processes than you usually get online and at conferences.

Since Brian Dusablon will also be at DevLearn (speaking about usability and accessibility, natch), there’s a really good chance for an in-person recording of The ToolBar. Put in your suggestions now for what you’d like to hear us debate discuss in person!

I’m also looking forward to seeing many of you again and, just looking at the speaker lineups, meeting new people and learning from them. If you’re on the fence about going to either of these, I recommend you jump on in… and be sure to find me and say Hi!

• Aaron Silvers
• Jane Bozarth’s Bozathzone
• Brent Schlenker’s Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development
• Brian Dusablon
• Cammy Bean’s Learning Visions
• Ellen Wagner’s eLearning Roadtrip
• Janet Clarey
• The Total Learning Blog by Brandon Carson, Dolly Joseph, Enzo Silva, and Davina Fournier
• Julie Dirksen’s The Usable Learning Blog
• Will Thalheimer’s Will at Work Learning

And, in the non-ID world, Daring Fireball.

There are lots of others too, but these are my go-tos. If you’re on the list but haven’t posted lately, you’re making me a sad panda. Write something already.

What are your favorites — or top recommendations — or blogs you read every day — or list of people you wish would blog more often? Share the love… leave a comment or better yet, write your own post and link it up below!

Update: If it weren’t so self-serving, I’d put my company’s blog, too. Oh, look. I did it anyway.

Drink up and enjoy.

I thought I’d share the idea, though, especially since they let me know a few days ago that they have grant money available for their distance education students who start in Fall 2011. See their Fall 2011 schedule here… Classes start September 12.

1) Starting as both a test prep trainer and a software trainer, I volunteered for ILT curriculum design projects, which led to blended and elearning. Often trainers are tasked with design projects or asked to work with staff IDs.

2) I got a new job managing ILT and elearning projects and grew more interest in doing elearning design and development.

3) I got some formal training and made new connections. ASTD’s E-Learning Instructional Design class was an outstanding place to start. I also looked to the blogosphere for opinion and examples. (Aggregators like eLearning Learning and Alltop can help you find the blogs you like best.)

4) I changed jobs again to do actual ID.

I also highly recommend you find mentors; luckily, the instructional design community is full of people who love to help other people! Diane Elkins and Desiree Ward (who founded the company I now work for) have been mine since I first realized I wanted to become a designer, and I’ve been lucky to make many other connections — mainly through social media — since starting this blog.

I’m sure others have taken other routes and have more suggestions. Any one else care to share their paths and/or tips?

Yeah. I went there.

Dr. Michael Allen’s CCAF (Context/Challenge/Activity/Feedback) model is one of the first I was introduced to in anything close to a formal way, through ASTD’s E-Learning Instructional Design certificate program.

CCAF focuses on the parts of the interaction, including two that aren’t often appreciated — Context and Challenge — and Dr. Allen gives guidelines to make each of them powerful, relevant, and integrated with the others. I’ve come to think of these like the legs of a table: Each has to be well built in order for the table to be strong.

The link to the blog posts above will be helpful, but for a complete explanation, I highly suggest reading Allen’s Designing Successful E-Learning.

Well, that’s it for this series! These are some of the most helpful models I know of that actually influence what kind of learning experiences you create and how effective they are. Now it’s your turn… what would you add?

Other posts in this series:

• If Not ADDIE, Then What?
• Part 1: Thiagi’s 4-Door Model
• Part 2: Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping
• Part 3: Michael Allen’s CCAF

The Action Mapping process, developed by Cathy Moore, has a heavy emphasis on relating practice activities to what the learner will actually be required to do on the job to meet a business goal, and then working backward from that to decide which information to include in the course. Cathy explains Action Mapping, the reasons it’s important, and a tool that she uses to facilitate it, on her Making Change blog.

Bonus: Action Mapping helps you figure out which information is truly necessary, but then you usually have to help your SMEs or stakeholders see that perspective. A couple of months ago, Diane Elkins posted on the E-Learning Uncovered blog about how to have those conversations.

Now that you know which goals you need activities around and which information to include, how do you design the actual interactions?

Stay tuned.

Other posts in this series:

• If Not ADDIE, Then What?
• Part 1: Thiagi’s 4-Door Model
• Part 2: Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping
• Part 3: Michael Allen’s CCAF

To celebrate, here’s a bit of fun: a rendering of the Mona Lisa in 140 dots. (The further you are away, the better you’ll see it.)

HT: Jason Kottke

Thanks to everyone who has read, commented on, and encouraged this blog over the past couple of years. It’s been a blast!

Update: Yes, I tested it on an iPad. A borrowed one.

Thiagi’s 4-Door Model describes a structure in which there are four entry points into the course: the library, the playground, the cafe, and the assessment center. These areas represent different ways in which the learner can interact with the content of the course and even other learners. Learners can enter through any door they choose.

More on Thiagi’s 4-Door Model:

A case study and explanation by Russ Powell and Brandon Carson for the eLearning Guild’s January 2010 Online Conference.

The Thiagi Group Training Intelligence podcast, Episode 7

This is newest-to-me of the models in this series, though I realized when I started learning about it that I’ve been incorporating elements of it for years! And though it provides a good framework for the structure of the course, it doesn’t say much about which information to include or how to design the interactions behind the four doors.

Stay tuned.

Photo credit: robynejay on Flickr.

Other posts in this series:

• If Not ADDIE, Then What?
• Part 1: Thiagi’s 4-Door Model
• Part 2: Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping
• Part 3: Michael Allen’s CCAF

• speak to the creative process of creating learning experiences, and
• have originated in the practice of creating corporate learning (rather than in academic theory).

I hope to reach designers who might be hearing criticisms of the models promoted by their organizations, associations, and schools, and might be asking themselves the question in the title of this post.

Please stay tuned and feel free to share your own inspirations, as well!

Photo credit: kingarthur10 on Flickr.

Part 1: Overall Course Structure – Thiagi’s 4-Door Model

Part 2: What to Include? – Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping

Part 3: Designing Interactions – Michael Allen’s CCAF

Full series here.

The first half of the article covers how the company uses metrics — not opinions or theories — to progressively improve its games. For example, wooga has dismissed elements like letting the player choose an avatar (also attractive for elearning) because they’ve found no effect on player engagement.

Analytics like this are hardly new to marketers, but this article struck me because of two things:

1) How useful similar practices could be in elearning, and…

2) How rare analysis like this is in our field.

Sorry to criticize so often, but I call them like I see them.

For an antidote, see Ellen Wagner’s recent posts on more advanced analytics for learning.

Here, Vitsoe explains the legendary industrial and product designer Dieter Rams‘ principles of good design. I’m not pasting them here because I think there’s value in the explanations and images that accompany each principle.

Which of these do you think is most applicable to instructional design? Least applicable? Which do we as an industry need to pay more attention to?

I haven’t played through the whole thing yet, but there are clearly some lessons for elearning designers here, even if you’re not particularly focused on “gameful” design. The first one that struck me was the context. Designers who are familiar with Michael Allen’s CCAF model know all about the importance of a compelling context; here’s a great example.

Click below to watch the trailer, read a review at Play This Thing, or just play the game!

[youtube fL9R6_IFGJU]

HT: ze frank

In Episode 3, we talk for way longer than we intended to about doing instructional design and development on a Mac. And we drink Saint Arnold’s Summer Pils and Lagunita’s Lucky 13.

Love it? Hate it? Talk to us on our website or Facebook page, or review the podcast in iTunes.

In the latest installment, I’m hoping to leverage (read: exploit) my Oregonian-ness, Kelly Meeker‘s love of the outdoors, and my husband’s mad photography skills.

What do you think?

Me in my OpenSesame hoody, at Smith Rock. Photo credit: Scott Unrein.

Update: I WON! Thanks, OpenSesame!

The other buttons toggle individuals instruments, turning on and off each part in the piece. The buttons light up as that instrument plays each note. The Orchestra turns on all instruments to play together. If you press the Orchestra button while a piece is already playing, it changes pieces. And — sometimes thankfully — holding down the Orchestra button turns the whole thing off.

This $20 toy has more interactivity than most of the elearning I’ve seen. Why do you think that is?

I’ve set up an Ideascale so you can weigh in. Add your own ideas, vote, and/or comment. Looking forward to your responses!

I recently learned more about A Game of Phones from two sources:

Brian Dusablon did an excellent write-up on his blog… and who better to do so than the winner? Congratulations, Brian!

Also Kris Rockwell, one of the game designers, gave me an overview and my very own deck at the TK12 planning meeting this week. You can purchase a deck at agameofphones.com… or go there for more information on customizing the game for another event.

Update: Brian also wrote a review for Learning Solutions Magazine. Check it out!

In Episode 2, we talk about mLearnCon 2011, Lextensions (where did they go?), Google+ (probably waaaay more than you wanted to hear), and Zebra. And we drink Black Butte Porter.

