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So one of the things that I do often, and get to talk about a bit, is the idea of visual design.
For the record, I am not a very graphically enabled person. I can sketch a bit, I can get a point across, but I don’t make many visuals that anyone would call beautiful. How about you? Are you graphically minded?
Regardless, being visual, or thinking visually is important part of any learning professional.
For one of the presentations I did, I even put together a presentation that starts with some visual thinking – and the power of how visuals can communicate very powerful messages – both in terms of learning and emotion.
Check out this short screencast, as one example:
Also, check out VizThink – lots of interesting material for anyone interested in become more visual. Or looking to enhance your visual thinking. http://www.vizthink.com/blog/
I’ve been reading Wired.com for a few years, usually daily. For awhile now they’ve had a feature called the Wired How-To Wiki. (this one is about getting through airport security)
It’s an interesting experiment in presenting learning content on several different levels.
First off all they have lots of resources and professional writers to make it look good and read it really well.
Second, they understand that the graphics really make a piece. Sometimes the images are truly (which is the positive), 
sometimes they are just fun (at least they give us something). Check out How to survive and Avalanche
Third… it’s a wiki – meaning anyone can make changes, comment on the content, and even see the changes over time.
Although I haven’t dug in to see if readers of wired.com are adding much content or not, it is still an interesting concept. Allowing user generated content and corrections to create learning content.
Think of organizational possibilities – you create a quick procedural write-up on how to do a task, maybe as a job aid for yourself, or for a co-worker learning on the job. Rather than letting it rot on your hard drive, you share it out to the wiki. Perhaps a coworker sees an error or inconsistency, and takes a minute or two to make a change. A third co-worker disagrees, and changes the process. All is lost– no, from the wiki we can see who made what change and when- it can be restored back to its previous state, or changed again.
So not only does it create transparency, it creates an opportunity for each member of the organization to take ownership.
A potential downside might be if and when employees don’t feel like they have time to add anything. Then we’re no better off than we were before the wiki. Also, I’m not saying that this is the strategy for deploying every type and kind of training- I wouldn’t use it for highly regulated topics, or topics that are mission critical to the success of the organization. It can assist, but probably not the primary tool.
Now, can I get my screencasts to play in the wiki?
Okay one more post on the iPod Touch (at least for a little while, since this really isn’t a blog about the iPod touch – its about learning, especially e-learning.)
Today Toolbook announced it has and will be releasing tools to develop specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I am not a Toolbook user – but I think it seems pretty cool. Focused development on e-learning on a very cool tool.
They even made a screencast to preview it, check it out here: http://www.toolbook.com/demos/iphone_howto_demo/1/index.html
If anyone is working with ToolBook and is able to give this a try, I’d love to hear how it works… and even, if possible I’d be willing to test it out.
So in my travels lately I have been keeping an eye out for free Wi-Fi connections so I can use one of the features of the iPod touch that I can’t use at home. In the Denver Airport on Wednesday I was able to connect to the free connection.
A couple things I noticed as I browsed the internet, some of which will be a limiting factor if you are planning to use the iPod touch for mobile learning (m-learning).
One: using the wi-fi feature cuts the battery charge significantly. So if you’re using it with out a charger or a way to plug it into your computer, the actually amount of use you can get out of the touch is limited. I know I went from full to half in an hour or so. For shorter smaller modules this is fine. If its going to be something longer, you may not want to rely on the user going through wifi to access content.
Two: As of right now the actually types of content you can view on the iPod touch through the Safari browser is limited. No flash content. Images of most types seem to work fine. Videos- really I think I’ve only seen YouTube videos that play on YouTube. Even the YouTube video I posted recently only plays on the touch from the YouTube page.
Three: The ability to type and add content quickly from the iPod Touch. While I really like the touch keyboard, I am not yet proficient, and not fast at all. I still make mistakes. Granted I’ve only been using it for two months, I think that the keyboard is going to be ideal at all for writing or entering much information.
Four: At least for now, I don’t have a good application for note taking, organizing, or accessing other documents. I was checking my work e-mail through the web (which is a great and easy way to see wants going on, unless a response is needed ASAP), but I can’t even begin to look at attachments that come in. So again a limit on the formats that can be viewed and accessed.
