Design Lively Elearning with Action Mapping
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/info
I provided this search result to a colleague showing old git’s are on the increase (good news Pete), old goats are stabalising while old bastards may be dying off.
On the back of the local Creative Commons AU roadshow visiting Australian capital cities, news of another Creative Commons related event, the Open Video Conference 2010. A side note, my favourite entertainer social activists The Yes Men will be appearing.
www.aliprandi.org/cc-user-guide
Thanks to the CC license applied you can download it for free, but if you want to support and promote this kind of cultural production please consider to buy a paper version (or paid file download option).
This is an independent publishing project: the book is completely edited by the author and published online and by a self-publishing service (Lulu.com).
The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has made the article by Cherryleaf’s Ellis Pratt
A Different Perspective on Measuring the Value of Technical Communication
(Intercom July 2009) available for anyone to download.
A timely quote following many peer discussions of a similar thread regarding the outwardly narrow view of our profession for career development. One conclusion was the hierarchical authoritarian nature of most social structures. This quote taken from a discussion on the USA based TechWrl (tech writers list):
What I’d like to know is who defined a “career” as necessarily having an upward mobility path? If you have a “job” that pays you well enough to satisfy your financial needs and enjoy enough to provide you with personal satisfaction, why isn’t staying in it and growing enough to keep you marketable in it for your entire working life not a “career?”
GeneK
This morning my local friendly bully, we’ll call him Mr. Baynull, was bored with life.
Mr. Baynull fired a rubber band at me as a cry for help. His shot was predictably poor, but the twang of the rubber and its protracted fairy woosh was still enough to break my focus on work.
While considering how many of his fingers I could break in one of his afternoon “hide behind the monitors” naps, I thought this article on multi-tasking and productivity may sit better with my pacifist side.
The Free Culture Game is a playable theory but I hope in this case life imitates art.
…a game about the struggle between free culture and copyright. Create and defend the common knowledge from the vectorial class. Liberate the passive consumers from the domain of the market.
Is radio making us stupid?
Is radio cinema making us stupid?
Is cinema television making us stupid?
Is television the internet making us stupid?
Is the internet internet search making us stupid?
Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, posed the question Is Google Making Us Stupid?
I can’t tell you the answer, I scrolled down with the mouse wheel a bit and switched to another browser tab barely reading any of it!
This video presentation of an informal survey titled How Bad can a Cell Phone Company Get? appears to target bad customer service. 93% of responses were an incorrect rate, half of those 100-times less than what is actually charged.
It is a good example of something intended to deceive people to gain a profit. I will show how this works out to nearly 10-25 thousand dollars per person who should ever be on one of these contracts and download a DVD of data at these actual rates, as opposed to 100-250 dollars of the misquoted rates.
Philip Yaffe describes a simple writing method How to improve your writing by standing on your head by Philip Yaffe
This article is a self promotion for his book In the “I” of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) like a Professional.
Another of his articles The mathematics of persuasive communication contrasts expository and creative writing. It is not as simple a point as his one above, however they do complement eachother when you consider them together more deeply. This one is specifically to target scientists and engineers in promoting another book of his.
Steve Jobs has a tough job professing on user interface design while Jakob Nielsen is on watch. In the newsletter Alertbox of 29/10/07 Jakob wrote:
Steve Jobs was quoted last week in the New York Times for saying that “there are no ‘verbs’ in the iPhone interface” and “People don’t understand that we’ve invented a new class of interface.”
… (body snipped) …
Either Steve Jobs doesn’t understand interaction design or he deliberately distorts history to make false claims for his product.
I have pasted the full email article below:
I have registered to participate in this free online conference, running from November 15-20, 2007.
World renowned speakers will present live (all sessions will be recorded). Of greatest value, we feel, will be the opportunity for attendees to engage in dialog with each other through online forums – forming connections and exchanging ideas and visions on corporate learning.
A different kind of conference experience with many opportunities for active participation for attendees who wish. All sessions will be recorded and available within a few minutes after the session for people who cannot attend at that time.
David Farbey recounts fond memories in announcing Helvetica, the feature-length film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture.
It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.
Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.
Little Known Ways to Create Your Own Graphics Using PowerPoint by Tom Kuhlmann prompted this exercise application of the article in a derivative tutorial by example.
I have created a single slide tutorial in Powerpoint by the same method as an exercise demonstrating the tutorial itself.
The moral of this visual communication interview is just start. Forthwith, my shaky RSI hand took my beloved Lamy fountain pen to paper, creating this image.