You can now Like us on Facebook and subscribe on the website, just like a real podcast. We’ll also be on iTunes soon.

Update: Now on iTunes.

While you may or may not be developing “courses” for mobile devices, you very well may still want to make sure your content is iPad-friendly. This post will bring you a couple of steps closer. It’s very much like we’re working, and then giving you stuff for free.

Enjoy!

HA! Tricked you into looking at my baby pics!

Now if you haven’t read it yet, go read Dr. Jane’s latest Nuts and Bolts, Let the Learners Hold the Spoon. It’s excellent.

Happy Friday, everyone!

But how often do we actually push back and say, “That’s not a training problem”?

Even among those of us who know better, I suspect the answer is “Not enough”. Maybe we are afraid of being viewed as uncooperative. Maybe we are trying to prove our own value.  Maybe we don’t want to lose the contract or the client. Maybe we just genuinely want to solve the problem.

I don’t have any magic fixes and I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t know.* But I’m encouraging all of us – including me – to more often take a pause to consider this when a project arrives at the door. And if it’s not something your best effort in training can fix, take a breath and try to trust a little more that the person you’re saying No to will value you all the more in the long run for saying it.

* Update: If, on the other hand, this is new information and you don’t know how to determine whether it’s a training problem, this column by Jane Bozarth is a great place to start.

The short form has been an interesting challenge. It’s one thing to explain your position from every angle, at exhaustive length. It’s something different to boil it down while worrying, with every sentence and caveat you cut, that it’ll be taken out of context, or the obvious exceptions thrown back in your face on Ye Internete. But the hope is that this format — and I think we were right to choose it — will make Things We Think more actually useful. The hope is that short, provocative nuggets will spark your own thinking and force you to make up your own damn mind.

Exactly.

This is more of a PSA than anything, because of friends whose companies or managers seem to think that this is how it works. That’s not how it works.

Would I like that to be how it works? Yeah, to tell the truth, I would. Because the aim of what we do is to help people be better at what they do, and plugging directly in to someone’s head would be an efficient, consistent, and effective way to do it. But since no one has figured out how to overcome the downsides yet, I guess I’ll work on building this instead…

I’ll let someone else focus on the probes.

But here’s something you don’t want to miss: The conference will feature two games: BackChatter and A Game of Phones. A Game of Phones in particular sounds very cool and was created by talented learning game designers Alicia Sanchez and Kris Rockwell, who are also giving a session on its creation. Remember, if you’re interested in creating games or adding elements of gameplay to your learning, the best way to learn is to play. See a more complete write-up on Brent Schlenker’s blog.

And remember, if there’s someone there you want to meet, don’t be shy! The people I’ve met at conferences over the years have become invaluable resources, colleagues, and friends. So if there’s someone you want to meet, just go say Hi!

The ToolBar extends our conference experience of Learning Solutions 2011, and the concept is pretty simple: It’s us, talking about software – primarily elearning software – and drinking tasty beverages. We’re sparing you the karaoke.

In Episode 1, we talk about the upcoming ZebraZapps and drink Belgian beers.

The ToolBar is part of Emergent Radio, a larger project that Brian is starting. He’s curating conversations with some next-level thinkers, so whether or not The ToolBar is for you, stay tuned.

My company does quite a bit of testing with screen readers to make sure that our courses are not only 508-compliant, but as usable when using accessibility devices as when not. Yesterday I did some testing with Hype-published text, embedded into Lectora, and I’m happy to report that it read flawlessly.

It was a very basic test… no appearing or disappearing, just some text flying around the screen. The text was read just as if it were in a regular text box. Naturally, you would still want to include a description of the animation, but… Sweet!

This would be one of the reasons markup is awesome… If it’s machine-readable, it’s inherently more accessible.

Get your proposals in today, before midnight Eastern! Click here to submit.

Speaking proposals for TechKnowledge 2012 in Las Vegas are being accepted through June 13, 2011!

Submit your proposals here in the following tracks:

• E-Learning Design
• Emerging Technologies
• Management Strategies
• Platforms & Authoring Tools
• Virtual Delivery & Presentation

I’m thrilled to serve on the planning committee this year, along with some next-level thinkers including Cammy Bean, our fearless committee leader.

So get to it! We can’t wait to see your ideas!

It is, however, the kind of thing I think Trivantis should have been focusing on in the last year: making Lectora a tool that more fully utilizes the “pretty” in the HTML5 spec. But no matter… Now I can just create stuff in Hype and embed it in Lectora as external HTML. Like this.

Joking aside, it’s a tool. Use it wisely.

What I don’t know yet is how screen readers will interpret the embedded Hype content. Anyone?

[youtube V946uL0xMTA]

I’m here to tell you that there are lots of things you can do. Instructional design may be one of them.

Why you should consider instructional design:

1. It’s a booming industry.*
2. You can make cool stuff.
3. Really? In this economy, with an English degree, you need a third reason?

Why instructional design should consider you:

1. You can research.
2. You can write, both instructionally and creatively. Scenarios need plot, dialogue, even drama.
3. You can edit. Copyediting skills are great and being able to distinguish between essential and peripheral information is better.

At least… I hope you can do those things. Happy graduation!

*There is actually no listing for Instruction Designer with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (or Salary.com), but related job outlooks, anecdotal evidence, and training industry trends all bode very well for elearning designers.

Yesterday, I (and I don’t know who else) received word that we can talk about it publicly, which I’ve been eager to do for quite a while. My first post on Zebra is live on the E-Learning Uncovered blog now, and there will be more over the next few weeks.

I look forward to your thoughts!

Here are the details:

• Snap! is a a PPT-based elearning tool… a plug-in for PowerPoint
• Can include variety of media, output to social media sites
• Standalone or integratable with Lectora
• Only $99, or free for everyone attending the conference

According to an email sent out immediately after, you can go here for more information and a free 30-day trial.

More big news: Trivantis and Flypaper studios have agreed “in principle” to the acquisition of Flypaper by Trivantis.

I haven’t gotten my hands into Snap! yet, but as a longtime Lectora user, here’s my initial reaction: I’d rather see them focus on making Lectora a full-on HTML5 authoring tool than give the industry more ways to start in PPT and end in Flash. Even cheaper ways.

Your thoughts?

Update: Reactions from the Twittersphere

Alcorn, Ward, and Partners is now Artisan E-Learning (at artisanelearning.com)…

…and our E-Learning Uncovered site has gotten a facelift too (at elearninguncovered.com). E-Learning Uncovered has some great resources and a new blog, which I’ll write for along with Diane Elkins, Desiree Ward, and Tanya Coomes.

Aw shucks, this is still Tuesday (on the West Coast) and I haven’t posted anything free in a while, so in addition to all of the cool free resources you’ll find on E-Learning Uncovered, if you leave a comment here by Saturday, May 14th, midnight PST, I’ll pick 3 winners randomly to win their choice of any of the E-Learning Uncovered books.

Good luck!

Thank you so much to everyone who took the course, gave feedback, and got their friends and family to take it, too. Thank you also to Aaron Silvers, Michelle Lentz, and Robin Smail, who generously served as SMEs.

I also used Hiring for Hope’s Virtual Career Summit webinars as resources, and  Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Trainers just to make sure I was getting stuff right (it was on my to-read list anyway and I’m glad I killed both birds with that stone… I got some good ideas for using social media in ILT at the same time).

I’ll be releasing my research results for public use within a few weeks… Stay tuned!

The course, Using Social Media for Your Job Search, is at elearningresearch.org. Please feel free to take the course and invite your friends and colleagues. They don’t need to know anything about social media; this is a course for novices. It will be live through April 25. Estimated seat time is 20-30 minutes.

If you’re interested in the study results, I will be posting my report, data, and both versions of the course online in a few weeks. Thank you for participating!

And I just have to shout out to this organization, by the way… The organizers are doing a fabulous job of bringing in great topics every month, they meet by webinar, and they’re open to all; you don’t have to be a member of ASTD or the DC chapter to join in. I have thoroughly enjoyed their meetings and I think they’re doing a great service by being open and focusing on bringing in great programs.

I’m testing two courses against each other in terms of engagement and retention. The study will be open for about a week, and at some point after that, I will make the report, the courses, and the data completely open to the public. I sincerely hope this research tells us something instructive about effective elearning design.

The trouble is…

1) I’m not as interested in this design approach as when I started the project.

2) I’ve designed this course to isolate the variables I’m testing, but it’s not necessarily how I would design courses for clients. As a sample of my work, it’s not going to be representative (or my best work).

How’s that for an oversell? Stay tuned!

Sign up here and put onehundredfortywords.com in the “why you should be a beta tester” field. I’m told that will get you to the front of the line.

I’m hoping to play with it enough to put some thoughts here, which might be a challenge with the whole M.Ed. project going on at the same time, but either way, I encourage you to send your thoughts my way for a guest review!

