Developing products that works for different languages

Recently I had the opportunity to watch the movie Babies, and I think is a great example for instructional designers of how - with one single product - you can address audiences that may not speak the same language ...

The recipe for that of course includes use universal things that everyone can relate & make the product very very visual :0)

Here is a trailer of the movie:



Source:http://focusfeatures.com/film/babies

Tool to create customized comics

Through Brian Remer from The Firefly Group (http://www.thefirefly.org/),I discovered this convenient tool to create my own comics.

It has many applications, for instance ...

• the comics (final product) can be used as a part of my instructional materials, or

• the creation of the comic (process) can be used as an activity to use to make learners reinforce what they learned, creating a comic about that.

The tool presents you with the empty frames and you can choose the characters (from a selection) and then choose balloons for thoughts or talk, you can add your own text and make some modifications to the characters such us size/scale, add objects, flip the direction the character is looking at, and choose expressions ...

Check it out at: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/

Visually Interesting Statistics

As an instructional designer I am always looking for good examples of how to captivate an audience and convey a message effectively.

Here is one of my favorites examples, a TED Conference presentation by Hans Rosling:



By the way the topic of the session is very interesting too.


Source:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Simplicity is not always easy to achieve

I am a PC AND Mac user ... I have one computer of each ... but I must admit that sometimes when designing training materials that should be simple ... it requires a lot of thought to do not over engineer it !

I enjoyed this video that has a grain of truth ! ;0)

Second Life - This I believe

In a forum I participate, somebody asked:
"Has anyone used Second Life as a training tool? Do any of you know of any training-specific companies who develop this technology and then integrate it into either ILT or online training?"

For those of you who doesn't know what Second Life is, Second Life (SL) is a free 3D virtual world (you have to be connected to the Internet) where several users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat at the same time.
See more at their official website http://secondlife.com/


This was my answer to the question:

Back in 2005 I used SL as a part of the assignments in one of the courses of my Master in Educational Technology. At that time we had to create an instructional activity within SL.

Then in 2007 in the community college where I work[ed], a person had a similar initiative, and to my despair some of the same problems arose.

Even though was not in a corporate training environment, I think that the lessons learned in my master's project are totally transferable:

Lesson learned # 1 - You will need very good and updated computers
SL software consume a great deal of resources from the computers, you need new/powerful computers with great video cards. In both cases we had to use lab computers dedicated to that program, so they will not crash.

Lesson learned # 2 - First time users need time to learn how to move/interact in SL
In both cases people spend a lot of time customizing their own avatar (you can change all the possible things you can imagine - from your eyebrows, to the size and shape of your boobs).

Also learning how to move in the environment took some time (at the beginning many were naked and flying and crashing everywhere). in fact in my master in the second edition of that course, they pre-created avatars, and had a small workshop where people will solely learn how to walk, run, fly, grab objects, etc.

Lesson learned # 3 - For serious training is better have a "private" space
In order to have a private space, you will need to buy land and build a minimum place with objects based on your training needs. Otherwise if you have your class in any public space you can have anybody stepping in, interrupting and even boycotting your activity

Lesson learned # 4 - Don't be afraid to outsource "construction"
In my masters they decided for future editions create a virtual classroom. The learning curve to program/create the objects, houses, and artifacts was steep, so the teacher got some money to pay someone to do it. They found and hired the "builders" searching in SL forums.

Lesson learned #5 - Mastering SL requires time
Whoever is in charge to develop the training in addition to the instructional portion to design the activities, will need to learn the tool. That is time consuming, so is better allocate resources that can devote enough time to learn the capabilities of the SL environment and then create the instructional activities.

Lesson learned #6 - Use all the SL potential
SL will take time to develop and to have students get accustomed of how to operate/ interact in that virtual world, so don't design something that can also be done in more low tech solution (i.e. through chats or even asynchronous solutions).
Take advantage of the capabilities that SL has (i.e. walking, traveling, taking pictures, interact in different ways with others).

