"The Bitter Episode" - The Toolbar, Sketchnotes by Me

So here is my second crack at sketchnoting a webinar/chat/discussion.  I went back to one of the previous episodes of The Toolbar, hosted by Brian Dusablon and Judy Unrein.  Episode 13 was "The Bitter Episode", although not nearly as bitter as I had expected.

Brian and Judy, as always had some thought provoking discussions that really expand how we as designers should be considering or conscientious of the courses we are creating and the tools we are using.

I wanted to practice my sketchnote taking.  I really need to learn how to draw people better, however I was almost able to do this particular set in real time.  I pause only twice to re-listen to some points I missed, but new I wanted to capture.

Something I should have mentioned in my last posting about sketchnotes, was that as I had learned in my research, my focus on what was being said is much stronger.  I tend to be someone that always multitasks while listening to webinars and to that end usually truly miss most of what is being said.  By having to pay attention more closely so that I can ensure that what I am hearing I am translating into images/analogies I am focused on the talk that is being presented and recollecting the material more easily.

Seems like my messy writing has finally been put to good use.

Curation in the Workplace - David Kelly, Sketchnotes by Me

I've become increasing interested in the idea of learning how or practicing how to take sketchnotes.  Initially for me I just thought it seemed like an interesting idea and some skill set that may be useful when designing and developing elearning.  I was curious if it could help me to get better at storyboarding, which is a skill I know I'm not as proficient as I could become.  With this in mind I began to research more and more about sketchnotes, graphic facilitation, and visual thinking.  Then it just became, for lack of another expression, kind of cool.

If I think of something I want to physically make I can do it with ease; ask me about my fish lamp some time.  Ask me to draw something and I feel so inept.  I've had a few friends show me how easy it is to draw and it just always feels so foreign.  The thought of trying to create drawings to capture what I am hearing in a lecture, conference, webinar....EEK.  But, I'm determined to try.  Again....it just seems cool.

One of the sketchnote gurus I listened too explained how we tend to be visual learners.  Most of what we intake is visually, then some hearing, some by scent, some by touch.  The act of taking notes and drawing visuals and analogies to what you are hearing helps the listener to process the information, retain the information, and mash it into images/symbols that more closely resonate with the listener.

I thought about this and it seemed to make sense, but really???  Really?  I'm not sure it would ever work for me.  I'm so use to just writing and writing and typing and typing notes.  In fact I'm pretty good at it and if I really concentrate can almost capture a talk word for word.  But there in lies the problem.  I'm just capturing the words and not synthesizing as much of the actual substance of the talk as I should be and want.  I'm there  listening for the purpose of learning, not the purpose of transcribing.

So this has now brought me to my first attempt at taking notes in this manner.  I wanted to start somewhere and I heard that the TED talks were a good place to begin.  They are usually not much more than 20 minutes and the topics are incredibly interesting.  I of course never start at the beginner level. I instead delve into a one hour webinar.  However, I pick a topic I really an interested in and have some passion for hoping this will inspire me to draw and more importantly learn more.

Jane Hart hosted another "In Conversation With" David Kelly this week about "Curation in the Workplace".  I highly recommend listening to it and looking at both Jane's and David's sites.  Both add such invaluable information to our elearning/learning community and have been large influences on my own path.

So here is my first attempt at sketchnotes.  I did have to pause the webinar during the first 30 minutes to get what I wanted down on the paper.  Not the true idea of this type of note taking.  However, as I went into the next 30 I had much less problem.  I kept up with the conversation completely.  I took notes freely and as I had learned from my reading and researching, embraced my mistakes as I went along.  In the end I'm kind of proud of what I was able to capture.  More surprising to me is I truly remember every moment of the webinar.  I can recite all the points that were major to me and I don't have to look at my notes at all.  The act of adding the images to my page, also implanted them into my memory.  I love technology and all that goes with it, but this pen to paper method has won me over to try at least a few more times.

Always surprised and amused by image search results

This afternoon I started out on my production of creating a new course about Skin Wounds. I'm sure you're thinking "How Exciting!".  Exciting? Perhaps not.  Interesting and slightly gross.  Definitely.