Update: The beta testing period has been extended. Please see the comments on this post.

It was a struggle to put into words my thoughts about how authoring tools and learning design are related, as I attempted to do in the article in Learning Solutions on Monday, but someone going by the screen name synapps left a comment that sums it up pretty darn well:

“Art challenges technology, and technology inspires the art. That’s it in a nutshell the way we work at Pixar.”

- John Lasseter

Well put, John. To me, this seems like the ideal situation… I’m not particularly convinced it’s the one we have in the mainstream elearning world, but it’s certainly a good vision of the future.

It’s called Thinking Outside the Toolbox, and it’s been simmering for a couple of years as I’ve watched my own thought processes and had conversations with many others in our industry about our tools and how they relate to what we design and create. This line of thinking was also the basis for the Morning Buzz session I facilitated at the Learning Solutions conference.

I encourage you to add your thoughts. Enjoy!

There were some pretty exciting things happening in the expo hall at this conference, and there were lots of good opportunities for networking. I was lucky enough to have a few friends and acquaintances present, which made the conference a completely different experience for me. You all know who you are… It was wonderful to see you in person!

The reception on the opening night of the conference gave attendees a chance to meet each other and vendors in a socially lubricated environment. L-R: Stevie Rocco, Kevin Thorn, and Jane Bozarth

In general, I have been really pleased in the last few months with the number of vendors producing improved tools for elearning — tools that either facilitate creating a richer learning experience or push the envelope toward more standardized delivery or both. I was happy to see that the response to my “Which new tools do you want?” query pretty much mirrors my own, because I think IDs are really starting to be smart about what they want in authoring tools, and they’re being heard. Here were the things that excited me most:

Articulate Storyline

I was waiting for an education session to start when Twitter started exploding with Storyline buzz. It continued through the rest of the conference, and from what I can see, the excitement seems to be well warranted. This is definitely a tool I’ll be following as closely as I can in the coming months, as I’m sure many other elearning bloggers will, as well. Maybe we’ll even hear from my coworker and own personal Articulate guru, Tanya Coomes.

In the meantime, here are a few ways to get info on Storyline.

OpenSesame

These guys have been making a big splash with their “unlock an iPad” game at the last few conferences I’ve been to, and I’m glad, because their business model kind of depends on them getting a lot of elearning producers and buyers aware of them. Their elearning marketplace now has over 1400 courses… pretty impressive!

I had thought for a while that the only company with more clever marketing than OpenSesame was BlueVolt, with their LMS voodoo doll…

…but it turns out BlueVolt is actually Open Sesame’s LMS, which they license to the public in addition to using it for their marketplace (as I understand). Correction: My understanding was incorrect. BlueVolt is a separate company. Please see Kelly Meeker’s comment below.

Well played, OpenSesame. Even though I didn’t win an iPad.

Zebra

No Zebra Lounge or huge announcements from Allen Interactions this time, but I did enjoy learning more about the software with the developers and product manager, and that’s always exciting.

As I’ve shared before, I think this is amazingly promising software, and if you haven’t had a chance to see it or play with it yet, I encourage you to sign up for the public beta. Here’s why: I’ve been to webinar after session after course on elearning design in which participants are encouraged to make better elearning… more interactive, more exploratory, more game-like, and it frequently seems to devolve into a gripe session on how we don’t have good enough tools to do all of those things… or at least, to do them easily. I think there’s some validity to that complaint, but I also think it’s frequently an excuse for lazy design. We’re going to start seeing that excuse become less valid when Zebra launches.

Anyway, more on that to come.

All in all, this was a great conference! Thanks to the e-Learning Guild for a well-planned, fun, and educational event.

Oops! I almost forgot… Again, for more Learning Solutions recaps, be sure to check out David Kelly’s Misadventures in Learning!

With my time somewhat limited, though, I’m only going to post the few recaps for sessions in which I took away something I particularly wanted to share here.

Learning, Identity, and Social Media: The Changing Landscape

Brandon Carson of Yahoo! guided this session and first of all, I have to give him props for doing something different with his presentation. From the visual design of his slides to the music playing when participants walked in to the way he introduced himself (using MIT’s Personas project), it was a really refreshing experience. His presentation focused on a social learning environment he had built for a previous client and how the participants functioned in that arena… sometimes well and sometimes not.

Also refreshing: This case study wasn’t a success story. It was a good illustration of the pitfalls and bad behavior that can result. Thanks for letting us learn with you, Brandon. (And by the way, his slides tell a good chunk of the story even standalone.)

Game Design Principles for e-Learning

Rick Raymer is a game-developer-turned-self-described-“level-19”-instructional-designer. (In WoW, that’s 19 out of 85… pretty much a n00b.) Again, I think he brought something really refreshing to the table, coming from actual game design instead of the elearning world. There were two things that I want to highlight in particular:

1) With the background he has, Rick is clearly encouraging elearning designers to push the envelope with their designs. The participants had pushback, as is always the case, because of no budget for graphics, 3D modeling, blah blah blah, but that’s not the most important part. I’m going to insert my own interpretations here, so Rick, feel free to add and/or disagree: If you’re looking to upgrade your tools and your ID skills, focus on making things that adapt to the learner, that allow for exploration, that allow for chance. Think variables, not clip art packages.

2) In the “pre-concept” phase that Rick outlined, he encouraged the participants to live a more creative life. Seriously. Some ideas to expand your horizon (both from him and the participants): make a big cultural shift for a week, such as watching completely different TV (or no TV!), buy completely different food. Play games. Yeah. Seems kind of obvious, but how can you really understand game design principles unless you play?

Great job, Rick. I’m interested in seeing more as you continue to level up your ID.

Social Media: The Myths and Magic

Jane Bozarth had several sessions on various aspects of social media at this conference, debunking myths and getting real at every turn. I was only able to stay for part of this session, but it was enough to learn about how the State of North Carolina expects its employees to be active in social media. It sounds like they are being very grounded; their governor doesn’t freak out when someone calls her an idiot on Facebook or Twitter any more than if it happens in traditional media.

On the other hand, social media can definitely be an amplifier: She used as an example the dust-up created a couple of weeks ago when HCI sent out a very tasteless email. It became a trending topic over the next couple of days while HCI’s Twitter bot continued to push out marketing links. Some powerful examples, for sure… her Social Media for Trainers is near the top of my book stack for post-M.Ed. reading.

Tomorrow: the expo and networking…

Dr. John Medina

What a great speaker to start the conference off with a bang! He was incredibly dynamic and I thoroughly appreciated that all attendees were able to start off with a presentation solidly grounded in brain science that they could then “bounce” other information off of for the rest of the conference (and hopefully far beyond). I hear that much of this is in his book, Brain Rules, which I will be buying shortly.

Key info I took away: Even brain scientists know very little about how the brain works/learns. Once something enters short-term memory, it must be repeated (or thought about again) within 30 seconds or it’s gone. If it’s repeated, it enters working memory, where it bounces around for TEN YEARS and is highly subject to corruption. Once it enters long-term memory, it is no longer highly subject to corruption. He suggested a model for learning that facilitates repetition of material on timelines that promote retention. Also suggested a future software/hardware combo that could detect when students didn’t understand something and dynamically rechart a course to review the appropriate older material.

Favorite quote: Brain science is about information processing, so is elearning… it’s SO time for us to get together.

Nancy Duarte

Again, a great speaker… she certainly walks the walk. One of the things she wrote about in the book was doing research on your audience before the event, and sure enough, Nancy was in our tweetstream a couple of days prior to her arrival (and responding a couple days after, as well).

Key info I took away: I read Resonate when it came out and it actually had a big impact on my HTML5 presentations this year (yes, even with such a dry topic). So this presentation was more a cementing experience than a learning one, but still, here they are: OBSESS about your audience (such a great message for our industry; how much do you do it?). You’re not the hero of your presentation (read: elearning); you’re the mentor. Your audience is the hero. Be emotional about what you’re trying to sell/teach. If your audience gets attached to that emotion, they will pick your ideas over others.

Favorite quote: Steve Jobs is the greatest business communicator of all time. Yet.

Michael Wesch, PhD

My brain was so full by the time his keynote rolled around that I had to stop the tweeting and just experience it. And from that, I learned one thing that Twitter does for me: reinforce ideas and bounce them over to working memory (and also give me something to look back on to review those ideas again). So here, I’m going to Wesch’s YouTube channel speak for itself. Start with one you probably have already seen: Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us. I think I will have more thoughts to share with you as his ideas percolate…

I was going to post a list of other recaps here, but seriously, just go to Misadventures in Learning. Props to Dave Kelly… he’s doing an awesome job of aggregating for the community, and it also benefits people who were at the conference but left their clones at home. What a service.

Tomorrow, I’ll tackle the education sessions I attended, and Thursday, the expo and networking. Stay tuned.