Marketing for teenagers

Way back before the presidential elections of 2009, started circulating this video and others done by the Leonardo DiCaprio's production Company (Appian Way). "These non-partisan public service announcements wanted to encourage American youth to register to vote in the upcoming election."



Every time I have to design marketing pieces for young people I still scratch my head, because seems to be difficult (for me) how to capture their attention and keep them interested. They are certainly different teenagers of what I used to be. So I thought that a similar approach to this video will be good to apply for other purposes (career awareness, mandatory training, etc.)

Granted that besides the idea itself, the cast is a luxury that I certainly will not have :0)

Side note:My favorite is like the backstage of the shooting ;0)

About risk in a learning enviroment

Even though the presenter talks about a camps for kids. I think that presents a couple of valid points for any learning experience (despite the age of the learner). Some that come to mind are:
- Design your activities include moments to let the learner explore and learn on their own
- With direct involvement (lighting the fire, don't getting burn, put the fire down) you learn the whole process, not just disconnected steps.
- Foster the sense that everything is "knowable"
- Learn the boundaries of our new digital word

Enjoy the video :0)

Defining Moments

When I see something I like in a magazine, because I am almost always too busy but I don't want to loose the information I like for future reference, I automatically rip the page, and goes to my pile of things for "process"(&).

The other day, thumbing through part of the "process" pile, I found an article from the July 2007 REAL SIMPLE magazine. Wrote by Gail Blanke (a life's coach) the article talks about the defining moments in everybody lives!

According to Gail Blanke (author of the article) ...

A defining moment is 'an occasion when you found something in yourself you didn't know you had, or forgot you had, and pulled it out. As a result you changed an outcome from negative to positive.
A defining moment is when you said, "Yes, I will" or "No, I won't." It's when you drew a line. Or erased one, if that was what needed to be done. It's a moment after which you never thought of yourself in quite the same way'.

Thinking about it, here are some of my defining moments:

* When I quit my job in a company where a coworker was stealing merchandise and I caught him and reported him with superiors, instead of look away

* When I pulled myself out of boredom - in jobs where I was over qualify - , and proposed new products to offer or ways to do things instead of be a conformist and just do the bare minimum

* When I worked 24 hours without sleep for the first time in my life in a project designing and developing a computer based training, the adrenalin of the commitment of team was stronger that the physical need of sleep ... however the next day I crashed pretty hard :0)



(&) I learned that in the David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD) philosophy.

Storytelling - Part 2 (Pecha Kucha)

The brother of my last boss used Pecha Kucha with his students. He passed the tip to my boss and he passed to me.

The concept was challenging, "convey your message in 20 images (slides) 20 seconds each, so your whole presentation will be 6 minutes and 40 seconds".

We tried the technique for a presentation to community college advisors about the Logistics & Supply Chain Management Career Field (I crafted the presentation and my boss was the presenter).

As the crafter of the presentation I have to admit that at some points was hard to come up with a visual that will convey the message, specially when i was not going to be the presenter (in fact in the revisions meetings we had some changes of images because my boss didn't agree with them). The presentation was a success! (you can see the ppt in my portfolio) We stand out because the content and also as a contrasting alternative to dry full of text PowerPoint slides.

We plan to use this technique as often as possible.

Here is my favorite Pecha Kucha explanation video:

Storytelling - Part 1

Slideshare is an application to share PowerPoint Presentations online without having to send it to each person by email (especially if the presentation is rather more than a couple of Mb).

I started to use it while I was doing my masters in Educational Technology at San Diego State University.

In they May 2009 newsletter their were promoting a storytelling contest. the rules were simple "[the] entry to the contest can be about anything. A story about you, your travels, or something you love. Just tell it with words and pictures and in 30 slides."

These days despite the type of audience you have, capture and hold their attention is key. be short and concise, and use more images than text in the slides has been I trend I came in contact with from different sources (see future postings).

For now I will let you with a nice presentation about storytelling using PowerPoint that I found in Slideshare!

Note: at some points the presentation goes slower than the narrator, so bear with it, because I still think that provide good info. and also is good example of storytelling itself :0)

Storytelling 101

View more presentations from Scott Schwertly.

