Sometimes a big part of the job of Instructional Design involves simply copy/pasting information from one format or platform to another. I’m working on a project now that has made me very thankful that I’m using a Clipboard Manager. What is a Clipboard Manager? It’s a desktop tool that lets …
In college I had a writing teacher who stressed the point that Writing represents you when you’re not there. –Alberto Rios It was his way of impressing upon us young writers to make sure everything we mean to say actually makes it onto the page. A common pitfall among young …
Hemingway is a markdown editor that coaches you to write more clearly, helping you to emulate Ernest Hemingway‘s trademark sparse, journalistic style. Though I don’t use it as my main markdown editor, I’ve been thinking about ways it can be useful in a variety of learning tasks. Once writing …
Until recently, I worked on Propero.org, a collection of accredited, self-paced, online learning courses where students work at their own pace and pick up college credits with maximum convenience. I joined the team after the curriculum had been developed, so it was my job to review the courses and determine …
In March 2016, I participated in the IDEO CoLAB Makeathon 2016, an all-day workshop where we went through the IDEO design process to envision future applications for blockchain and Internet of Things technology. This article outlines my experience at the Makeathon, and the Sleep Conductor App Prototype our mighty team …
I am a big believer in RSS News Aggregators as a core technology for lifelong learning. By allowing each individual person to curate their own interests and get in the habit of consuming a steady stream of news relevant to their interests, RSS lets people build their own personalized diet …
If you’re an admin user of Canvas LMS by Instructure, you frequently have to navigate your account by searching for users and courses in the Admin panel’s search bars for “Users” and “Courses”. This is a snazzy trick that lets you search your Canvas instance directly from your Chrome browser’s …
Most LMSes have a “Discussion Forum” tool that you can add into any course unit, and even make it a graded assignment in the course. Many online educators will post a discussion prompt and let students respond below. Here’s a little trick to help spice up your discussion postings with …
Google Play Music is my favorite music streaming service — but running it in my main browser has some drawbacks. Luckily Loop has emerged as a nice standalone desktop app for Google Play Music. It lets you keep your music player separate from your main browser, improving your overall performance …
I have long been a fan of the h5p.org project, a collection of open source learning objects written completely in HTML5 technologies to add interactive elements to online courses. These are the learning objects used in edX courses, but you can freely deploy them in your own courses. I’m going …