Gerry Gaffney of UXpod’s interview synopsis:
Dave Gray talks about giving ourselves permission to draw, about how the printing press led us to communicate in a particular way, and about how that can limit our communication in a digital environment, about how PowerPoint can be both inhibiting and comforting, and about how where we are with video today is where we were with PageMaker 20 years ago.Dave says ‘You don’t have to be an expert to start – you just have to start’.
Processed recordings from the forum. Expand the post to view the speakers and details.
still/open Program by Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Processed recordings from the forum. Expand the post to view the speakers and details.
still-open-online-publishing-forum-1a.zip (73MB)
still-open-online-publishing-forum-1b.zip (59MB)
still/open Program by Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
VETinfoNet is a one-stop portal for vocational education and training (VET) in Western Australia (WA). It speaks to the strong TAFEWA presence. Substitute our own scenarios and you will find it can still be directly relevant.
The Training Forum 2007 presentation slides and podcasts are available. I have listened to many of the general topics, here are a few good examples:
The following session summaries are taken from the Training Forum 2007 Session and Registration Information booklet (PDF).
I wanted to gain a practical understanding of copyright affecting sound and video recordings of public forums and event workshops. Arts Law Centre of Australia Online was my main source of clarity.
At the end of this summary I have provided the license and recording release for an idea or to modify to suit your needs. If you press CTRL+END you will see this Userware blog is itself under a (different) Creative Commons license.
I have RSVPd to attend the following free public forums and will post up a review after the events.
Online Publishing Forum Sunday 09-09-2007
A free forum courtesy of Writing WA from 11 am – 2 pm.
still/open Forum 10-09-2007
ARTRAGE and Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) present still/open public forum at The Bakery as part of BEAP 2007.
still/open is a free public forum which focuses on both practice and theory which can be applied through networked art and software development, print and online publishing, and in the scientific arena where the open science movement encourages a collaborative environment.
Targeted at subject matter experts with good and bad practices discussed. The video covers the use of:
From the interviewer’s upload page:
Don Box is well known for giving highly-rated presentations at industry conferences. One year he gave a presentation in a bathtub. Another year he gave one wearing just a T-shirt.
Mike Hall took his camcorder over to find out Don’s philosophy on giving a good conference presentation.
Developing effective e-learning / training strategies podcast by Jeff Parks of the IA (Information Architecture) Podcast.
Jeff has previous experience as a rehabilitation therapist for individuals with acquired brain injuries. He identifies similarities with technical communication and states:
…how an understanding of the brain, at least a basic understanding of the brain, and how we think about things and how we evolve our thought processes can dramatically increase our capacity to communicate with each other and specifically how we can train and learn within applications whether it’s in an e-learning system or an in-house in-class training session.
Work-Learning Research is a site self described as “Practical Wisdom from Learning Research – Bridging the gap between research and practice…” I found the presentation of research (PDF 0.3MB) on spacing learning over time had some very relevant outcomes relevant to Vocational Education and Training (VET):
A Week in the Life of a Technical Writer is an “insight into the daily life of several technical writers at National Instruments”. Their corporation appears to have similarities to ours in structure and operation. I found it is a very good site with the following particularly relevant and useful:
Reputation as the best value voice recording device in MP3/flash device history.
Built-in mic, Mic pre-amp line input, direct records to MP3, USB2.0 output, Long power life on single AA.
DesignCritique.net podcasters present an excellent review and discussion:
iRiver IFP Series MP3 Recorder Critique
What happens when a secondary function of a product is so good that it becomes the primary reason for purchase among a customer demographic? Tim is joined by special guests Mike and Keith for a discussion of iRiver’s IFP-800 (top of photo) and IFP-700 series (bottom) of digital audio players/recorders. iRiver designed the MP3 recording for these units so well that many people use them purely as portable MP3 recorders, not players.
The other three motivation types work. Intrinsic-toward has highest probability of being sustainable.
Recommended by Tom Johnson of IdRatherBeWriting:
This podcast from Alexander Kjerulf, called “Why ‘Motivation by Pizza’ Doesn’t Work,” opened my eyes about the reasons behind motivation. We were on the verge of implementing a member recognition/rewards program in our chapter when Clyde Parson sent me the link. Kjerulf’s podcast was so good I listened to it twice.
Direct-Download (6.8MB, 23min)
14/11/2007 Update: Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards supports the same motivational theory.
Slide notes from presenter Jack Molisani’s website:
A business case is a fundamental tool for building support and justifying resources. Want a pay raise, new authoring tools or a bigger budget? Read Jack Molisani’s presentation on How to Build a Business Case.
Direct-Download-Slides (0.3MB)
Direct-Download-Audio (23MB, 49min)