Another video that I like (instructionally speaking)

This video talks about bacteria that normally lives in our skin. I liked how they mixed a typical talking head footage with the drawings, sounds, and pictures.

From the instructional point of view ... just right !

I was exploring some shorts (very short) by Isabella Rosellini about how some animals reproduce.

With a witty catchy tittle (Green Porno), the videos are great and engaging about the explanations.

I think they have and excellent mix of good attributes of learning objects: short, reusable, visually appealing, the image reinforce the explanation and suitable for mobile devices (small screens).

The videos were showcased in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Here are the links for all of them ...

How earthworms, drangonflies, bees, fireflies, snails, spiders, flies, praying mantis reproduce?

NASAGA Rocks !

This year I decided to treat myself with a conference I always wanted to go ... well I had in wish list attend a conference of Sivasailam Thiagarajan (a.k.a. Thiagi). I have been following his newsletters and activities in www.thiagi.com since 1998.

Attending to this year NASAGA conference (originally in my quest to listen to Thiagi live!) exceeded my expectations. All the professionals (speakers and attendees) were very enthusiastic about sharing ideas. This conference not only filled my mind but also my soul ...

... and empty my pockets in an auction ;-P to provide scholarships to first time attendees to the next year event (just kidding I gladly contributed).

NAGASA 2008 was a truly open & honest collaboration space ... tossing and getting ideas in each session, break and presentation. An experience very far from these places where everybody is trying to sell their products.

All the ideas in the sessions had a lot of applicability in training and facilitation. In fact I had the chance to know about a game called "The beer game" that reproduce a supply chain for my logistics courses.

And the Aha! of the conference for me was the "debrief" and techniques to enhance it.

The title GAS: Games, Activities & Simulations, was more than appropriate considering that the conference was in Indianapolis !

I recommend you NASAGA conferences. The next one will be on October 2009 in Washington D.C.

Stay tuned, visiting their website for more info: www.nasaga.org

Versatility ... something to keep in mind

Through the ColourLovers Blog (which I religiously read) ... I came across with a link to some Chinese people who designed this puzzles ("TOYPOGRAPHY" -- A TOY of TYPOGRAPHY) .

Check out their website (most of it is in Chinese, click on about, and look for subtle button that reads "English"). I wish that they have their website translated in full.

Each of the puzzles' pieces can build a word (apparently only animals) in English, with the same group pieces you can "write" the same word in Chinese, and also you can create some kind of "draw"/picture of the animal.

You can see animations of the puzzles and its transformations in the website (look for the words in the same line where "About" is)

I was very surprise about the level of versatility that these pieces have, and I remember the numerous discussions I had with colleagues about learning objects and how little or how can be should be the object to be really reusable & interchangeable. This puzzle is the proof that in any mass of content, is possible get the common denominator.


Because they only have puzzle with animal words, I just keep wondering if it was a design/audience decision, or if this versatility formula only apply for certain things ...

Which also might be something to consider in instructional design ... maybe not all the contents are suitable for learning objects after all.

Copyright & Tears

Currently I am developing curriculum, to create a 2-year program in a community college. I have great ideas to use articles, movies, etc. However I am hitting the wall of copyright issues.

My coworker Lora, point me to this website from Purdue University (http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/), which explains very well about the copyright issues especially for distance learning.

The director & creator or the site (Kenneth D. Crews) changed jobs and now is at Columbia University. However his legacy - despite the note in red in the home page - is still alive in the Purdue site. I'm glad that such a great job is still online. I am planning to buy his book.

Check the already praised website (I am creating this link to the page that contains a useful checklist to assess fair use. However, feel free to navigate it with the links located in the left side. You will probably like all the pages).

All depends of where you are

"Upside-Down" North America
Originally uploaded by Claire L. Evans

The other day, surfing the web, I ended up in the Claire L. Evans' Flickr account ... where I found this picture. The caption read "From the maps section of Scandinavian Airlines' magazine. Very exciting! Very humbling! East coast becomes west coast and vice versa."

