Work on the K4STEMLAB continues accelerating at incredible … (dare I say - ludicrous?) speed. Key classroom and learning management system components are quickly falling into place. The day started with work on our Google Apps for Education domain, preparing over 1,000 user accounts for their first use.  That was before breakfast. We successfully tested multiple features in our Haiku Learning test domain, including embedded Google forms and Glogsters, use of assignments and the drop box, even a simple exam-based assessment. Everything worked perfectly. Our Classlink Launchpad environment is nearly complete, providing secure, cloud-based access to network files and shares on any device with Internet connectivity. The screenshot below shows me logged in with my home folder ready for use: We installed Splashtop Remote and now my iPad can run the SMART Board, which should be great fun for students to control for presentations or game playing. I will be using it as well. And, our foam cube seats arrived - these will be used primarily in the area around and near the SMART Board. (They were generously donated by the Northfield Education Foundation.) Flexible seating is a key element in our "agile classroom" design philosophy. It was a very productive day even though we did not mount the Z-Rack as I’d planned (we’ve reached the most critical part - drilling the mounting holes - and I am procrastinating out of fear.) Now I have to decide if I am going to "play hooky" and go to Livingston, NJ tomorrow for the NJTEA’s free STEM Boot Camp … or work in my classroom some more. Decisions, decisions… G’night all!

Dr. Kim Hyun Deok Foreman, Professor at San Francisco State University, pastor’s wife and missionary to Rwanda, passed away after an auto accident near the town of Gitarama, Rwanda. I still have a hard time looking at those last words...

Class starts today! (June 23)   Starting my Entrepenurial Educator MOOC today! https://t.co/lWn33HVen2 #edtech #education #ISTE2014 #virutuallearning — C. S. Stone, M.Ed. (@csstone1161) June 23, 2014

Wow. There are so many cool ways to learn online now. The whole world is a school. This list is meant for continuous learners and for procrastinators looking for distractions in the coming year. 1. Learn through Visual Search Engines How would you like your search engine to show results in a collage? Spezify does just that. It’s a visual search engine that draws content from all over the Web, particularly social media sites. Your collage might show a book from Amazon, a YouTube video and a page from a blog or web site. You drag the results to navigate the page and then click the graphic to view the media. Although the results might not be as robust as with conventional search engines, it’s a lot more fun. Other visual search tools include: viewzi, Kart00 and search-cube. 2. Learn from Word Clouds How can you search for something on a site when you’re not sure what’s there? Though Word Clouds aren’t new, have you used them as a learning tool? If you go to Wordle and enter a site’s url or feed url, you can use the word cloud as an index to the site. Look for words of interest and then search for those articles or pages. You can also use word clouds as the basis for writing a poem, for studying another language and for comparing two pages of information. Janet Clarey compared two articles from this site using word clouds. You can also create tag clouds with TagCrowd and you probably figured there had to be a tweetcloud. 3. Ask a Question Although Question and Answer sites aren’t new on the Web, we’re now at a point where there are enough experts online and enough Q&A sites to make finding an answer more feasible. Some sites crowd-source the answers while others use mentors to answer questions in their area of expertise. These sites are also great for browsing through when you’re in procrastination mode. Here are a few: Amazon’s Askville, Yahoo Answers, Answerbag, Gotta Mentor, BlurtIt, and WikiAnswers. For answers to eLearning related questions, try one of the LinkedIn eLearning Groups with a high membership, like The eLearning Guild or Instructional Design & E-Learning Professionals’ Group. FYI: You can always shoot me a question through the contact page and I’ll answer or crowd-source it. 4. Think Visually One of the best ways to learn is to look at things from a new perspective. Prezi can help you do this. It is one of the most innovative tools for creating nonlinear presentations. Check out their Showcase. Expressing and organizing your ideas in mind maps is another approach to expanding or changing your perspective. Try these free online mind mapping tools, some of which are collaborative: Mindmeister (check out their Public Mind Maps), Xmind and Mindomo. 5. Hang Out with Professors We now have lots of options for taking free online college courses. Imagine a great lecture with no tests, papers or deadlines. That’s right. Check out UC Berkeley Webcasts, which has a mix of video and audio lectures and MIT’s Open Courseware, which consists of PDF lecture notes and some multimedia presentations. OpenLearn has a Learning Space with lecture notes and discussion forums. You can also reuse and remix their content to create your own courses in their Lab Space. Other open university courses are at Carnegie Mellon and Tufts University. Don’t forget the lectures from University of Oxford and Stanford on iTunesU. 6. Watch Documentaries If you like to learn from documentaries, you can catch some free ones at Get Docued, Free Online Documentaries and Free Documentaries. 7. Tune In to Big Ideas Discuss, watch and get inspired at some of the sites that promote new and innovative ideas. You’ve probably seen the videos at Ted, but what about Big Think, Fora.tv and Ideas Project? 8. Learn through Twitter Do you ever search through tweets to discover the latest resources and conversations? Real time search is very now. For example, I just searched for ‘elearning’ (I know I’m boring) and got directed to a great discussion about how to help learners get the most from eLearning. You can search directly on Twitter, but they say the results are less than stellar. Other real time search engines that get better reviews are Twazzup, Tweetzi, IceRocket (searches other social media too) and TweetScan. 9. Hop Into a Debate Learn about all sides of an issue through online debating. Debategraph uses a visualization tool to show the complexity and multiple aspects of world issues. You can start at the Gallery to pick an issue. Then select Stream View (the small print below) to see the visualization. You can then explore the issue and add your own viewpoint. Also, check out Debate.org, where you read the debates and vote on a winner. 10. Create a Mashup Mashups let you combine and remix information, media, content, web applications and services. Making a mashup helps you perceive information in new ways and is a learning experience in itself. Two mashup platforms are Pipes and Scrapplet. Pipes is an aggregator tool for manipulating and remixing content and data from around the web. Scrapplet uses a drag and drop approach for mashing up content, particularly from social media sites. How do you plan to learn online this year? Post from: The eLearning Coach10 Ways To Learn In 2010 Tweet This! Share this on Linkedin Share this on Facebook Buzz up! Share this on del.icio.us Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Email this to a friend?