4/3/11 Update: How could I forget this picture? (Did I mention I’m a bit of a Nancy Duarte fangirl?)

Also, my company publishes the E-Learning Uncovered series of resources (books, reference guides, etc.) for instructional designers and developers, and we’re wondering: Which tools are you most excited about right now? Which would you most like to see resources for?

Looking forward to your feedback!

TK11 had a similar one and I also had a lot of time to play with the app on my 18-hr trip here, so I developed a strategy. Here’s how I’m using it:

1) Find the sessions that I must go to… Either I’m presenting or have definitely decided to attend. Add it to the calendar AND mark it as a favorite. (I’m using this quite sparingly, as I tend to make game-time decisions.)

2) Go to Programs > All Sessions at a Glance. It took me a while to find this, but I’m glad I did. I went through the list, marking each session I’m interested in as a Favorite. I’m not worrying about time slots at this point. I’m doing the same with the Expo section for particular booths I want to make sure to visit.

3) Go to the conference. Whenever I don’t have something on my schedule, I’ll go to Now. If there’s nothing starred, it’s Expo time or break time. And if I’ve accidentally gone to Now instead of looking at my schedule, my Must-dos are also right there, starred as reminders.

Also, I’ve put my info in Share Contacts so that I’m ready if someone wants to “bump”. I probably won’t just offer that, because it sounds funny, but… I’m ready.

Got feedback on the app? Be sure to tell Brent Schlenker!

• Nancy Duarte’s keynote and ID Zone session
• Finding out the latest at the expo
• Sharing the tech, tool, and design love at my HTML5 and Morning Buzz sessions
• Several other concurrent sessions — although I’m still not positive which ones I’m going to
• Hanging out with people I know mostly from the Internet: Jane Bozarth, Brent Schlenker, Bill Brandon, Brandon Carson, Kevin Thorn, Brian Dusablon, Sumeet Moghe, Sahana Chattopadhyay, Aaron Silvers, Michelle Lentz, Alicia Sanchez, Koreen Olbrish, Stevie Rocco, Kris Rockwell, Tricia Rimmer, Kay Wood, Tracy Parish, Terrence Wing, Julie Dirksen, and my co-worker, Tanya Coomes (we work 2,000 miles and three time zones away, so we rarely get to hang out in person). And whoever else I happen to meet.

I’ll attend all general sessions and as many others as I can, and I’ll tweet (and maybe even blog) often to help bring the conference to you. #LS2011 is the official hashtag, and I’ll use the session number as an additional hashtag. See you online, or if you’re here in Orlando, say Hi!

It’s officially called How Development Tools Shape Our Design, but it probably should be called How Development Tools Shape Our Design — If We Let Them — And Let’s Talk About How to Not Let Them. This is a topic I’ve been writing about some and thinking about a lot lately, and I think it’s a very important one, particularly if you’re a designer/developer or a one-person shop or a user of rapid development tools, or any combination thereof. And according to the eLearning Guild’s research, that’s a lot of us.

I hope to see you there!

But this is not bait; it’s a serious question. The only way we can know whether HTML5 is ready for elearning yet is to evaluate its capabilities against what we already do… and want to do.

If you comment and tell me about an elearning project you are doing that is not supported by the “HTML5 stack” of technologies — or if you’re not sure — I will PayPal you one dollar.

Go ahead. I have dozens of dollars.

It seemed like a good day to ironically use clipart. It's the trucker hat of the elearning world.

When I write for others, I use whatever style they want. (Actually, I write how I want and then they change it, which is fine. They’re usually paying me in some way, after all.) But when I write for myself — like here — I use no hyphen and no capitalized L in elearning. Here’s why:

Years ago, we referred to email as e-mail. Or eMail. Occasionally I still see one of those styles, and I think to myself, how quaint.

Maybe it looks weird now when I write elearning, but it doesn’t cause confusion and it won’t look quaint in ten years.

Oh, and the AP finally changed its Style Guide standard from e-mail to email yesterday. Web site became website, too. So there you go.

Such is the case with Allen Interactions’ St. Patrick’s Day card showcasing their currently-in-private-beta authoring tool, codenamed Zebra. (About a month ago, they released this Valentine’s Day “Switcheroo”.)

Pretty cool demos, but the real wow is how easy it is to create interactions like this in Zebra… not just clicky clicky bling bling, but great instructional interactivity. My company is already planning to make it part of our authoring tool set when it’s released, and if you haven’t yet, I encourage you to join the beta and see for yourself when it goes public.

onehundredfortywords.com is now part of the eLearning Learning community!

If you’re not familiar with it yet, go there and check out the many other great elearning blogs. Thanks to Tony Karrer and everyone who works to make this resource available for our industry.

Just a heads up… I am speaking about HTML5 and elearning at Learning Solutions 2011.

I’m also facilitating a Morning Buzz session on a topic that’s very close to my heart: how our development tools impact our designs. That’s Wednesday, March 23, 7:15 AM… wait, srsly?

Let’s hope for good coffee.

I’m really excited about some of the sessions and even more excited about meeting F2F people I’ve met online over the last couple of years! See you soon.

This game informs, educates, and persuades, and here’s another thing I really like:

Except for the randomization and some multimedia, this game could be created in PowerPoint. And shocker… it’s not the randomization or the multimedia that give the game its impact.

A great serious game. Props to Urban Ministries of Durham and McKinney.

Four days ago, my husband left for a week and a half in the Midwest. (He’s finishing up two graduate degrees in abstentia — another word for Oregon — and so he’s returning to the Middle for his doctoral comprehensive exams.)

He would be there for less than a week, except his university is insisting that he be in the same town for the “take-home” portion, which finished today.

How did he complete this exam? On a computer.

How did they direct that he submit it? Via email.

How were the questions delivered to him? In Blackboard.

And he needs to be halfway across the country to do this because… Wait, why is that again?

Absurd.

But at TechKnowledge, that brief SoMe resume plus participation in the backchannel was enough to give me a good introduction to Karl Kapp, Aaron Silvers, Cammy Bean, Ellen Wagner, Alicia Ruiz, Stevie Rocco, Kris Rockwell, Koreen Olbrish, Clark Quinn, Michelle Lentz, and Damon Regan… All great people with great minds and passion for learning.

Now, some of you won’t believe this, but I tend toward the shy side sometimes, particularly around people I really respect and haven’t met yet. My point? I never would have met these people if I hadn’t been using social media, or I never would have met as many of them, or I never would have established connections as quickly.

If that were all of the story, it would be good. But that’s not all.

Meeting in person adds a dimension, strengthens bonds, gives you the common ground of shared experience. And that’s a good thing. But there’s more.

I’m more active now on Twitter, blogs (including my own), and even Facebook. A few new friends have linked to my blog, which I always find thrilling. I’ve online-met even more people through the people I met in person, and maybe I’ll meet those other people soon, too. (Yeah, go ahead and re-read that. I’ll wait.) All of this activity is good networking, but it’s even better food for… as Aaron Silvers would say… ideation.

I’m tempted to wrap this up with a moral but honestly, I think you get it.

And if you’re reading this and we’ll be in the same place soon, get in touch. I’d love to meet you.

(Oh, and the inspiration for the title of this post: Lots of Fun at ASTD TechKnowledge 2011. Karl Kapp is a scholar and a gentleman who will one day succeed in teaching me the etiquette of spell-checker-to-client confidentiality.)

A presenter at a TK11 session (sorry, I forgot which one) mentioned sketching as a tool for instructional design around the same time I ran across the below article… And as Special Agent Cooper tells us, when two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention.

Three things about sketching:

Sketching User Experiences – the book that started me sketching; a must-read

Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool – a great article on how and why to sketch; includes a list of tools

Bamboo Pen & Touch – my coolest Xmas present this year, moving me into the electronic age of sketching

Do you sketch, either for instructional design purposes or otherwise? Why?

Ellen Wagner said it in her closing comments at TechKnowledge: Don’t let people do bad instructional design to you.

Here’s what that means to me: Whatever my competitors are doing, that’s what their clients think is elearning. If it’s ineffective, their clients may come to me instead… But just as likely, they may abandon elearning without knowing that there are other options. Do good work, and we all benefit.

How to get there? Four ways come to mind:

1) Learn from whatever sources you can.

2) Be generous with your time when others want advice.

3) Don’t reward others’ bad designs.

4) Do your best work always. Yes, I know… But aim for always.

What else?

Well, I hope you guys are out there, because TechSmith just sent out an email today that Screencast.com now supports Tables of Contents, Closed Captions, Hotspots, and Search in HTML5 video. See the announcement here.

I’m sure I’ll try this out soon, but if you’re rarin’ to go and want to do a guest review, just email me at judyunrein at gmail dot com!

But let’s be clear: There’s PowerPoint the software and there’s PowerPoint the method of giving presentations (and creating “elearning”)… also known as Death by PowerPoint. The only (well, almost only) problem I have with PowerPoint the program is that if you let it decide for you how your presentation or course is going to look and flow, it will lead you to create PowerPoint, Death by.