For those that haven't realized it yet ... North America is "Upside-Down".

The fact that we see life and the "world" - in this case literally - based on our present circumstances ... let me reflecting about how many times our instructional products do not take that into account.

Sometimes what we need is some activity, sometimes even just one, to address this and have everybody in the same page with an increased level of awareness.

One of my favorites site to get ideas and activities is Thiagi's website. Check it out !

That's the secret ... Watch less TV

When I read in Learningtown the comment associated with this video "Where do people find the time to do things like edit the Wikipedia?" and the answer ("They watch less television ...") I just felt relief !!!

Unfortunately in my case there is still a lot of shows that I do not want to miss, so in my case ... as many teenagers I end up multitasking.

I am not sure how successful I am in all the simultaneous tasks, but oh well , after a hard day at work, I am convinced that I deserve my TV time.

This is a great video! I am even curious about his book, and even though I don't do what he says I agree that we should use the surplus of our time in more productive tasks than master the couch potato skill set.




If you cannot see the video in my blog try here:
http://www.learningtown.com/video/video/show?id=2039019:Video:27685

(you might need to sign up for free to see the video)

Web 2.0 - Nice explanation

Some parts of the video are a little bit cheesy for my taste, HOWEVER I think they do a great job explaining what (in the world) is the famous Web 2.0



I hope that you enjoy it

iPods - the other side of the coin

Browsing a magazine while waiting for a dentist appointment I saw an article titled Cheating Goes High-Tech where basically the author comments about a case in a high school in Iowa City(IA) where some students were caught cheating.

Apparently they created an audio file with the information and played through their earphones in the test session. Because this lap of sophistication in the cheating techniques, the author commented that in many schools in the US the iPods and digital media players are being banned.

I don't endorse cheating, but certainly I think that the process of create the cheat sheet, exercise the student capabilities to - at least - identify the main ideas / concepts of the lesson.

As an educators and instructional designers I think that we should re-think the way we evaluate the kids. If our tests requires more application of the content instead an automatic answer the cheat sheet will be useless.

Source: Good Housekeeping magazine - Issue October 2007 - page 125
(Well .. what kind of literature did you think I was going to get in a waiting room ? ;-P )

Aha ! "$100 laptop" ... uh? yeah, sure ?!!?!

Couple of weeks ago, browsing the local paper (QC Times), I found an article in the business section about the prices of the laptops from the OLPC project.

I'm not specifically following up this project, but as usually happens ... suddenly I see it everywhere ... the articles or news just pop at me. In a previous posting I talked about the difference in price, at the beginning I thought that will be just a Latin America overhead cost ($100 + taxes + any other government fee). However seems that the $100 is just a label. Here is an extract of the article:

" ... Leaders of the non profit One Laptop Per Child that was spun out MIT acknowledged Friday that the devices are now slated to cost $188 when mass production begins this fall. The last price the non profit announced was $176; it described $100 as a long term goal."

I am glad that at least these change in price is acknowledge now, and they do not force to produce something with less capabilities than the ones needed. You know "the cheap ...in the long run costs double ...". However the article also mentions a reality for the governments who budget for $100 per laptop and it might be costing almost double. I will not be surprised if some of the interested just drop their place in the waiting list.

Back in 2005 was reported that the laptop will be "... A 500-megahertz processor (that was fast in the 1990s but slow by today’s standards) by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and flash memory instead of a hard drive with moving parts. To save on software costs, the laptops would run the freely available Linux operating system instead of Windows.
The computers would be able to connect to Wi-Fi wireless networks and be part of “mesh” networks in which each laptop would relay data to and from other devices, reducing the need for expensive base stations. Plans call for the machines to have four USB ports for multimedia and data storage.'

The 2007 article reminds us that the the laptops will still feature:

• open-source & intuitive interface
• sunlight readable display
• very low power consumption (and pull cord for recharging by hand), and
• built-in wireless networking

Source: Quad-City Times - Business Section - Page A-20 - Sep 16, 2007