A colleague asked me to scan through a presentation that someone had passed to her today.  As I flipped through the monstrosity, 138 slides (Egad!), I was appalled that the entire thing was all most all text.  If I had a nickle for every full sentence bullet point in the document I’d be rich.  There were a few "process flowcharts" ...

Here are a some fantastic resources that you can become familiar with that will really excel you to an advance user of Articulate Studio.  The tips and tricks shown below are easy to learn but less well known to most users. My take of each of these tricks and more can be found under my Freebies section in the: Tips ...

I had to come up recently with a solution to be able to have a learner follow one of 2 paths through a course.  The first time they take they course they are to choose Path A.  The second time through the course, say for re-certification, they are to choose Path B.  Path B takes them directly to a knowledge check ...

Yes, seems like a strange title, but once you have the context I know it will make sense to you. Yesterday I sat in the first of many live sessions of MIT’s Media Lab Learning Creative Learning Open.  This course is being offered for the first time online as and OpenCourse.  That right there excites me.  Over 7000 people have ...

I sat in on Trina Rimmer‘s fantastic presentation during this month’s Elearning Guild Online Forums. Trina presented some interesting ideas around the topic where instructional designers and SMEs may clash heads. The items that frustrate each side of the project may be no more than communication issues that with some clever rewording can be addressed or even avoided. I’d strongly ...

Recently I’ve been working with Storyline to create a course for our public site instead for just our internal staff.  This meant I finally got the opportunity to use some audio and voice over tracks within the course. One particular slide is a bit stale with just bullet points of information for the person to look over.  So I created ...

I just finished reading Clark Quinn‘s piece on "Barrier to Scale?" and he has some fantastic points especially around the face that if enriched learning is centred around social learning, collaboration, and meaningful challenges "…. that you simply cannot make a quality learning experience that can be auto-assessed.  It needs to be rich, and mentored, scaffolded, and evaluated." This made me think ...

Last week it occurred to me that the last several months of LMS upgrading would have lead to my utter demise if I didn’t have my LMS buddy. Much like a really good friend that you’ve known since you were little, an LMS buddy is there for you always. They listen to your troubles during bad times. They are encouraging ...

  This was my first time trying to just use my phone to capture the notes as soon as they were done and then upload them using the WordPress app on my phone.  The sizing didn’t work out as I had hoped.  Basically you weren’t able to read my messing writing. So I sent it to my email, did a ...

If you have not yet had the privilege of viewing Col. Chris Hadfield’s Facebook page or Twitter posts you have truly been missing out as a resident of earth. Each day he has been posting pictures that have been captured from the ISS. Cities glowing in the night. Toronto Manila Dublin New York Volcanoes peaks. Mount Vesuvius Fogo Mount Okmok Mount St. ...

Tonight I spent some time at the local book store sketching items out of a book that was actually titled "Things to Draw". I barely got through the first few pages and produced this. It’s a start. I abandoned trying to draw a water tower, a dolphin, Fiji, and David Bowie. UPDATE: More inspiration for practicing your visual alphabet. > ...

Can’t believe I find ants difficult to draw/sketch.

Go ahead and try these ones on your own.  Post your doodles on Twitter using #doodleday Topic: Picnic Words Generated: ants picnic table tree blanket wine glass wine bottle glass flower watermelon soda/pop hot dog burger picnic basket fly swatter bee grapes ball shish kabob slide glass with straw bbq pitcher with ice ice cream lemon slice lady bug tulip ...

Lifehacker has a series called "How I Work : Every Wednesday we’ll feature a new guest and the gadgets, apps, tips, and tricks that keep them going."   After recently seeing Daniel Pink’s interview a colleague suggested we should fill out these questions as well.  So, here we go… Current Gig: Instructional Designer/Education Technology Specialist for Regional healthcare facility. Current mobile device: ...

I really enjoyed Jane Bozarth’s webinar today.  Although I understood and knew much of the "concepts" ahead of time; listening to Jane further explain, share examples, and give tips on how to become a positive deviant was extremely informative.  If you get the chance to hear her speak on this topic in the future I highly recommend attending. Link to Jane’s ...

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to vent about my LMS headaches, but alas, here I am again.  Facing the same issues as if nothing was ever learned the first time around.  Well that’s not completely true.  I’ve learn enough to fill and encyclopedia or I suppose that’s a wikipedia now. If I can share one thing, it’s ...

My recent LMS troubleshooting took me on a trip down memory lane to grade 10 Computer Science.  Specifically my teacher that for that class and the years that followed for that subject.  I really wish I could remember his name to give him his due credit (will have to get out an old year book).  He frustrated us to no end ...

I had the honour of presenting to my colleagues at this year’s eACH Conference in Toronto.  One of the topics I presented on was getting the most out of a twitter chat.  I specifically wanted to focus on #lrnchat though as it is a chat that I participate in and I knew that attendees of eACH would also see great ...

On Friday, I had the privilege of presenting at the eACH 2013 Conference in Toronto.  One of the topics I presented on was using PowerPoint as an Image Editing Tool.  Here are the notes for this presentation.  Hopefully this will still be of use to those that may not have been in attendance.

Unfortunately I had 2 webinars I wanted to attend at the same session.  Here are my notes from the first half of Julie’s session, which I was very much enjoying.

This was a fantastic session and if you get a chance to listen to Jane  over the coming months speak again on this topic, I highly recommend that you do. I don’t actually think my sketchnotes are improving in the fact that there are still so many words on the page and less images.  However, the format really appeals to ...

Recently I was tasked with finding a simple yet robust place that members of a particular learning program could access to communicate and share ideas with one another.  I’ve used several tools in the past and have been successful, but have found some challenges with them as well. I have found that Google Groups just seems to get very text ...

An interesting thing happened to me yesterday when I was visiting with my family, my father stunned me and ‘schooled’ me once again that generational differences don’t make much difference at all. The set up: My brother comes into the room to show me the latest tickets that him and my father will be using to attend a local concert. ...

No, seriously…I’m asking. I continue to struggle with my LMS as I’m sure many of you do with your selected systems.  However, I’m at a point where I feel I’m losing my mind.  I’m not sure how many times an end-user should have to test the functionality of an upgrade before it is implemented.  Even if the answer is one ...