PowerPoint doesn’t have a brain. You do. Let’s all use them for better presentations — and better elearning — in celebration of Just Say No To PowerPoint Week.

[slideshare id=6825868&doc=fr104slideshare-110205184038-phpapp02]de

Also, thank you for your attendance and your involvement. You brought some great questions and I hope I can continue to help you (and the rest of our industry) sort through how this issue affects our work.

If you have a question or a suggestion for a future post on this topic, feel free to leave a comment here, on SlideShare, or on Twitter… or email me. Let’s keep this conversation going.

Update: Yes, SlideShare requires the Flash plugin, but I just learned that you can upload presentations to Scribd, as well as documents! Scribd is a document-sharing site that entirely rewrote its code in 2010 to display its content in HTML5.

View plugin-free on Scribd.

At this point, I think the wifi is trying to keep me from complaining about the wifi.

Veer.com has images, fonts, just about everything a graphic designer needs… and they have great wallpaper, too. They’re free but require a login. Check out the February releases. (I’m thinking the Escape from Comic Sans one will have a home on my desktop for a while.)

And while you’re there, check out their other free stuff, some of which you might be able to use in your courses after all.

Of all the things I’m excited about for this event, probably the biggest one is the chance to meet people in person who I’ve met online over the last couple of years. If we haven’t already touched base, DM me and let’s meet up!

Got there today through The State of the Web (Winter 2010) (not particularly safe for work… even if it did make me wake up a baby laughing).

But here are some free things today, just to make your Tuesday awesome for a reason other than it’s not Monday:

25 New Free High-Quality Fonts from Smashing Magazine

AND… yourfonts.com is having another day of making unlimited free handwriting fonts, in celebration of National Handwriting Day on 1/23/11. Just use coupon code CPN2011FUN on 1/23/11.

(I just thought they should really pay me for sending people to their site and guess what? They have an affiliate program. So using that link will now pay me a few bucks… except when you use their site on a free font day. But do it anyway…  I love mine and anything is better than Comic Sans in your courses.)

However, it’s also true (according to the eLearning Guild’s annual reports, anyway) that most of the elearning development world uses rapid development tools, and those don’t have all the capabilities of Flash either. So my open question to developers and designers is:

What do you need for your course development that HTML5 doesn’t provide?

Or, alternately, What do you need for your course development that you’re not sure HTML5 provides? If you ask a question along those lines, I will do my best to answer it here.

It’s my pleasure to bring you something very special today: a guest blogger! Diane Elkins is at DevLearn 2010 in San Francisco and attended Michael Allen’s special event to preview Zebra last night. (By the way, if I were to publish a list of “things I’m missing” by not being at DevLearn, this event would have been right on top!)

Last night, I attended a special presentation by Dr. Michael Allen and Allen Interactions on their upcoming authoring tool, Zebra, and I would like to share my impressions. In short, Zebra is about to turn the authoring tool world on its ear. Imagine a tool that’s as interactive and dynamic as Flash and as easy to use as Lectora (if not easier). Normal people like us (as in, not programmers) will have the power to create just about anything we can envision. As they demo’d the capabilities of the tool, you could hear the gasps of amazement from the crowd. It really is that easy.

A few details. Last night was the launch of the private beta. They have plans to release the software “around” the middle of next year, with the specific release based on the results of the beta. It’s a web-based application, and will be based on a software-as-a-service model. They are even considering a “freemium” model where certain aspects are free, with fuller features available on a subscription basis. When I asked Dr. Allen about the price, he said, “People won’t even blink at the price. That’s our goal.”

Under the non-disclosure all the attendees signed, I can’t share many technical details. (BTW, all of the information in this post was cleared to share.) They are exploring different output formats, and still tackling issues around SCORM and 508 — both of which they’ll need to resolve, I think, before they can go mainstream.

So what does this mean for the authoring tool market? I see it carving out most of its users from the current Flash and Lectora market, as well as from the die-hards who haven’t been able to give up Authorware.

I don’t see the Captivate market being affected as that is still the best choice for IT simulations (yes, I know you can do more with it than that), and I didn’t see anything last night that would challenge Captivate’s dominance in that market. Instead, you may just be more likely to put your Captivate clip in a Zebra course.

As for the PPT/template tool market (Articulate, etc.), I see the impact being minor. People who want template-based authoring will probably still stay there. Those who feel they are outgrowing that model may see this as a good time to try their hand at what I call a “thought-based” authoring tool vs. a “selection-based” tool. (You think of an idea and then make it in the tool, rather than select from a list of choices and make your content fit.) There’s a place in this industry for both types of tools. (For the record, Zebra will have a heavy template component. Authors can save elements, anything from a graphic to a full-blown simulation, to “the cloud” for re-use. They are even planning an app store-type feature where course components can be bought, sold, or given away for free.)

Is it the perfect solution to all the world’s authoring needs? Well, it’s easy to think so in the rose-colored-glasses pre-release phase. I’m sure it will have its challenges and its critics. But I still firmly believe: Zebra changes everything.

If you are at DevLearn, stop by their booth to see it in action. I can gush all I want, but until you see it in action, you won’t really get how amazingly full-featured and easy it really is.

And here’s what I got:

Adobe, I heart you.

Check out the latest and be sure to also sign up to receive the newsletter directly. (Don’t worry, we won’t spam you… We wish we had time to write more often!)

If you see your name listed but didn’t receive an email from me, check your Spam folder (or just send me your shipping address at jkunrein at alcorn-ward dot com and I will send your book right out to you.)

Thanks for playing!

The most profound insight I’ve gleaned so far is that knowledge actually enables imagination, rather than restricting it.

Alison Gopnik:

Conventional wisdom suggests that knowledge and imagination, science and fantasy, are deeply different from one another — even opposites. But…the same abilities that let children learn so much about the world also allow them to change the world…and to imagine alternative worlds that may never exist at all…

I agree instinctively, yet I see counterexamples every day. At what point — and why — does expertise stop enabling imagination, and start preventing us from seeing new ideas?

* That’s why, after reading for one month, I’m bringing you a quote from page 21.

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Okay, I keep forgetting to post this other quick announcement: I’m presenting another couple of sessions at TechKnowledge 2011.

They’re the Beyond the Basics of Camtasia Studio Creation Station sessions. See you in San Jose in February!

And, to celebrate, I’m giving away 1 copy of each of their books:

E-Learning Uncovered: From Concept to Execution

E-Learning Uncovered: Lectora X

E-Learning Uncovered: Articulate Studio ’09

To enter: Leave a comment with the title of which book you want, and leave a good email address so I can get your shipping information (email addresses won’t be posted publicly). I’ll use a random number generator to select the winners at midnight CST on October 15.

P.S. One reason I’m excited about this new opportunity is the ability to work almost completely virtually. Let’s hope I keep my command of the English language as well as Janet Clarey does.

Update: The cartoon linked above is part of a comic on theoatmeal.com. Someone sent it to me around the same time Janet posted it, also separated from the rest of the comic, also uncredited, so someone out there is being evil. Stop stealing.

(And here I’m going to disregard my word count and just explain, because I can’t provide a video clip at the moment. The gist is that they don’t care that the average user is female with 2.3 kids… They care that there might be a user with arthritis, or one who is an athlete. They design for the extremes, feeling that that will provide a better experience for the middle as well. This is the kind of thinking that produced the Oxo vegetable peeler, a vast improvement over the previous standard peeler because of the rubberized grippy handle… essentially just a bike handle placed over the ungrippable metal one that had been around forever. Watch 00:05:25 to 00:08:00 in the film if you have Netflix Instant. Or watch the whole film, because it’s really good. Now, back to the regularly scheduled blog post.)

I think BabyBjorn products are designed the same way: When one of my sons started treatment for a club foot, we found that their baby carrier was not only comfortable, it was the only one of our three carriers that would accommodate an infant in a full leg cast or brace.

When I taught for The Princeton Review, I was trained to consciously organize boardwork so that someone who had trouble concentrating would be able to catch up easily after short mental breaks. And everyone in class benefited because it simply made for better teaching.

But most elearning design seems to focus on the “average” user, starting with audience analysis. Food for thought: When you start with Average and add accessibility features, how is usability affected for everyone?

Sizer – This tiny, free utility makes windows exactly the size I want them. It’s very useful for software simulations, especially when I’m taking screen shots individually rather than using Captivate or Camtasia.

Screen Calipers – This tool measure distances on the screen. For example, if I have to make an animation of a certain size in Captivate but it has a toolbar at the bottom, I can measure the toolbar to figure out how much it will add to the overall dimensions.

These are great utilities and they’ve saved me a lot of guesswork, but I’ve had them forever and change is good… Does anyone have alternatives to recommend? Or other timesaving utilities?