Took a "day off" yesterday to attend the 2012 NJTEEA STEM Boot Camp in beautiful Livingston, NJ. Met my erstwhile colleague Dave Zirkle at the GSP Cheesequake rest area around 7:15 am for the final leg of the trip. Rolled up to Mount Pleasant Middle School at 8am and the place was already buzzing. Well over a hundred educators of all kinds - science teachers, math teachers, technology educators, administrators and curriculum people from all over the state were there. The agenda for the day was a mixture of presentation/lecture and crazy hands-on building. I learned something in every session. I am still waiting for the DropBox link with presentation resources but as soon as I have it, I’ll share. Takeaways There were so many, particularly in Chris Anderson’s session. Here are a few: The Committee of Ten <= these folks didn’t listen to John Dewey, who advocated we NOT build schools around subjects in silos. Awesome. Thanks guys. Assessments of prior knowledge can be crazy fun. Don’t start a lesson without one! STEM was coined by the National Science Foundation and was originally SMET. It became "STEM" at some point (gee, wonder why?) and took off. iSTEM is not an Apple device, it refers to "Integrative" STEM, where the philosophy and approach work their way into every aspect of the school, not just instruction. I am totally joining the NJTEEA. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (recommended reading!) It was an amazing, fun, energizing day full of exploration, learning, collaboration and making new friends. Exactly what I want for my classroom.  Here are some pics I took. Have to close with this. Chris also showed two videos. One, by Chris Rogan, which I can’t share, and the one below. In it, Ioannis Miaoulis, the president of the Museum of Science in Boston (home of the Engineering is Elementary program) advocates for the study of engineering in K-12. It is the most powerful expression of the driving force behind our K4STEMLAB initiave I could ever hope for. Ok, gotta get back to work!  

So, first things first.  This is VERY different from Google Voice.  Don’t confuse them!  Where Google Voice is a personal, auditory device you can use in the classroom in various ways (see my pilot here), Adobe Voice is more about the visual.  It kind of reminds me of Voice Thread, without the communal chat attached. […]

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Certification of the 19th amendment. My friend Libby Dorsey shared an email this morning with a reminder of this important anniversary, asking that we remember the day and remember the efforts of those...