Anyway, my client sent me their material and initially their first slide had a suit of armor on it.  They liked the idea of trying to protect the patient's skin.  I also thought that was actually pretty creative of them so I started off on my journey to find some images that I could incorporate into this theme.

I thought to myself, "I want an image of armor" so I'll start with Google Images to get some ideas.

RESULT:

After seeing this I realized, "No what I need is a close up of armor." My next search through Google then is "chain mail".

RESULT:

So this is better.  I'm now at least getting something that resembles what I might be able to use as a background.  Now, knowing I'm looking at Google Images, I realize many of these are copyright protected, but now I have an idea of what I can maybe search for on Flickr.

Next step, change to Flickr and look up "armor."

RESULT:

As I expected, good images, but not really a background that I can use for this particular course......

And that's when it began to fall apart and I ended up falling off my seat laughing.

I changed the search in Flickr to "chain mail".

RESULT:

Now you will remember that I mentioned this course is about Skin Wounds....but I'm guessing that the chaffing that results from these outfits on a hot day is not what they had in mind.

I'm going to 1, try to stop laughing; 2, quickly close my search window before someone wonders what I'm up too; and 3, try to think of some new key search words to use.

A Small Collection of Free eLearning Tools

Recently I was asked to showcase at the eACH Conference 2012,  some free elearning tools that can be used for deigning/developing elearning.  I presented just a few of my favourites out of the hundreds that are available within this 20 minute session.

With some incredible inspiration from Jane Hart's Top 100 Tools for Learning (2011) resources, my personal PLN, including various blog writers that I connect with (like David Kelly), and items that I have used in my own development I put together this brief collection of tools.

Inspiration and resources for more free tools/articles/ideas are found on the last 8 slides of this presentation.

Direct link to presentation.

It takes a lot of work to look this good.

After all my years of doing this (and they aren't many, but I should know better by now) it surprises me every time the amount energy and effort it takes to sometimes make the simplest thing.

Photo by: T.Parish

I have a presentation I'm doing this week (I'll post it in a follow-up posting here).  It's only a 20 minute presentation.  The planning time, layout, screen capturing, practicing, re-editing, re-practicing, blah, blah, blah it has taken to have this to the quality and look I want it to have has taken roughly 8 hours.

Really!

There were some interruptions in the middle of all that time, but still.  It's this development time that stuns people that never do this kind of work (presentations, elearning, etc).  They often assume 20 minute presentation should take 30 minutes to make.  Or an hour course should take about 2 hours to make.

The reality of it all, is it takes a great considerable more effort and time to design quality work.

If you're every looking for a rough guide of course design times look here:

• How long does it take to create e-learning? - Clive Sheppard (Summary)
• How long does it take to create e-learning? - Bryan Chapman (Slideshare)
• Design Times Ratio - www.langevin.com

Playing in the Word Clouds

Sometimes it's fun to use various word cloud generators to see what kind of key themes you keep going on and on about.  Others may call these your key concepts or topics.

Regardless I gave Tagxedo a try today as I hadn't seen it before.  In some respects I was surprised to see the key words that came out from by blog and my twitter accounts.  I'm not sure they're complete accurate when it comes to actual word usage from the source.  In the Twitter word cloud, I see the word GOOGLES .  Really?  Did I actually tweet that out at some point?  And so much so that it is on there as a bigger word than OPINION?  When did I tweet about Indiana?  Who do I even know in Indiana?

And so the fun begins as a brief look into my past writing years.

Discovery Through eLearning Word Cloud

@Tracy_Parish Word Cloud

Tip:Don't Over Using Characters in Your Courses

I've been using Articulate's Storyline for sometime now and was just previewing a course in which I used one of the Illustrated Characters.  I realized, when going through it, that I had changed her facial expression so many times that she started to look a bit manic.

Tip:  These (or any) characters are great to use, but remember if you are expressing to the learner one component of information, try to minimize the changes to poses and facial expressions unless a dramatic change in the "story" is needed. 

You don't want the person's arms up, down, up and smile, frown, angry all in 3 slides.  There are times when it is warranted to drastically change the poses/expressions, but try to keep the character looking as natural as possible.  This goes for the illustrated and photographic characters.

