Archive for the ‘Informal Learning’ Category

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Put Learning on Your To Do List

June 26, 2008
To do list
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To do list from beth77’s
photostream.

One of my SMEs mentioned today how she wants to learn more about Web 2.0 tools, but hasn’t made time for it. She knows she should; she knows it would help her do her job more effectively. But it hasn’t been a priority in her schedule.

She was surprised when I said that I have a recurring reminder on my to do list to set a goal for my own learning for the week. Having that reminder pop up every Monday morning means I always add some specific goal to my list for later in the week. Sometimes the “goal” is simply to attend a webinar; sometimes it’s to work on something in Captivate, Flash, or CSS. Sometimes it’s just to try out some new site or app. Last month, the Comment Challenge was my goal for each week. My blog reading is just part of my daily habits now, so I don’t count that towards this goal. I try to set a goal beyond my usual reading, commenting, and bookmarking.

I admit that I don’t always meet the goals I set for myself. Some weeks that goal just gets pushed back every day of the week until Friday afternoon, when I finally admit it won’t happen and postpone to the next week. But more often than not, I spend at least a half hour doing something specifically to improve my skills. Even if I don’t meet the goal, I’m thinking about what I want to learn next and looking for opportunities.

I started doing this at a previous job when I had my Franklin-Covey binder and followed those techniques to stay organized. I don’t follow it closely anymore, but the idea of “sharpening the saw” still influences how I plan my time for the week. I’ve been setting these goals for myself for several years, so it seems normal to me. I don’t think my SME had ever thought of it that way though, and I suspect I’m actually in the minority for setting aside the time each week.

That conversation has me wondering: What do you do to make time for learning in your schedule? Do you set goals for yourself or put it on your to do list? Does it just naturally happen as part of your job? Do you have a system that works for you? Do you focus just on formal learning, or do you consciously think about your informal learning too?

Please share what you do and how it works for you. I’m curious to hear other ideas.

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Formal or Informal Masters for Instructional Designers?

February 25, 2008

In his recent post We Need a Degree in Instructional Design, Karl Kapp argues that simply practicing instructional design isn’t enough; anyone who calls themselves an instructional designer should have a degree in it. He’s added a great image from Kathy Sierra that says “I’d make a good brain surgeon, because I HAD brain surgery.”

Karl makes several points that I agree with (this is my summary, not his):

  • There’s too much bad instructional design out there.
  • Instructional designers should be able to apply multiple instructional strategies, according to the needs of the situation.
  • Instructional designers should be able to articulate why they make the decisions they make, backing it up with research.
  • Understanding the theories and the research will help improve instructional design.
  • Everyone can always learn more about learning and instructional design.

Although I agree with all these points, I’m not convinced by the conclusion he draws from these points:

I have to say that in my extremely biased opinion…a degree is not only needed, it should be required!

I don’t see graduate school as the only way for individuals to meet the goal of becoming better instructional designers. Shouldn’t people who design learning for others also be able to design their own learning paths? Is formal education the only option, or is it possible to do an “informal masters” on your own?

This is not to say that there’s no value in a masters degree; I’ve certainly heard from lots of people who have found it to be very beneficial. I have every reason to believe that I personally would learn a great deal in a well-designed program. I’m also not claiming that people who have that formal education can’t and don’t gain from the informal methods too. Karl’s a great example of this. He’s out there learning in public even though he has his terminal degree; he clearly sees learning as a lifelong process.

My disagreement is with these formulas.

  • Masters Degree = Good Instructional Design
  • No Masters Degree = Bad Instructional Design

It isn’t that simple. I’ve seen atrocious design from people with the credentials, and I’ve seen people like Cammy Bean and Cathy Moore who do fabulous work but don’t have the degrees.

Clark Quinn’s explanation falls more in the middle, rather than having an either/or formula. Being a “reflective practitioner” can give motivated people the background and knowledge of that “informal masters” and achieve many of the goals from Karl’s post.

The benefit of the Master’s is the chance to get to know the theories (depending on the program and instructor). The pedagogy for the course should include applying the theories to pragmatic design, not just reciting back the contents (I used to use RFP’s asking for designs or redesigns using the theories). It’s not the only way, but being familiar enough with the underlying principles to be able to adapt the design to match the circumstances is important…

Note that Cammy is a ‘reflective practitioner’ to use Schön’s term, as she reads and reflects on what she does. That’s why she’s effectively done her own ‘masters’ in learning/ISD. So, I’m not comfortable with trusting experience over time to yield competent results, I think it takes someone being an ongoing learner. That’s easier in a well-designed program, though the caveat is that all programs are not necessarily well-designed.

Does college matter?

The above image is from Kathy Sierra’s post Does College Matter? but the quote I want to close with is from her Ten Tips for Trainers.

But with that out of the way, nobody needs a PhD (or in most cases — any degree at all) in education or learning theory to be a good teacher. Just as there are plenty of great software developers and programmers without a CompSci degree. People can be self-taught, and do a fabulous job, for a fraction of the cost of a formal education, but they have to be motivated and they have to appreciate why it’s important.

Let the debate continue!

Update: Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers here.