I had been dreading the final stage of the Z-Rack build, but in the end, I was successful. it isn’t perfect, but it is excellent, and I did it by myself (though Fay Crooks, Mary Lou Best, and Michele Seals all helped me wrestle the freshly-mounted board onto the vertical poles.) Its completion (and the other fabrication wins today) mean my power tools are no longer needed. The only major remaining space tasks/needs are dry erase paint for one giant wall in the back and my student work tables/chairs. We do have a few more surprises coming, though… My other big, big win in the classroom technology / maker fabrication department was hacking some curtain rods and zip-ties into a surprisingly stable (and very safe) mount for the DVD player I’m using for electronic signage: I knew the solution would involve zip-ties. Everything is better with zip-ties. The final design includes zip-ties tightened against each other and multiple redundant safety (anti-drop) features. Most important: the passive safety system (it’s 75″ off the ground). Can’t wait to load some USB drives up with images and let them play while class is underway. (It’s already been suggested that I put some questions up like they do before movies … with the answer a few slides later. That could be really fun…) We scored another HUGE win when I was given permission to "repurpose" some old PC laptops, saving them from the recycler. Took me over an hour to sort through some pretty torn up and worn out equipment to finally score five working laptops (Dell D600, P4M 1.4 ghz, 512mb RAM, 14″ XGA, Windows XP) for use in my room: [The two units to the right are parts machines.] What will we use these for? Right now, I see immediate them running legacy applications (like our Qx5 computer microscopes).  I got five so that there can be one per table and the kids can work in groups. Several need CMOS batteries and the image has to be tweaked but once I have one set up properly, it will be easy to move the image to the others using Norton Ghost. Then they’ll all be identical. The latest gadget (and the one surely to blow the minds of my teacher colleagues) is my 4gb Eye-Fi card (eBay, new, $34 shipped) Setup was a breeze. Watching it work was mesmerizing, even for me. I’d take a photo, put the camera down, and in minutes it appeared on the computer screen, automatically stored into a folder with today’s date. THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. I picked up an inexpensive digital camera (eBay, used, $28) and a digital camcorder too (which I am less impressed with, actually). Kids will be shooting pics and vids all day and they’ll be sent to my PC automatically. Can’t wait to see the results. As I said at the outset, the biggest remaining space tasks are creating our giant dry-erase wall and getting the work tables and chairs in. I plan to spend the weekend and next week getting some test lessons done and meeting with teachers about our new space and the Engineering is Elementary lessons we’ll be implementing. I’m only in for a few hours tomorrow so the next update may not be until next week. Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

Here's the answer to a reader's question, "What is instructional design?"Post from: The eLearning CoachWhat Instructional Designers Do-Updated

This.. is powerful. ..

The National Center for Education Statistics has just released a publication entitled ‘Postsecondary Institutions and Price of Attendance in the United States: Fall 2009 and Degrees and Other Awards Conferred: 2008-09, and 12-Month Enrollment 2008-09'. Great stuff if you are...

ok, no, not really.  Its just been taking me a few days to recuperate, that’s all.  I haven’t even opened up my bags of goodies or reviewed all the resources I QR coded all over the place. Yes, it was overwhelming, in a very good way.  So, until I can gather my thoughts on the […]

