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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/
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.
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 am going in for more ASTD Internationa l presentations today. Hopefully there will be some things I can take back to apply in designing training for TechSmith .
Specifically I would like to have some conversation with folks who are trying to do e-learning (or move towards more of an e-learning 2.0). I think there is a great room for screencasting, which I hope to do some soon on this blog. It definitely is not the end-all-be-all solution, but I think there is a lot of merit in begin able to show someone at their pace the info that they need.
I think in situations where someone is trying to reach a mass audience and there is not necessarily going to be a lot of two way conversation – then screencasting is a powerful tool – especially when conveying information/knowledge/learning or what ever else you call, about something on your screen.
I could see an educational YouTube – home-grown topics in training and education. Although, there would have to be a half-way reasonable way to weed out junk… It could create a whole new realm of educational discovery. Throw in social networking, ways to comment on the video (thinking something like digg )
-matt