I’m not trying to be negative, because I do really like my iPod touch – wow screen video looks so nice! I also want to be realistic about what it can and can’t do right now.
So my last post was about Launchy, with a quick video posted to YouTube.
There are two things I wanted to comment about, in conjunction with the last post. First, is the notion that with technology, I need to stop and think about the implications for learning– especially for tools.
Think about it. A tool like this, whether it is Launchy or some other program really has interesting potential in a learning environment. If I was working with a synchronous or a-synchronous group and had multiple websites, documents, etc… that I needed to access on even a semi-regular basis, I would add these to the list that Launchy pulls from. I would also have my student’s use this tool. It simplifies some of the process to quickly accessing materials.
I think it also very cool that it makes it very easy to launch an application. I think with a little become familiar with it, and a bit of regular use, it can make teachers and learners processes a bit smoother and faster.
Second Point
Maybe this is an aside, but after posting the video to YouTube, my first by the way, I was shocked to see that withing an hour there was a comment from someone:
I guess I’m not surprised, Launchy is similar to Quicksilver. Although I admit I was disappointed. I can see how someone entering into this space, trying to do something new, get involved in web 2.0 would be intimidated.
Honestly, who cares – I’m a PC user, I’ve taught classes for students at Indiana University, as grad student for both PC and Mac. Both platforms have pro’s and cons.
I think anyone that is using a forum like YouTube to try passing on educational materials probably needs to develop a thick skin, since you never know what will come your way. The idea of sharing and commenting is truly a powerful concept, but it is also can be scary and down right nasty if your materials is received negatively. In the case of this one video, fortunately, there was no cussing 
So here’s the question, what do you see as the positives and negatives of posting to sites like YouTube for e-learning purposes?
I have been using Launchy for about a year now. I really like it. When I have been using a computer without it, I always miss it.
It really is cool. You can quickly launch it with a hotkey- then you can use it to launch programs, websites, or go to folders, it even can be a calculator.
I put together a 2 minute video to give you a preview. Check it out:
I’m hoping to do more screencasts… let me know what you think….
I’m in Denver for the next couple of days at the Innovations 2008 conference put on by the League for Innovation in the Community College.
Presenting on Camtasia Studio in the afternoon tomorrow (March 2, 2008).
Should be a great opportunity and I’m looking towards talking with educators from the area and around the country.
Chris Anderson, author of The Long-Tail and editor of Wired magazine has an article worth reading, Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business in this month’s issue of Wired.
I think there are lot of things that apply to the education and training world.
There are probably a lot of conclusions that could be drawn from the article, and I am sure that there will be criticism, but here are my thoughts.
First it’s interesting that many of the areas where we can see obvious growth towards free are the collaborative, community based businesses like YouTube, Social Networking, and Wikipedia. While there is no doubt that organizations are potentially putting a lot into running these sites, it is also true that these sites wouldn’t work very well with out contributions from the community.
So one thing that we have to consider — even though there isn’t money involved – what is the cost of participating?
I think the cost can take place on several levels. First, there is a personal cost to be involved as a user or contributor. Of course the benefit often out weighs the cost. There is the potential of the cost in information that is gathered by some sites – that information is creating opportunities for those organizations – which is good them, and if we like their service and they keep improving it, maybe it’s worth sharing. There is also the idea that they give us a basic model until we use it enough and have a need to use it that we pay for premium services.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying any of this is wrong – I just think that really aren’t many things that are free. There is a cost, that cost just isn’t always financial.
So a couple questions:
Will consumers come to export more and more, but also want to give less? Or will we just keep giving more and more (specifically information about our tastes, habits, and who we are)?
What impact does/could this have on learning/teaching models?
We already have open universities (like MIT) giving away content – how does this affect for-pay-programs? (Maybe it can’t compete now, but what about in a couple years?)
Can free ever provide the same quality of paid in education? (All else being equal, such as a student’s dedication, commitment, and involvement…)
Could an organization potentially give away training modules, with some type of premium tiered content or advertising model? Would main stream organizations tap into these resources would they not be used because of lots of internal reasons that usually come up when corporations want to use open materials…?