Does this look like the desk of a teacher a week before school starts? (You never know when a can of black spray paint will come in handy.) It’s been a solid week since my last update,  literally haven’t had a spare moment to blog since. We’re in prime ultra mega crunch time now, so I’m gonna keep this short. Chromebooks - they’re here and they’re awesome. These are the Series 5 500′s (similar to what our fourth graders used earlier this year). They are for the Elementary and Middle School carts. I will be using one set in my lab until my Series 5 550′s arrive, supposedly next week. I am now working on our Google Apps for Education domain configuration, choosing installed apps & extensions, and other security settings. This is the power of a Chromebook deployment: you tweak settings in a web-based control panel and as soon as the devices boot up, the settings take effect. It’s a beautiful thing… Furniture - is coming! Work tables and chairs will be here shortly. They better be, or, those nifty foam cubes we got will see a LOT more use… Our fantastic custodial team painters Roy and Larry put three coats of Killz 2 latex primer on "The Great White(board) Wall" yesterday. Before I leave this evening, I will sand it in preparation for the application of the IdeaPaint tomorrow. I’m also painting all of our duplex outlets and switch covers BLACK (hence the spray paint) to discourage kids from writing on them. Outlets will also be sealed with plastic safety inserts. After speaking with several of my colleagues about first week activities, I’ve decided the throttle things waaaaaaaaay back and first focus on getting everyone (students and teachers alike) comfortable in our new space before we get too crazy with projects. The paper laptops (for first grade) and marshmallow challenge (for grades 3 & 4) are going to have to wait. That is not stopping me from perfecting my lesson screencasting form; just this morning I put together another prototype screencast that I will be testing tomorrow with some volunteers. My screencasting rig/setup is fantastic, works perfectly, and generates crazy high-quality HD video output. Camtasia Studio 8 is an absolute joy to use. I’ll close with a short TED talk about the Marshmallow Challenge by Tom Wujec from back in 2010. It’s a great overview of the activity. We’ll probably be using straws and not spaghetti (see, I’m already thinking about cleanup).  Can’t wait to see how our kids do with this introduction to design thinking.

Did you ever end up on a project that required video and somehow you became the default expert? That’s what happened to me early in my career. At first, it was a bit unnerving. But like any devout eLearning practitioner, I just pretended I knew what I was doing and got on with things. If you suddenly find yourself responsible for a complex video production—you know, more than sitting in front of your web cam—you’ll need to do some major planning. Here are some of the key things you’ll have to consider, plan for and get done. Script You will need an approved script prepared in a standard format and distributed to the talent in time for them to memorize their parts. If you are a designer and writer, this is a great opportunity to learn the craft of scriptwriting. You’ll need to learn how to show rather than tell and you’ll need to know the effect that varied camera shots can have on your script. The alternative is to hire a scriptwriter. From a practical standpoint, training videos typically use the two-column (audio and video) type of format with the narration, sound effects and music in one column and visuals in the other. Dramatizations often use the full-page screenplay format. Just use the one that works best for communicating your ideas and for future planning. Locations or Sets Every scene will need an appropriate location and you’ll need to hunt these down. You might find suitable locations in your office that only require a few props or you might choose to film in a public area. You may need written permission to set up and implement a video production outside of a studio, so be sure to have the approval forms on hand. Alternately, you can hire a video production house and use one of their studios where they will create the sets. This nearly guarantees you’ll have an interruption-free location where you can really focus. Production Planning There are several production documents that are more or less required for a multiple-scene and multiple-day video production. Large productions require numerous documents, but you can probably get by with these three for smaller industrial/training videos. Shot List: One shot is a continuous segment of footage from one camera angle. You’ll need to create a list of all the shots that need to be recorded. The video crew will need the shot list. Shooting Script: This is a working script that group together all the scenes from the same location so they can be shot at the same time. The script will be shot out of sequence, according to location, which is the most efficient way to shoot video or film. The video crew will also need this script. Call Sheet: The talent will need a list of all the scenes to be shot, all of the personnel required for each scene and the date and time they will be needed. Some people include the props and equipment required for each scene too. Talent One of the best ways to identify actors for your production is to have auditions. You can also browse talent sites with video samples online. The highest paid and often most professional actors are part of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in the US. I assume other countries have similar organizations. You’ll also find talented actors who choose to go nonunion, so don’t overlook them. If you are going low budget, you can often cull a cast from acting students at a local college. Don’t forget to have the selected talent sign release forms that give you the rights to use them in the video. At all costs, try to avoid anyone untrained in acting, including your client’s employees and friends. Unless they have some great talent that was previously hidden, using untrained actors in training videos can really put the final nail in the coffin. Video Crew Okay let’s face it. Most budgets for training videos are not soaring through the roof. I’ve directed video productions with one crew member: a camera person. Ideally, however, you’ll be able to afford the following: Director: In most situations, if you are the person responsible, you will become the default director. Forget the director’s chair, you’ll probably be standing up and running around half the time. Videographer: The videographer operates the camera. For small or low-budget video productions, you will have a videographer who also mixes the audio. Become best friends with this person, as he or she can help you with the direction. Don’t hesitate to discuss each shot and see how it will look through the camera. Sound Technician or Audio Mixer: If you can afford a separate person to record, mix and monitor sound, it’s worth the cost. This sound engineer can help to choose the best microphones for the scene, they are responsible for recording the audio and they monitor the levels closely with headphones. If there is outside interference, the sound person will alert the director to do another take. Script Supervisor: I’m not sure what the official term for this person is, but you always need someone to take production notes. This person needs to be sure there is continuity when shooting from one day to the next. He or she will take note that the actor in Scene 12 is wearing a blue shirt on Monday and needs that same shirt on Wednesday for a related scene. The script supervisor can also work with the videographer to log the time code for each shot. Instructional Crew Videos that have a training focus will need one or two people on hand who are focusing on content and instructional strategies. Instructional Designer: Most training videos require the instructional designer to be present to ensure that key points are implemented correctly. There are often a barrage of unforeseen issues and questions that arise (imagine that!) and only someone familiar with the content and purpose of the scene can answer them. If the director and instructional designer are the same person, you’ve got it covered. SME: It’s good to have the subject matter expert on hand when you are communicating technical or complex topics. Post-production Work Everything done to the video after the recording is considered the post-production work. This includes editing, voiceovers, special effects and conversion to various formats. You’ll need to plan who will do this type of work. If you don’t have the capabilities in-house, you’ll need to hire a video studio to do the post-production work. The producer of the video (which may be you) may need to sit with the editor to identify how sequences should be assembled. I wish I’d had a list like this when I became the default video expert. Hopefully, you’ll be more prepared than I was if the "video expert" role lands in your lap. Are there other things you plan for in a training video production? If so, please add them below. Other Articles About Media Post from: The eLearning CoachPlanning A Video Production Tweet This! Share this on Linkedin Share this on Facebook Buzz up! Share this on del.icio.us Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Email this to a friend?