Not so good:

Better:

Comments regarding this post can also be found in the E-Learning Heroes Community Forum.

Can we really remove all the annoying instructions?

I saw this video a little while ago, and I'm unsure how long it's been circulating, but it is hilarious if you have anything to do with instructional design and development. "What if Mario was Remade in 2012?"

(some language may offend)

Basically it is the actual game footage from (I think) the 2006 version of the game, but every single step and action that is performed by the player is superseded by pop-ups and voice overs instructing the player what to do next.  The player is bombarded with things of which we are becoming complacent.  There are the instruction pop-ups, the click here, click there, the do you want to post your achievement to Facebook, to Twitter, do you want to buy more coins for $0.99, do you want to buy a new outfit for Mario for $5.99.  It is spoofing, and to a great degree, showing how drastically marketing and social interaction has been embedded into all we do today.

What really struck me and continues to haunt me as a designer/developer is the bombardment (this is my word of the day) of instructions given to the player.  I seem to be "forced" into adding this level of instruction into the courses I've been designing lately and I'm tired of it.  (Here comes my rant).  I'd love to hear from other designers how often they too are put into this predicament of having to add in countless instructions to ensure that each and every single learner does not have to use any extra brain power to navigate through a course.  

The argument is that good design does not need all the "Clicky-Clicky Bling Bling" (via @CammyBean).  So how come so often I hear from my clients and beta testers "Oh I didn't know I was suppose to click that".  What has happened to everyone and their sense of exploration?  Why when there are four choices on the screen do they need to be told "Use your mouse and left-click on one of the four blue choices that are located on the right lower side of the screen".

I'd also like to know if anyone has an opinion on how many times do you hear...."Oh I didn't know I had to click there", before you actually decide to resign the activity.  Do you take the first instance as a warning that something is wrong or the tenth?  At what point can you say "it must be the learners" and at what point do you decide "it must be the design".  For me, it is unfortunately all about my learners and I've come to know that they do not like to explore or be adventuresome.

My learners appear to just want to click NEXT to continue.

So my thinking and goal for this year is to move them away from the Mario 2012 version of learning and back to the 2006 version (at a minimum).  I want them to try to explore every pipe to see where it leads.  I want them to try to punch every set of bricks to see if they get a reward.  I'm not entirely sure I'll find a solution and a great methodology to make this shift, but I would be really excited to hear from any of you that would like to join in on this movement.

Can we really remove all the annoying instructions and get our learners to be adventuresome?  It's time we designers/developer revolt and change things up.  What are your tips, tricks, demos you can share that do move design in this manner.  

Transported Through Time with Twitter

For me, last month was a real interesting step back in time.  I became fascinated and intrigued by all the Titanic hype.  Yes I admit that it was I that arranged a girls' night out to go and re-watch the movie (again) in 3D.  Which, if you don't mind 3D effects did add some extra (pardon the pun) depth to the movie.

More so I got wrapped up in watching numerous documentaries about not only the voyage, but also the possible climate implications, at the time of the voyage, that led up to and perhaps sealed the fate of the ship.  I watched episodes showing how master craftsmen of the time would have worked with the tools at hand to produce everything from the lavish decor, to the simplest cabins, to the modern devices and mechanics that made this ship so spectacular for it's time.  I also watched James Cameron and a team of experts discuss and explore what really happened from the moment of impact at the surface to the moment of impact at the bottom of the ocean floor.  To see some of that new animated footage brought new light to the incidents that happened that evening.  

More intriguing from a television perspective, was one show that covered the people that were involved.  It covered many of the characters that we have come to know.  How they came to be on the ship, their involvement as staff of the ship, and what became them and their families after.  People like: Captain Edward John Smith (Titanic), John Hume (Orchestra Member), Captain Stanley Lord (SS California), Colonel John Jacob Astor & Mrs. Madeline Talmage Astor (1st Class Passengers).

I know many of us have now lived though several amazing and incredible world events lately all through Twitter.  More people found out globally and quicker than the "news" could provide the information, that Obama had become president.  Think back to the Japan Tsunami.  How fast did the world learn of this disaster through twitter? Family used Twitter as their only communication to find out if loved ones were safe.  It's no doubt what an important communication tool it has become, but something about reading the Titanic Voyage tweets on April 14th really got to me.