Raptivity is now offering 6 interactions that publish to HTML5.

A review is forthcoming… perhaps…

I got an error message when trying to access these from my iPhone, but they’re worth a look from your desktop!

(Hat tip to John Gruber of Daring Fireball, one of my favorite blogs.)

The session title is HTML5: Are We There Yet? See you in San Jose in February!

- Steve Jobs, in a 1996 interview with Wired magazine

I probably won’t be blogging for another month or so, but I plan to catch up on lots of blog reading in the meantime. See you soon!

Photos by Scott Unrein

Now, Apple did choose to put up a browser sniffer directing you to download Safari if you don’t happen to be using Safari when you visit. I personally think Safari’s worth using for the anti-aliasing alone, but if you just want a casual glance, go to the developer section instead… The demos are easier to get to and most of them work just fine on Firefox.

And authoring tool vendors, please visit the developer section for the code. I would love for someone to make it easy for me to make really pretty HTML stuff. Just sayin’.

3 AM Update: I have no idea why I’m up this late, but I went back to the demos and the site has changed; now there are browser sniffers on each demo in the developer section, in addition to the one blocking the main section. And in all cases, they don’t just warn you that the demos won’t work… they prevent you from seeing the demos unless you’re using Safari. Way to show that HTML5 is a web standard, Apple.

What a neat way to meet your learners literally where they are, at the moment they need the information. (Clearly, if a patient like me can see these screens, this is a major potential point of failure for privacy regulations!) I’m sure they do regular compliance training, but this seems like a useful year-round reminder, even if it blends into the background over time.

(And the cynic in me gets the last word: Good way to CYA, too.)

Learning Solutions Magazine

Enjoy! And here’s the permalink (requires free subscription to the magazine).

Not that I would be at all of these conferences in a normal year anyway, but I do usually enjoy them when I can make it. So you tell me… what did I miss? What was your favorite session or takeaway? Help me out; I’m stuck here in the middle!

Also curious what the buzz is going to be at mLearnCon, and especially whether people will be talking about HTML5. I’ve been doing some research and writing about that lately, which I’ll share very soon…

Design is a signal of intention.
- William McDonough

That’s one of my favorite quotes. Couldn’t locate it yesterday during #lrnchat…

mrch0mp3rs: Design, in my opinion, means there’s an end in mind we wish to achieve by intent.

jkunrein: @mrch0mp3rs YES about intent! All design implies intent. If you don’t have it, you’re just throwing stuff, seeing what sticks.

tmiket: @jkunrein I know lots of people to take the “just throwing stuff” pproach… unfortunately!

usablelearning: @jkunrein I’m ok with throwing stuff and seeing what sticks, actually. Not ok w throwing stuff, and then walking away

tmiket: @usablelearning Great point…I see lots of walking away too…it’s journey right?

And then someone tweeted that throwing stuff was just for the first 5 minutes… Unfortunately, I can’t find that.

Anyway, there’s a plug for early usability testing… or rapid prototyping… or whatever interpretation you like.

So I had to share this link that was sent to me the other day: The Guild Leader’s Handbook, a primer on how to run a successful guild. Replace “guild” with “company” and you’ll see exactly what kinds of skills serious gamers are learning in-game. Spend enough time in an MMO, and it’s far from the anonymous, consequence-free, even anti-social environment that some non-gamers perceive: Leadership, management, and followership skills are every bit as important in guild life as they are at work.

Not convinced? I challenge you to read the free chapter. Come back and tell me what you thought… for 1000 XP.

I tried YourFonts.com a few weeks ago, thinking I might make a banner for this blog out of my own handwriting, but I wasn’t quite satisfied… with my handwriting, that is. The service was pretty freakin’ impressive. Still, my font isn’t there yet.

But I get another chance! On May 9, they’re running a special offer: Use the coupon code CPN4MOM2010 when you check out and you can make as many fonts as you like for free. This is only good on May 9, because… nothing says Mother’s Day like lots of free, custom fonts?

Why in the world would they do that?

Because they can.

More thoughts on the future of elearning delivery… and the technology behind it… very, very soon.

Must get done with spring semester first.

A few weeks ago I came across a very different vision of saving the world through games, one that appealed to me more because positive behavior change is viewed as — and shown to be — a long-term effect rather than something you do at the moment for a gold star or a number of points. It was also mind-opening to me as a gamer who is very aware of the time and effort spent… some say wasted… in online games. And this week’s #lrnchat reminded me that I hadn’t posted it! Doh!

If you haven’t seen it, you definitely want to. Here is Jane McGonigal’s incredible TED Talk, Gaming Can Make a Better World.

New Skills for Instructional Designers – Not only does the content sound great, I know the quality of these presenters’ ideas from their blogs and other online presence, and I’m interested in what they have to say.

I’ll catch up on the backchannel later…  Have safe travels home, everyone!

That’s when I turn to games, movies, and TV for inspiration. Personally, I don’t think what makes for good drama in these disciplines is all that different from what creates truly memorable learning experiences. I’ve seen no evidence that people turn off their BS detectors when they sign into the LMS.

Along that train of thought, here’s a letter from David Mamet to the writers of The Unit, about creating good television. Warning: Strong language abounds.

Enjoy.

Jealous! (Did you know that orange was the color symbolizing jealousy in Shakespeare's day?)

I enjoyed peeking in to the #ls2010 backchannel today! And I realized that yesterday I didn’t even mention anything that wasn’t a concurrent session… lots of stuff going on in the ID Zone sounded really cool, too, but I’m way too tired from my week to make this post any bigger than it’s already shaping up to be. I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to decide what to actually go to. Here are my picks for tomorrow…

The Top 10 Must-Do’s for Developing Successful e-Learning Programs – Having spent the last 3 years building an elearning initiative from the ground up, I have to wonder what I missed. There must be something.

Giving Voice to Your e-Learning - Okay, selfish choice. Since I do a little voiceover work on the side, mainly for elearning, I might figure out a few things about how to market my services in this session.

Designing Continuous Learning: Leveraging the Power of a Learning Continuum – Again with the movement away from learning “events”…

McGyver e-Learning: Creating e-Learning with Open-source and Common Tools – Even if you weren’t a proponent of open-source tech (which I am, don’t get me wrong), who could resist something called “McGyver e-Learning”?

The Evolving LMS/LCMS:  Their Role in the World of Learning 2.0 and Social Learning – While I’ve heard of several LMS/LCMSs that support social learning, the ones I have the most experience with definitely don’t fall into that category. It would be nice to get more education there.

Rapid Deployment Leveraging Social Networks and Google Wave – Or maybe it would be better to see some concrete tools and examples along the same lines…

Case Study: Converting a Live Workshp to e-Learning – This just sounds good. Lots of us grapple with converting ILT to elearning and the decisions that must be made in that design process; I’m always interested to see how others do it.

Visual Design Essentials: Practical Techniques for Designing Better Online Courses – I had to reread this description before I “got it” that when the writer says “design” he means “visual design”, and that made me chafe a little (that confusion being something that bosses and clients often fall victim to, as well). Having said that, visual design is important and it’s always something I’m up for learning more about… particularly when it relates directly to what I do.

“Don’t Make Me Think”: Creating Effective e-Learning with User Testing – I reread Steve Krug’s book recently because I hope to step up some of our user testing at work; this session would be relevant. And I like that they’re recognizing how relevant web design/development is to elearning design/development…

New Applications for Mobile Games and Simulations – mLearning has never been a huge interest for me, but I’m currently doing some research on HTML5 and therefore wish I could peek into just about every mlearning session I hear about…

When Worlds Collide: Social Media and the Learning Organization – Again, interested in how social media and collaborative tools can affect learning.

Don’t be shy! Tell me what I missed… even if it’s not listed above.

Edit: I have to say (as if there are people out there who are going to get offended) — there are a few sessions that sound really cool, but I might have caught the same speaker doing what sounds like a similar topic at prior conferences. So I pretty much didn’t list those here. No offense! And from the tweets coming in about Michael Allen’s session, I might be wrong about that anyway. Again, wish I were there…

Jealous!

Looking ahead to the conferences happening this summer, the one I’m probably most sorry to be missing is Learning Solutions Conference and Expo 2010.

But just because I can’t go doesn’t mean I can’t window-shop! So, completely ignoring my word count, here are the sessions I would be trying to decide between if I were in Orlando today:

Using Web Analytics to Track the Use of Formal and Informal Learning – Lots of us try to avoid our LMSs, but then we don’t get good tracking on how many customers we’re serving. Analytics could bridge that gap and I do use Google Analytics for websites I manage… but I don’t know a lot about using it inside a company’s intranet, which it seems like you would have to do.

The Role of Standards in Supporting Innovation in e-Learning – This might be a little basic for me, but I’m really interested in the work that LETSI is doing.