From TeachThought Its time to set a new goal, ford a new path, challenge myself.  Will you join me?

Over the weekend, an article published in Advertising Age discussed the significance of search optimization, the importance of Google, and just how much certain big brand companies are spending on Google advertising. The focus of the article dealt specifically how...

It was a good experience.  I learned a little bit of a lot of different things, which is what usually happens at conferences.  I met some really amazing people, some of whom I now follow on Twitter.  I played the Networking Game, for what it was worth and a few of those people are now […]

Many of the best tips for creating rich, engaging digital assets for learning come from sources that are probably not first-of-mind for most learning designers or IDs, much less trainers, professors, or instructors. Case in point: My so-called seven steps...

Found this video a while back and meant to share it here. Ioannis (Yannis) N. Miaoulis is the president of the Museum of Science in Boston, the organization behind the award-winning Engineering is Elementary curriculum we are embracing in the K4STEMLAB. In this six-minute video, Mr. Miaoulis explains why we should be teaching engineering in US schools, particularly at the elementary level. He contends: Technological literacy is basic literacy Engineering is a great integrator of other disciplines Engineering makes math and science relevant Engineering opens career opportunities for all students Please watch this video. It helps explain why we are incorporating the study of engineering into our K-4 Computer Lab this year.

Motivation is the force that drives people to fulfill a need. If you can tap into a learner’s intrinsic motivation—where an individual is rewarded by the learning itself or an internal goal—you’ve got it made. But in both workplace and academic environments, people are often unmotivated because they are required to take courses in which they have no interest. That puts designers and developers of learning products in a tough position. We need to work hard at creating experiences that get audiences engaged and motivated. Here are some strategies you can use to motivate adult learners, based on their characteristics. Create useful and relevant learning experiences. Adult learners appreciate immediate relevancy. It’s a great incentive when training is immediately valuable and helpful to one’s work or personal life. Focus on practical knowledge and skills. Related to the strategy above, try to concentrate on workplace (or real life) performance, rather than on extraneous facts and theories. Provide options. Adults usually like choices that promote self-direction. When possible, allow learners to choose the courses they will take within a curriculum or subject category. Even if you provide a suggested order, allow learners to take lessons in a sequence that works for them. Facilitate exploration. Provide resources, references, videos and podcasts to create an ideal environment for personal exploration. Adults have a breadth of experience. Exploration provides an opportunity to construct knowledge in a way that is meaningful for each learner. Build community through social technologies for learning. Implement a social media strategy as part of a learning experience. Use social networking applications and services to build groups with a common interest or goal. Sharing knowledge and experience through informal networks is a motivating and natural way to learn. Accommodate group interactions. Provide opportunities for group discussion, collaboration and group problem solving. Enable testing out. Allow learners to test out of courses for which they know the content. Create active learning. As a general rule, most learners are motivated by engaging and active learning events over passive ones. You’ll find specific strategies for making learning active in this list. Put a face on it. When it fits with your goals, let learners know that there is a real person behind an online learning course. Provide opportunities for this expert to interact with the audience through live or online question and answer sessions. Challenge through games; entice with immersive environments. When your audience members are involved in the challenge of a game or focused on solving problems in a virtual environment, learning becomes an incidental aspect of winning or finding solutions. Although this usually requires a higher budget than other strategies, look around for pre-programmed games that work with your tool set. Use a witty character. Humor is a great way to keep learners motivated. Use humorous characters that reflect familiar situations and personalities to arouse interest. Accommodate busy schedules. Create learning experiences that can be mastered in small segments of time. Make it easy for learners to access individual learning objects for just-in-time answers. Chunk information. Another reason for organizing information into