I began following this account sporadically when it first set up, but as the fateful, historic night drew near, I began to keep a closer eye on what was being posted.  I was being transported back through time.  I was reading and virtually experiencing all of the events of April 14, 1912 from the perspective of 2220+ passengers.  A first class passenger describes the morning as:

Captain Smith reports on his communication with the SS Noordam:

A third class passenger let's us know that their luxuries are of no comparison to the first class:

Engineers and Crew occasionally give us glimpses into the running of the ship"

That all aside, what I found the most profound were the tweets coming in from @TitanicRealTime 100 years to the minute, post disaster.

As the day of tweets begins, one comes to realize that many of them are as true as the day they were first experienced.  Real perspectives, from real people.  Words, thoughts and actions captured from journals, logs, eye witnesses and then redistributed 100 years later mirroring everything minute by minute.


The effect of the tweets became engrossing, heart wrenching, and eventually almost unspeakable.  It was if as by reading them you were reliving the entire day and night.  Not from one perspective but from many; first class, 3rd class, crew, engineering, the captain, and even near by ships.



So if you didn't experience this tweeting event this is probably all sounding very much like what someone would say if they were reading a book.  Read a book, any book, about the Titanic and you're going to get the same experience and perspectives. You'll say this is true for any historic account.  But what about TIME?



Here's what really, and I mean really got to me that night.  Not only was I reading these tweets (yes like one might a book), and not only was I immersed in my own imagination of the imagery being presented (yes like one might in a book), but there was an aspect of time going by as the events were unfolding.


You couldn't just jump pages ahead to see what was going to happen next.  You couldn't read something like, "It was mid-afternoon. Mr. White was to arrive at 4:00pm and we were all very excited to see him.  When he arrived...."  That small statement there has me as a reader, trying to imagine that it's the middle of the day and late afternoon all at once.


As the Titanic tweets were being presented they were presented at the same time the actually occurred and it created an effect that had you waiting to see when the next one would occur and what would it say.  How much more of the story would be shared?  It is very hard to imagine this, because as I soon as I try to explain this in text I'm losing the effect and am in fact mirroring that which occurs in a book.  However, that night, the reading of the tweets came in like this (EST):


5:15pm
#passenger I've noticed the engines running faster than at any other time during the trip – no doubt they want to beat Olympic's record.

then an hour later:

6:15pm

#passenger I was just climbing into my top berth to read when I noticed the ship vibrating much more than usual. Is this normal?

As the reader...I now wait and wait and wait to find out....Is it actually normal?  There is no flipping the page, starting a new chapter.  You had to actually physically wait to see what was to happen next.

6:35pm

#crew Keeping a sharp lookout but no icebergs at all on our current route. Visibility is becoming more of an issue however…

6:39pm

#officer 3 gongs coming from the lookout and a report on the telephone – Iceberg Right Ahead. Hard-a-starboard!!

Over the next several hours, a flurry of tweets start pouring in from the #crew, #officer, #passenger, #engineering, the #captain, even the #bandmaster. At some points they came in quickly as the passenger and crew confusion mounted. As the reader you also felt anxious, nervous and confused.  

The actual magical element of the Timeline, that Twitter provided, as a part of the overall account, did not truly impact me until the final moments of the event.  

At 9:17pm I read  "#BoatNo1 All the lights have now dimmed, pure darkness. Only screams can be heard…"  Then 3 minutes later I read: "#BoatNo1 She is gone…The unsinkable ship….Lost in the depths….All around check their watches 2.20a.m. – exactly."

Tweet after tweet came in for hours to then 6 minutes waiting for the next tweet, seemed too long.  #officer No one knows what to say or do. Some sit quietly, others weep, some are inconsolable. I can barely believe it…

Four more minutes of waiting.....

#firstclass Those poor souls floating in the ice cold water, I want to pull them into the boat but others resist. Why?

Then 11 minutes of waiting.....

#firstclass The ocean is awash with screaming people and bodies – it is an unimaginable sight.

14 minutes of waiting.....