Creating Game-like Engagement without a Game Designer’s Budget – I’m a big believer that it’s the creativity behind the game — and the understanding of what makes a game good — that makes it exciting… not the multimedia. It sounds like this session is aimed at the right ideas.

Assessing e-Learning Results: Fundamentals, Myths, and Special Opportunities – I like that Will Thalheimer focuses on research-based solutions, so I tend to be interested in pretty much anything he has to say.

Project Management for Rapid e-Learning Projects – Project management has always been a challenge for me… not so much because I’m bad at it (hopefully), but more because I’d like to be better so that I could spend less time doing it.

Improving Systems Training by Adding Informal Learning – See comments on Will Thalheimer’s session above.

Distributed Learning: Rethinking Design to Encourage Advanced Performance – I’ve spent a lot of effort over the last year trying to change from designing learning “events” to designing solutions that meet learners’ needs over time. Interested in what Clark Quinn has to say on the topic… his perspective is usually a very interesting one.

Creating Media Like a Pro: Tips and Tricks for Audio and Video Development – And as much as I like to contemplate theory and learning strategy, I’m part of a very small shop and that is just getting its feet wet in video development. Some nitty-gritty tips would be good, and I always pick up good stuff from Diane Elkins’s presentations.

Advanced e-Learning Technology Architecture: Moving Beyond Course Delivery – Again, just interested in how technology supports — and limits — learning delivery.

Creating Value in e-Learning Design through Effective Instructional Feedback – I also usually learn a lot from Allen Interactions’ classes and sessions, though this one might not be much that’s new after taking both of their Elearning Instructional Design classes from ASTD.

On the upside, I guess I don’t actually have to decide between these, since I won’t be there. Did you pick any of these? How were they?

"The perfect elearning host" according CS. I concur.

Cheers: Cartoon Solutions has released Beth, a smart-looking, non-Barbie™-proportioned character that’s great for learning agents. I have to admit, though I’ve used their art in the past, sometimes I’ve changed the body proportions to be more realistic. The marketing behind Beth shows that Cartoon Solutions is paying attention to its elearning audience.

She's not bad... she's just drawn that way.

Jeers: Trivantis included a — sorry to say — salaciously drawn mermaid in the Lectora X media library. Can’t say I’ll find much use for this in elearning… even if I needed a mermaid, I wouldn’t opt for Jessica Rabbit’s long-lost oceanic kin. And that’s a pity because elearning is Trivantis’s whole business. That being the case, it’s pretty disappointing to find something this off-the-mark. Hat tip: Marc Shecter.

*Wordpress tells me I started this blog post almost three months ago. I haven’t posted it because I’ve had an issue with Lectora X’s media library on my company’s network… not Trivantis’s fault from what I can tell, but it’s taken some time to get resolved, and I wanted to be able to say that in all fairness, the rest of the media library is at least work-appropriate. It is, and otherwise I’m pretty darn keen on Lectora X’s improvements.

1) Advance/Advanced. Conference season gives me ample opportunity to cringe at this, especially since I think huge endeavors are worth the copyediting effort (cheers to Learning Solutions, jeers to TechKnowledge and ICE). Advance registration is registering in advance; maybe advanced registration involves adding pre-conference programs…?

2) Penultimate. Ultimate means last; and penultimate means next to last, not most ultimate (which doesn’t even make sense).

3) Simple/Simplistic. Sometimes simplistic is used (incorrectly) to mean very simple, but actually it’s not a compliment. Simplistic means overly simple to the point of being misleading or under-nuanced.

Until next time…

And the problem with that is, it’s really hard for me to shake that spring fever in a cube farm. I’m more easily distracted by coworkers, and I can’t do my normal staying-focused behaviors because I’ll distract them back. (I hum when I’m studying or playing WoW at home.) I also can’t wear track pants… or even jeans.

Does anyone function well in this environment? Do you expect instructional designers to stay “professional” all day and still do creative work… Or is that a false dichotomy?

Got any tips for me?

As a trainer, I often fell for the idea that if I was giving out prizes, trainees would only value them if they were “valuable”. But in fact, mere measurement does change behavior, and the oddest things can motivate us: achievements in WoW (most of which give nothing), virtual prizes (like clipart of a car that I saw one webinar presenter give out this past week), or simply seeing a full row of green checkmarks because we got 100% on a quiz.

There’s lots of stuff to discuss here. Watch. Tell me what you think.

(Alternately, view in parts on YouTube…)

[youtube pMLtwJGA4Wc]

[youtube 1GaqoE_qLCs]

[youtube 4lTprV-dRmY]

On the upside, I caught Studio 360 going home, with Quentin Tarantino talking about Inglorious Basterds. And what struck me about Tarantino — what always strikes me about Tarantino — is that he is such a complete, utter movie geek. A big part of his becoming a brilliant writer, producer, and director is his lifelong education in film. He “basks in cinema”, as he said to Kurt Anderson, both as a fan and a contributor. And his movies show it.

What do you bask in? What are you passionate about? What brings out your inner geek? Work? Hobby? School? A volunteer gig? Family?

Whatever the subject, do your contributions reflect that passion?

because they're short. duh.

At KC-ASTD’s tech conference last fall, I attended a session by Sue Maden and Tony Maden on elearning pieces they’ve created at Burns and McDonnell. Some were Flip videos, some were screencasts, and some were interactive. Each took around 2 minutes. The whole point was to access the information just-in-time, so they weren’t serving them through their LMS.

Sound familiar? It did to me… We started doing something similar at my company this past year. We call them “trainlets”, and I’m going to get skewered in #lrnchat for spreading new terminology in our field, but the name has caught fire at my company, unlike “CBTs”.

I didn’t invent the term, but here’s what it means to me:

• <5 minutes
• usually not interactive, but can be
• probably not delivered through the LMS

Are you doing something similar? What do you call them?

Shamira (aka me)

I play World of Warcraft. One thing that fascinates me about WoW is how much learning happens in-game… mostly informally.

Monday night, my guild tried five times to down a boss we’ve killed easily before. Our leaders explained and encouraged. Repeatedly. Before we quit, one mentioned that some people weren’t executing, even those who had before. I spoke up.

“I know you don’t want to embarrass anyone, but will you tell people privately if they aren’t doing it right?”

“If you aren’t doing xyz, you aren’t doing it right.”

I was doing xyz. But other people might not be able to evaluate their own performance in the heat of battle… right? “What if people can’t tell?”

Pause. “Okay, fair enough.”

Incoming private message: “You’re doing it wrong.” D’oh!

How long do you wait to tell people they’re doing it wrong? Why?

This is the odd post as I’m going to get personal and let you know the other reason I’ve been neglecting my subscribers and readers: I’m pregnant with twins, and the last couple of months ain’t been easy, people. But thanks for sticking around.

(Even if you aren’t full-service, take a look… I don’t freelance for whole elearning development, but I do freelance voice work, so I just signed up in the Voices and Audio Services category. Maybe someone looking on the site will need an American voice at some point.)

And for those of you who buy elearning services, there are some great resources for you,  too… including a guide to buying elearning services and a guide to writing an RFP for elearning. Check it out!

I participate as often as I can, and tonight I decided to post some of my favorites from last night. (Yes, sometimes I blog purely for the pleasure of deciding to do something and then do it. No committee involved.)

So, without further ado…

Re: Q1) What new trends, approaches, etc are you suspicious of?

oxala75: i’m always suspicious of VW, but mostly because of its implementation, not its potential.

tmiket: I like easy to use software but ….just b/c you have a wrench doesn’t make you a mechanic..

Re: Q2) What skills are we missing in the suite necessary for good learning design?

Quinnovator: Q2: a willingness to go to the mat for the user experience, supporting fun over seriousness

And a bonus to take me over my word limit, but totally worth it…

Re: a side conversation?

Quinnovator: er,,, sex education or sex training: which would you want your daughter to have in high school?

It’s with somewhat less anticipation that I make my yearly requests for new software, but the shopping researching is still fun.

I know I’m not going to get everything I ask for (particularly not the Deluxe Chemistry Set), and yes, it will all be tied to the company’s business needs blah ROI blah etc increasing productivity blah etc. But having said that, I’m wondering…

What was on your software wish list this year?

This semester has been more time-consuming than I anticipated (a good thing because it’s not busy work), and I’ve also been asked to do a couple of webinars recently (which, so far, has been tons of fun), and my local ASTD chapter (of which I am a board member) is giving a conference (at which I’m presenting) in a few couple of weeks. So things are busy, but busy in a very productive way.

But posts are coming soon… including my first mondo post, on a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. Stay tuned.

Small piece of a visual comparison by Raynor

Even though instructional design is not synonymous with graphic design (contrary to some employers’ beliefs), graphic design is obviously a pretty big part of what we do. Even those among us who have the luxury of not doing our own graphic design have to judge and vet others’ work. So it seems like it behooves us to at least talk the talk and spot differences in design and type, to what effect on the overall product.