small chunks is to build confidence, which is motivating. Small bits of information are easier to process, comprehend and retain than large chunks. Add a dose of suspense. Don’t give away everything at first. Make learners want to find out more by starting out with a suspenseful scenario that learners need to solve. Mystery is a great motivator. Use creative treatments. Many online courses can be tied to a theme, a dramatic presentation, a compelling narrative or an unusual metaphor that can be carried through the instruction. This adds novelty and interest, which are  motivating forces in learning. Individualize the learning. During interactive events, use context-sensitive feedback for a more accurate response to the learner’s input. Even better is if you can provide multiple paths through a course so that learners are guided by the choices they make. This type of individualization can help a person build accurate knowledge structures, which improves competence and confidence. Accommodate individual interests and career goals. Each learner is a unique individual with his or her own goals. Empowering a person to work toward these goals through training is a powerful incentive to learn. Stimulate the mind. Ask thought-provoking questions and offer problems that don’t have one right answer. Challenge learners to think about exceptions to a rule or to question conventional wisdom. Learners appreciate it when you respect their intelligence. Let learning occur through mistakes. In our everyday life, we learn from our mistakes. We can simulate this in structured learning experiences by offering context-sensitive feedback during games, reviews and tests. Offer just-in-time resources: No one can retain all the content in a course. Provide learners with job aids, online support systems, like wikis and micro-blogging technologies to get just-in-time support in the workplace. Get emotional. When you tap into the emotional dimension of your audience, you can get them hooked and engaged. Add realistic stories, refer to an individual’s cherished memories or say something controversial. Do what it takes to get the audience emotionally involved. Encourage mastery learning. Help learners gain confidence and competence as they learn. Make sure courses are at the right level for each learner. Provide opportunities for people to retake courses until they have mastered the content. Provide real world practice activities. Ensure remediation presents content in a new way. Make it visually compelling. It may be hard to make a course look like it was produced by 3D experts, but there are low-budget ways to make it aesthetically appealing. People are hard-wired for pictures, so use visuals to motivate your audience. Simulate the workplace. Take your cues from the workplace. Uncover the issues or difficulties your audience is experiencing and base scenarios and practice activities on real-world experience. This makes learning meaningful. Respect the audience. Let your audience know why it’s important to take a particular course. Avoid a cynical or condescending tone and honor the learners. You may be the only advocate they have in this big world. Get learners to create graphic organizers. Encourage learners to visually represent the content they are learning. This can keep them engaged and help them structure their new knowledge for easy retrieval in the future. Use good design principles. Make sure your online courses are legible by using a font that can be read by adults of all ages. Ensure graphical text can be easily read too. Keep the screen clear from clutter. It’s demotivating to struggle through a course because of legibility issues. Ask for feedback. Find a way to let your audience contribute to a course. Let them know they can provide feedback to help you improve it. This might help some learners buy in to the program. Present the benefits. Sometimes motivating learners is as simple as presenting the benefits of a course. "This course will help you become more productive with your time, probably saving you 20 minutes every day. In one year, that adds up to 121 hours!" Create an experience, not just a course. What can you do to make a course unforgettable? Create an online and offline learning experience. Market your course to the audience to create buzz, get buy-in from key people, throw a related event, incorporate sophisticated activities to enhance learning, provide personal support for those having difficulty and provide follow-up. What strategies do you use to motivate adult learners? Comment below. Related Articles: Characteristics of Adult Learners 10 Social Media Tools For Learning Social Media and Learning Chunking Information Games and Simulations The Future Of Learning Design Post from: The eLearning CoachGet Your Audience Pumped: 30 Ways to Motivate Adult Learners Tweet This! Share this on Linkedin Share this on Facebook Buzz up! Share this on del.icio.us Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Email this to a friend?