#officer Burning green pyrotechnic lights in my lifeboat. My hands are so cold I can barely hold the flame. Someone must see us…

Only 4 tweets then occurred between 9:55pm and 11:00pm.  Sixty-five minutes of waiting.  Checking.  Refreshing the screen.  Looking to see what happened next.  How long did they wait for someone to find them? Who would find them?  

As the reader you ACTUALLY HAD TO WAIT, just as long as the real characters of this event HAD TO WAIT to come to the conclusion.

11:00pm
#Carpathia We have reached Titanic's location but the ship is gone. How could this have happened?

As an observer to this event, Twitter gave the Titanic story the appreciation of how quickly everything occurred and also how long it took for help to arrive.  The element of TIME coupled with various perspectives of the events that occurred created an entirely new dimension that history books and teachers at the front of classes can not convey.  Being immersed into the situation, in this respect, gave a greater appreciation of the events as they "truly" happened.

Thinking back to my history classes I would have loved to have experienced those lessons in this manner.  I most likely would have been more intrigued and excited to learn about them.  Granted the main Titanic events focused on one evening, but there was much buildup to the launch.  I wonder if a teacher or historical society such as that which posted out this Titanic Voyage, could perhaps do this kind of "reenactment" with any other events.  Could you find something that could be, for the most part, covered within a month of school or a semester of school?  Or could you cover and tweet out in real time at least a portion of an event?  Obviously Twitter isn't the only means by which could be done, but it gives rises to the idea that more historical accounts could become better understood by added in the factor of REAL TIME to them.

I'd be happy to hear from anyone else that followed the TitanicRealTime tweets or your thoughts on the ideas within this (long) post.

Change in Scoop.it! topic from "#lrnchat" to "The eLearning Guild - Guild, Members & Conference Curation"

I've decided that I would much rather gather recourses from the eLearning Guild and it's membership rather than from the twitterchat #lrnchat.  Many of the members of #lrnchat are in fact Guild members.  It seems to make more sense to expand this selection of curation to more wildly gather the information, resources and wisdom that eminates from the Guild, it's members,  it's conferences, and the conference backchannels.

I am not an employee of the eLearning Guild, but I am a member and have been for some time now.  The amound of information that one can get from the Guild, whether being a member or not is incredible.  However, once you also factor in the collective knowledge and resources shared by it's 49000 (and growing) membership; the amount of information at your fingertips becomes as hard to fathom as the universe itself.

I hope that by creating this Scoop.it! page that I will be able to gather up much of that knowledge and shared resources to give, yet one more, venue for this information to travel and to be shared.  My hope is that readers of this will find as much value from the information as I will.

Happy learning, sharing and growing to everyone.

(note: for now I can't change the url of the page http://scoop.it/lrnchat, but may try to find how to change it or create a whole new account  in the future)

Monday's Tracked Learning

I'm sure I missed tracking some my learning opportunities that happened throughout the day. I also know there were many items that seemed more like trivia bits that were interesting to me, but were things I didn't track since they were mini-trivia points.  Those of are some of the types of things that are still great learning opportunities, but things we forget to share and pass on to others.

During Work

• Marielle Thompson wins Canada a gold medal in women's ski competition this past weekend.  First in 40 years
• 30 hockey players join together for anti-homophobia campaign
• Morning radio call in shows are really really annoying
• A lot of people seem to experience issues with drop down menus not working in IE7, but as a user of a site where this is happening to me, it does not appear as if it is something I can change a setting for and magically it will work. It seems to be more of a programming issue, but what?
• My Internet browser has more add-ons running and enabled than I ever imagined. 
• There is a #lrnbk chat
• The people going through university currently are not nearly as tech savvy as we are lead to believe. 
• On Google you can no longer enter X and narrow your search to videos. The word videos has been replaced by YouTube. 
• 25 billion downloads on app store
• The most productive time of the day (in the office) is after 4:00pm 

Afterwork (I didn't do much reading/exploring on Monday night)

• iPad 3 smart covers to have rear coverage too
• Redheads have a high threshold for pain and can tolerate spicier food
• What I envision I can draw and what actually occurs when I try are vastly different. 