I’m working on my graphic design and typography chops informally for the time being, which is why I’m grateful for bloggers, among them John Gruber at Daring Fireball, who recently posted:

So You Think You Can Tell Arial From Helvetica? Quiz

and Arial Versus Helvetica

Extra credit: Not new, but very interesting… Helvetica (the documentary). Enjoy!

Just search for your name using Personas and it returns a graph of “how the Internet sees you”, based on predetermined categories:

Here's mine... click for a full view.

Obviously this is going to be more accurate if you have a fairly unusual name (like mine), but the creators of the project are well aware of this. Get a more complete explanation of the project’s aims and how to interpret your graph by going to Personas and clicking Read More.

But it gives me the opportunity to rant about an error that I see every single day now: the confusion between “it’s” and “its” (and general bad application of apostrophes in written communication of all kinds).

I feel it’s relevant to us as IDs because our writing needs to be nearly impeccable, and I don’t know many of us who have the benefit of a copyeditor. But I’m also pleading to you as learning professionals: does anyone know of a catchy way to teach the difference between “it’s” and “its” — or do you have a shorthand that you use to remember it?

If you haven’t seen it in action yet:

[youtube CsjJOsx84MA]

I always feel like the Joker whenever Google announces something new… Where do they get those wonderful toys?? But I then I remember they’re mostly free for me to use, for good or evil, as I see fit.

In the case of Sidewiki, I could see using this to enhance a company’s intranet/process documentation. I know of a couple departments that are considering moving to a wiki, replacing RoboHelp or another EPSS. Sidewiki would eliminate the need to rebuild the system… but I’m thinking it’s not going to work on some/most intranets, due to either technical or formal limitations.

Did any other uses of this app spring to mind when you saw it?

– Mark Twain

It’s been 3 months or so that I’ve been writing this short-form blog, and it’s been good for my writing overall.

But I’m also finding that there are some things that I can’t cover in the depth that I want to, using only 140 words at a time. I just can’t. Tonight after #lrnchat, Dave Ferguson assured me that that wasn’t a failure. Thanks, Dave!

Long story short (or vice-versa), I’m going to allow myself some Mondo Posts now and then: much longer posts that will have more depth… or more breadth. Definitely more words.

Okay fine, that's Mongo, not Mondo. Jeez, picky...

But I promise, I will respect your time and not write a Mondo Post just because I don’t want to take the time to edit. Much.

And not just in a creative sense, though we do a lot of creative work. Sometimes we need inspiration to come up with ways to meet a deadline. Sometimes we need inspiration to sweet-talk an SME into making our projects higher-priority. And yes, sometimes — often — we need an inspired way to present information, create a framework for practice, or motivate people to change their behavior.

I like what he has to say about pulling your inspiration from people in fields other than your own. As important as it is to commune with fellow practitioners in my field, I think I expand my horizons in a different way when I go outside and see how non-IDs solve their problems. It’s often surprisingly applicable.

One of them was to do volunteer work for an organization that is in need of your talents, and yesterday on ASTD’s LinkedIn group, I came across one such volunteer opportunity. The contact (company president Tegan Acree) has told me that they would be open to allowing designers/developers to use the work in their portfolios. They are creating coaching modules for job seekers and Tegan says they can use all the help they can get.

For more information, contact Tegan at tacree@hiringforhope.org and view information about the company on their LinkedIn page.

Having taken almost 2/3 of my coursework for my M.Ed., I’ve taken a lot of classes on learning design, but I’m hoping to approach things from a little different angle with this class. I’d like to get more basic in some senses… pay even more attention to what happens personally, cognitively, with the learner when using a computer as the teacher (or as an intermediary between a the learner and teacher).

I’ll probably post some musings here as the semester progresses…

You have to download and install it before the offer expires, but according to my reading, you will then have a fully-functioning copy of this software. Here are the limitations, from the enclosed README:

1) No free technical support
2) No free upgrades to future versions
3) Strictly non-commercial usage

Read more and download here, then come back and tell me what you think of it!

The topic has very little to do with my everyday work, but like many people who I’ve talked with from the conference, it has inspired me to get going on my next projects and maybe take a fresh look at what I’m doing and how.

Mostly, it’s just been a privilege to be around performers, scholars, and composers who approach their work with such dedication and commitment, and often, a great sense of fun.

Perhaps more on other insights later, as they come…

For now, if you want to peek in on the party, try Kyle Gann’s blog.

Techsmith did release a comparison chart between Camtasia Studio (for PC) and Camtasia for Mac, and indeed, the Mac version does have fewer features. But it does a great job, it’s fairly intuitive to use, and I like how it integrates existing Mac functionality (such as font selection).

Most disappointing to me is that there is no closed captioning capability at this point. I’m sure Techsmith is going to bring it up to speed, but of course, no one knows when.

I’m thinking about doing a more complete comparison of the new Camtasia for Mac with other Mac screencasting tools… which ones would you like to see compared?

My summer semester ended yesterday and it inspired the title of this post. I did a credible job (I hope), but studying Flash coding further has reinforced my belief that if you’re going to use advanced tools, you’re so much better off with an expert developer. After all, you wouldn’t want someone who only dabbles in ID to design the course, would you? (Please say no.)

Honestly, I think I have the brainpower to do the coding, I find a certain amount enjoyable, and I think it’s very beneficial for the designer to understand the basics of the development work. But…

1) I’m never going to be as efficient as a dedicated Flash developer, and…

2) Coding all my own designs might make me lazy about their level of interactivity. And that would be bad.

Screenshot of the to-come Camtasia for Mac, by TechSmith

I’m curious whether the Mac version will be as full-featured as the Windows one, though… even after the introductory price of $99 expires, a new license for the Mac version will be just $149, compared to $299 for the Windows version.

If the release doesn’t come with a Windows-to-Mac version comparison, I’ll post my own here as soon as I can… and I’ll post thoughts here regardless!

Photo: iStockPhoto

On Tuesday night, my husband and I started Salsa dance lessons.

Starting class, the instructors didn’t state learner-focused performance objectives or list the conditions under which we were expected to perform. Instead, they demonstrated what we would (hypothetically) be able to do once we learned the steps. It was enough beyond what we would cover that day to be motivating, but not so advanced as to be demoralizing.

The guidelines IDs use to create objectives help us communicate clearly, but don’t help us motivate our learners. I’m with Michael Allen that we could do better… why not communicate objectives and simultaneously help our learners visualize what they will be able to accomplish, even what they will become, once they finish our training?

IMO, subject matter and delivery method are largely irrelevant; I’ve seen this same technique used in data entry training.

Your thoughts?

I don’t entirely agree, but since more of my experience is in designing elearning, I don’t feel like I’m the biggest expert on the differences in what we do.

So I’m asking for your help… what do you think?

I understand that this question is full of gray areas, but please pick a side that you agree with more… and if you’re inclined, I’d love for you to leave a comment to explain why! For the purposes of this poll, assume that no elearning development skills are being considered; just design skills.

[polldaddy poll=1842756]

Photo: brunkfordbraun via Flickr

Just something to share…

I’ve found that IDs love to learn; not only is it sort of part of the job description, being exposed to others’ brilliant ideas can help foster your own creativity, as well.

A few days ago, Mashable.com posted this list of the “Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action”. You’ve probably heard of TED, but I’d bet at least one of the others on the list are new; they certainly were to me.

Keep learning!

About a year ago, when people started talking about edupunk, I related to it (and really, who didn’t to some extent?). But at least for now, this probably describes me better.

Of course, the word edugeek has already been coined and is being used in different ways, so I might have to go with edunerd or even edudork. But whatever it is, it looks something like this…

…and to me, it just means there’s very little that I would rather discuss than the processes of learning and teaching.

I’m enjoying my 10,000 hours, and feel lucky they’re happening in the age of such easy access to information, and a wide and available community of other geeks.

By showing up for training, we admit to the instructor that we’re not experts. Before that, we have to admit the same to our bosses –– in fact, we often have to make a case for how un-expert we are and how it’s hurting the company. And even before that, we have to admit it to ourselves.

That could be tough on the ego, and if your corporate culture is ego-driven, such admissions may be unconsciously (or actively) discouraged. And what about if you’re in a profession in which being an expert is baked into the job description?

Do you agree? And as workplace learning professionals, is this within our influence?

And even though virtual worlds have been one of the biggest buzz items in the T&D world in the last several years, the list is very short. No doubt, part of my reluctance is because as “tech-savvy” as I am, in SL, my virtual clothes still attach to unusual parts of my virtual body.

However.

I’m adding this to my list.

Photo: Imperial College London

Obviously, as a sometime patient I want medical professionals to get as much hands-on practice as possible. If it’s preceded by virtual practice, I say so much the better. And though the article doesn’t mention it, I have to think SL could prove a very useful tool for doctors’ continuing education, as well…