I’m reading Teacher as Architect, by Shawn Smith, Ann Chavez and Garrett Seaman. I haven’t gotten very far into the book yet, but a truth has become clear to me: how I build the learning structure in my classroom determines the strength of the learning experience for my students.  I now wonder, are the materials I’m building […]

Filmmaker Bruce Branit‘s brilliant, powerful short film, World Builder, has been a favorite of mine for years. We have used the first four minutes, thirty seconds of it in class to inspire students with possibility (click here, scroll down to the entry for 4th grade). If you haven’t seen it, here’s your chance. It’s fantastic. This film popped into my head repeatedly over the summer as I worked in my new room. At times, I felt a lot like the character in this movie. Seriously. This was my holodeck: With guidance from amazing people like Christian Long, Chris Lehmann, Mary Beth Hertz, Kristen Swanson, Gregg Festa, and many others, I immersed myself in the task of creating a truly student-centered collaborative learning environment. Christian began by suggesting I read Make Space, the acclaimed learning space design tome by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University ("the d.school.") . He also provided me two fantastic texts on modern school architecture, The Language of School Design and The Third Teacher (by his own firm, Cannon Design. They literally "wrote the book.") These resources were invaluable to me as I mentally constructed the master plan for the space. Then, with a little sweat and the support of my administration and school community (our amazing Parent-Teacher Organization and Education Foundation), the magic started to happen. Working within the constraints presented by immovable walls and permanently-mounted furniture / technology, I started to imagine what the room could look like: Then, it was like … bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt … there’s a foam cube, just like they talk about in Make Space: Then, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt … a Z-Rack appeared: Again, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt … a giant whiteboard wall: … and it didn’t stop there. Colorful mats appeared in front of the SMART Board. An old DVD player was repurposed into an electronic signage system. Donated supplies from colleagues arrived. Even some wonderful, serendipitous things appeared, like inspirational quotes painted on the walls by a Monica De La Torre, an active member of our fantastic parent community. There are so many more examples. And I am so, so grateful. We’re not done. Furniture is still enroute. Some technology still needs to be put in place. And, our whimsical "newsroom clocks" aren’t here yet, even though the project was funded by several generous donors weeks ago. (Some things aren’t as easy as they appear in the video.) No, it’s not perfect, but it is excellent. And it’s Version 1.0 - a design sure to be improved, informed by interaction with its most important occupants - our students. What happens now? We’re at my favorite part in World Builder, precisely four minutes and twenty-nine seconds in, the moment just before it all becomes real. Thanks go out to everyone who made this amazing learning space possible, from our school leaders to parents to colleagues near and far, to the sponsors who donated materials, goods and services. All I did was dream it up. In the process, I learned so much. Soon, it’ll be the kids’ turn to dream … and, to learn. -kj-

Adobe Systems got some great news today when word hit the street that Apple had decided to modify its previously published App Store developer guidelines. According to an article published by the Silicon Valley Mercury News, Apple will now accept...

In my Entrepreneurial Educator MOOC… we spent last week talking about being an "economy of one".  In other words, what skills do you have that make you an asset in the world and how can or should you use that skill set to create a career for yourself.  In addition, how can you take this […]