Tag Archives: Recommendations

That’s Just Sketchy

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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I’m not a good artist, but over the last couple of years I’ve started sketching to help me work out ideas, present them to stakeholders, and communicate them to developers.

A presenter at a TK11 session (sorry, I forgot which one) mentioned sketching as a tool for instructional design around the same time I ran across the below article… And as Special Agent Cooper tells us, when two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention.

Three things about sketching:

Sketching User Experiences – the book that started me sketching; a must-read

Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool – a great article on how and why to sketch; includes a list of tools

Bamboo Pen & Touch – my coolest Xmas present this year, moving me into the electronic age of sketching

Do you sketch, either for instructional design purposes or otherwise? Why?

The Latest E-Learning Uncovered Newsletter is Out!

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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AWP does a great newsletter for instructional designers (if I can brag on my peeps a little) through our E-Learning Uncovered site and the latest one has four reviews of design/development tools and resources you might be considering.

Check out the latest and be sure to also sign up to receive the newsletter directly. (Don’t worry, we won’t spam you… We wish we had time to write more often!)

Drop.io

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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I decided to recommend Drop.io to help you get files from here/you to there/them, but waited to try Dropbox first and compare for you.

The quick and dirty*: Dropbox has a larger free storage capacity (though Drop.io welcomes multiple accounts) and all around, Dropbox works extremely well; it’s iDisk-like but better. After testing though, I’ve decided to stick with Drop.io.

Drop.io works better for me at work than Dropbox (something to do with the firewall or proxy) and Drop.io doesn’t require any installs. (Neither does Dropbox technically, but Dropbox’s web interface is nowhere near as slick as Drop.io’s… see video.) So for those in a heavily regulated IT environment, Drop.io rocks. And bonus points for the name.

Drop.io also has approximately one bajillion ways to get files to your “drop”. My two favorites (neither of which Dropbox offers), in real time:

* 140 words is way too few for a thorough review, so I’m just explaining my own reasoning. Both sites have excellent overview/tutorial screencasts if you would like to learn more.

…And Finally, Learning Agents Part 6: Get Your Own (Using Illustrations)

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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Illustrations deserve their own discussion; they’re my recommendation because they’re highly editable.

Angela, one of our recent stars. $18 for her files and 100% worth it.

Angela, one of our recent stars. $18 for her files and 100% worth it.

You can use clipart (and if you do, check out Tom Kuhlman’s now-classic post on clipart editing). For learning agents, though, one or two on-screen personas get a lot of focus and need to represent a wide range of behaviors, so clipart may not cut it.

For my money/time, I buy pre-made illustrations. The regular stock photo sites have illustrations, but the best collection I’ve found for learning agents is cartoonsolutions.com.

Most of their characters are elearning-appropriate and they come with various poses and mouths (meant to animate speech, but I also use them as facial expressions). I buy Flash versions and use Illustrator to edit them for stills. Add audio from a popular CSR, and you’re golden.

I’m still looking for more collections — any recommendations?

GenerateData.com

Posted on by Judy Unrein
2

For me, one of the most time-consuming parts of creating training courses — especially those involving screencasts and screenshots — is staging.

For example, if I’m creating a course on Filemaker or Access, it’s obviously better if I have lots of data to use in demonstrations and practice files. If I try to make it up myself, the names end up being either John Smith or Tahloolah Firecracker. And it takes all day to come up with those gems.

Thankfully, I found generatedata.com recently. It generates names, dates, all sorts of data… and it’s all instant, online, and free. (There’s also a paid version if you need additional functionality.)

data type options on generatedata.com

Data type options on generatedata.com

Enjoy!