Instructional Designer Onboarding – a Multi-Modal Approach
In early 2020 I was tapped to design an onboarding program for three new Instructional Designers that would be added to our team in...
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March 24, 2023
What’s Different Between the Life of a Classroom Teacher vs. Instructional Designer?
How is the day-to-day life of an Instructional Designer different than that of a K12 classroom teacher? Many classroom teachers are looking to make...
February 10, 2023
The “Attention Method” for Effective Presentation Decks – Updated
This is an update to my previous post, The “Attention Method” for Effective PowerPoint Presentations. My Attention Method™ of presentation design is a philosophy...
August 24, 2022
Microlearning is not a Platform, it’s a Design Choice
One frequent buzzword you’ll hear a lot in the eLearning world is “microlearning”. More often than not, it’s pushed by companies trying to sell...
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Motion Graphics from Keynote to Video
My process for creating animated motion graphics is unconventional but it has distinct advantages over the industry standard method of using Adobe AfterEffects or...
UbD is the Ultimate Learning Technology
This is a pretty dense, fiber-full article about backward learning design by one of my instructional design heroes, Michael Feldstein. It introduces the concept of Backwards Design (part of Understanding by Design, which he also introduces). Most importantly, it makes the case that designing course strictly aligned with learning outcomes enables us to collect data programmatically, scalably, so we can make timely interventions that result in better student learning overall.
Use Twine for Branching Learning Scenarios
The open source writing tool Twine bills itself as an “Interactive Fiction” authoring program – a way for people to make text-based choose-your-own-adventure games...
Best Markdown Editors for Writers and Coders 2017
Over the years I’ve been exploring Markdown as a content development tool, I’ve tried most of the Markdown editors available for Mac and Windows....
Building Critical Thinking Into Self-Paced Online Learning
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...
Sleep Conductor | App Prototype for IDEO CoLAB Makeathon 2016
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...
Discussion Forum for Video Lectures Encourages Engagement
Most LMSes have a “Discussion Forum” tool that you can add into any course unit, and even make it a graded assignment in the...
Some Love for the Mozilla Web Literacy Standards
I wanted to drop in a quick plug for familiarizing ourselves with the Mozilla Web Literacy Standards and 21st Century Skills. Though edtechies have lots of...
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