CHALLENGE: Tracking and Sharing my Learning

Today I read Jane Bozarth's post on "What Does Learning Look Like? This" and it gave me a new appreciation to something I love to do and is in fact one of the statements I make why I have this blog.  "I strive to learn one new thing each day."

As Jane's post points out, how many of us really notice when and how we are learning.  It happens constantly, yet we often don't recognize those moments nor do we share our findings with others. If I really think about what I have learned already today, the list is kind of interesting considering I've only been up for 3 hours.

• wind speed hit 80km/hr over night
• child thinks she can block parents from her computer use by adding password to her account
• parent discovers how to remove same password
• reasons for Ron Wilson being let go from Leafs
• drawing is fun
• you don't have to draw well to get your point across
• there are many sites on the web to find out how many words you can make from a set of scrambled letters
• Torontosun.com does not appear to be loading today
• one of the fights on UFC last night was scored incorrectly and a rematch will be needed
• Trader Joes seems to be a place I need to shop
• in 1934 a pair of socks cost 9cents
• the town tax dept is closed on Saturdays

That's quite a list, it's quite random and jumps around, but also is a great chronicle of the day so far. 

The question then to be asked is Did I recognize what I was learning when I was learning it?  No.  Did I share all the items I learned with anyone?  No.  Did I share any of the items? Yes.  Which ones did I chose to share and why?

Often my moments of "WOW I need to share this" only come when the item really astounds me.  The item/result truly was unexpected or I know it will make someone else's life (usually work life) easier.  So why don't I share the other items?  Why do we only share the WOWs? 

I suppose for me it's because I'm often joked at for having "interesting but useless facts" floating around in my head.  So why share them all, but the point to take away, is that what interests you will surely interest at least one other person.  Someone has shared an item with me, I have learned from it, I REALLY should share that item too and pass on the learning.  If we truly think about it this is the way all knowledge has passed through the generations, by sharing.  If the shared stopped much of the learning would as well.

Jane's post calls for us to realize those learning moments and be much more fully aware of them.  I commented on her post that I am taking this thinking forward to my team.  I initially said that I want to challenge them to track all of their learning moments for a month, but now that I have written what I learned in 3 hours....that might be a huge task.

Instead this will be the challenge I put forward to them and myself and I hope you may as well.

Try to keep track of everything you learn in one week, which of those items do you share?  At the end of the week I'd like them to reflect on why did you choose to share those only specific learnings, why do you keep the others to yourself?

I'm curious and excited to see the results of this experiment and would love to see other readers results next Saturday (March 10th).

Happy learning.

How similar is Siri to a Logic Named Joe?

If you know what a "Logic Named Joe" is, then there are many words that now describe you.  None of which I'm going to view, because they will label me as well. However, it's the title of a 1955 OTR episode of X Minus One.

"Old-Time Radio (OTR) and the Golden Age of Radiorefer to a period of radio_programming in the United States lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until television's replacement of radio as the primary home entertainment medium in the 1950s. During this period, when radio was dominant and filled with a variety of formats and genres, people regularly tuned in to their favorite radio programs. In fact, according to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners." (Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-time_radio)

Photo by: Nite Owl

CC: BY

I'm a bit of an OTR fan and have listened to countless hours of Suspense, The Weird Circle, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Third Man, Archie Andrews, Fiber McGee and Molly, The Great Guildersleeve, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, The Black Museum and many more.  One of the things I love about these shows is not only how entertaining they were, but the history that is included within them is astounding.  Many of these shows were recorded during WW1 and WW2 and through the Depression.  So to hear the commercials that were broadcast decades ago and the social commentary often puts today's life into perspective.

Getting to my post's topic though, one of my favourite shows is X Minus One.  It was a spin off (so is my understanding) of the show Dimension X and had many science fiction story lines.  It's fascinating to hear some of the things they were dreaming of 50-60 years ago and what we truly have now in our daily lives.

The episode I was re-listening to last night was "A Logic Named Joe".  This story originally was published March 1946 in an issue of Astounding Science Fiction (according to Wikipedia).  It was then redone in July 1950 on Dimension X and recreated again on X Minus One December 1955.  Basically it is a story about a computer (termed in the story a Logic) and a repair man that names it Joe.  Joe develops some AI and with the repair man's tweaking and accessing of information world wide, Joe starts to disseminate results on demand throughout the world and freely.  Hmmmm sounding familiar.

Some of the concerns in the episode is that Joe is sharing information on how to make concoctions so as to remove inebriation and more impressively how pull of perfect crimes (robberies, murders based on hair colour) without getting caught.

I don't have an iPhone (yet), but I have had my friend show me Siri a few times and all the stuff it can do is pretty impressive.  Of course the web has always done that....ask it a question and you'll find the answer.  However with Siri and one being able to ask the question out loud and it respond back, it seemed just too much like this story A Logic Named Joe.  More importantly to remember; the story first came out 65 years ago.

Now I won't spoil how the show wraps up.  You can listen to it off of iTunes.  I did however ask my friend today to ask Siri "How do I kill my wife?" (a line from the show) and I was pretty thankful that since my husband just got an iPhone, that's Siri's answer was...."I don't know what mean."

My 2012 Challenge to the eLearning Community

One of the things that I love and enjoy the most about the "elearning community" is that we seem to thrive on sharing and learning from one another.  I truly want to strive to do this more in the coming year.  I've started most years off with that intention, but the demands of work often get in the way.

That's why I was excited to see a question posed yesterday in the Articulate E-Learning Heroes forum that I could answer.  That feeling that you get when you can teach someone one something else is exciting and joyful.  What's more, when you do it with only the intention to HELP others then the feeling is tenfold.

I'd love to challenge everyone this year to teach or help someone, in our elearning community, with their questions and problems that they may be having.  You'd be amazed how great you'll feel, how much we'll learn together and how much stronger our connected network will become.

REPOSTING - Articulate Interaction - How to Navigate an Articulate Based Course

This is a reposting of a previous post.  Someone requested the files because the links were not working. 

Here are 3 variations for "How to Navigate",  for those users that choose to look at it, how to navigate an Articulate course.  There is lots of discussion about the need for this and I am on the side that I would hope most users can figure this out on their own.  However, I have yet been able to create and launch a course without it in some form or another.  When I do I get complaints from someone that they didn't know what to do to get started.

At the least, when these are insterted as tab activies it is then there for those that need/want to work through "how to navigate" and those that don't need it can by-pass it.  It keeps the whole course less cluttered on the front end as well.

• Simple 1 slide version (okay for simple and easy navigation points that are need to be pointed out)
• Hotspot version - simple (used more often because user can click just the items they need information on)
• Labelled image - complex (least favourite, trouble with this version is that the user has to watch each and every item that is labelled and there are a lot)

Links can be found on the Articulate Community site: here.

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Original Post
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I've been working for months and months to get an LMS up and running for my organization (do a search for LMS on my blog and you'll see the overall journey) now the real fun begins. I now have so many people coming to me asking for this course to be created and that one. Seems as if everyone has something that has to be taught by the end of the year to all staff because the Ministry of Health says so. Regardless of that fact the LMS is now slowly being populated with courses and not just classroom based.

One of my concerns though is not everyone in our organization is familiar with taking an online course. Many would be able to just sit down at a computer and know immediately how to navigate though a course. Some who have never taken an online course would still be technically savvy enough to work their way through on their own. But, then there are all the others who are less technically inclined and perhaps even a little afraid of trying this "new" method of learning.

These are the staff that I need to consider when creating a course and need to include a "how to navigate" lesson or tutorial. I'm using Articulate to create courses for our learners. During the pilot of the LMS one of the courses created had many slides at the beginning (that could be skipped) that explained all the components that the learner would see or could see while taking the course. Once the pilot was over I discovered that this was probably not the best method for delivering the tutorial piece. Letting them skip over it was good, but it still muddled the over all look of the course. So what I have done now instead was to create the same interaction, but have included it instead as a help tab that can be accessed at any point during the course.

I've included a short Screenr video below that lets you see the interaction as it runs within a course. I have tried to make it "neutral" so it could be inserted into any course and that anyone could use it in their courses outside of our organization.

It's all about REUSE! So, if you'd like to use the interaction yourself please feel free to download and use it in your own courses.