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Collaborative Learning Trends

January 23, 2008

These are my live-blogged notes from the webinar Emerging Trends in Collaborative Learning from the WebEx/eLearning Guild Online eLearning Summit. My comments are in italics.

Speakers

  • Heidi Fisk, Co-Founder, The eLearning Guild
  • Brent Schlenker, the Emerging Technologies Analyst, The eLearning Guild

How do you define “collaborative learning”?

Brent showed his online profile in different places

I’m impressed that he’s a level 40 orc in WOW. The fact that I’m impressed by that probably makes me a g33k…

Heidi Fisk noted that she isn’t involved with so many new technologies b/c she has difficulty typing. Good example of why mobility is part of the accessibility considerations and why we should think about that more.

New technologies are all about connecting people-that’s the underlying theme of all these new innovations

The focus on “You” (Time magazine, personal branding)

YOUniverse-what does your digital presence look like?

  • Consume
  • Connect/Collaborate
  • Create

Maybe the “editable” from Brent’s earlier list should be “collaboratable”-not that it’s a real word…Hmmm…I still am not quite happy with that.

Looked at generational trends for technology

eLearning Guild technology usage

  • Synchronous e-Learning: 65%
  • Wikis: 31%
  • Blogs: 22%
  • Chat rooms: 24%
  • Mobile Learning: 19%
  • Podcasts: 17%

eLearning Guild is an example of collaborative data sharing, pulled dynamically

Synchronous Learning trends (although new engine in 2005, so data isn’t directly comparable)

  • 2001: 13%
  • 2002: 18%
  • 2004: 25%
  • 2005: 38%
  • 2007: 65%

Learning 0.1: Physical classroom in 1941, chalkboard, no

Learning 1.0: standard info (expert content, one direction, static, centralized). Few content creators, many content consumers

Learning 2.0: Dynamic, decentralized, loosely joined networks, learners create & enhance content; rip, mix, feed

“Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”

Five Ables from before:

  • Searchable
  • Editable
  • Linkable
  • Tagable
  • Feedable

First 3 “ables” are from the Cluetrain Manifesto

Informal Learning

New hires need more formal, structured courses, less informal

Company gurus use more informal support & conversations, less formal classrooms

Brent is showing this as very low informal at the beginning, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I think there is a lot of informal learning for new hires too

Google Trends shows searches for “instructional design” dropping over time

What does that mean? Are there fewer learning professionals using instructional design? Perhaps the old ideas of what instructional design is aren’t working anymore. We need to find new ways to be of value.

Blogs, Wikis, RSS

Got a phone call-darn, I missed what Brent said about blogs, wikis, and RSS. I’ll have to catch it in the recording. (Unless Brent would be so nice as to summarize what he said here in the comments…)

Internal Wikis: Intel as the example

  • 6000+ articles
  • Intel Acronyms to help people
  • Intel History created by the employees-better than what any single group of people could have done

Blogs let you share ideas and get feedback from all over the world

Text messaging took off much faster in other countries where the infrastructure was better for that than in the US.

Where to start using new technology? Feed reader/aggregator, start learning RSS

Feed readers are a good way to get a high level scan of a lot of the information

Showed iGoogle, Netvibes, etc.-learning dashboards

“Nobody can tell you what the matrix is. You have to experience it for yourself.” Morpheus, The Matrix

You have to go out and experience it, engage with others, create and share

Several questions in the chat about accuracy in wikis-people seem to be very worried about that. The moderator suggests lots of self-policing

Find the grassroots people to start trying something and encourage them to share what they are doing. You can’t just tell people “this is what we’re doing” like a new accounting system-you have to build from the bottom, not from the top down. Even if it fails, what have you lost if the tool is free?

Collaborative Immersive 3-D Environments

Games vs. Virtual Spaces

“You can learn more about a man in one hour of play than in one year of conversation.” Plato

Immersive 3-D environments require you to work together, be engaged, solve problems

Most kids play games, lots of adults do too

MMORPG is a virtual team

Screenshot of 40 people in a WOW raiding party-this is 40 people from around the world with different skills working to accomplish something. Lots of logistics even though it’s a game.

Second Life is a virtual space without specific game objectives like WOW. Watched NASA shuttle launch video within virtual world–a “matrix” moment for Brent

Example of Second Life training: Crowd control training where there’s no danger of people getting hurt. It’s easy for learners to figure out how to “game the system” if it’s non-player characters. If real people are the ones playing the role of disrupters in the crowd, it’s harder to game the system.

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Top Ten Tools: 2008 Update

January 12, 2008
Top 10
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Pixel mon amour
from poluz’s photostream.

Jane Hart has asked a number of people to update their lists of favorite tools, for either e-learning or personal learning and working. I haven’t changed too much from last year’s list, but I have made a few adjustments.

1. Firefox:
Firefox is the first application I start in the morning, and it stays open basically all day. It’s the way I access most of the rest of the tools on this list.

2. Google Reader:
Google Reader is my RSS reader of choice. Last month I wrote about how RSS is one of my primary personal learning tools. Reading RSS feeds gives me a constant flow of information to absorb and a route to interact with so many great people in the blogosphere.

3. WordPress:
WordPress.com is my blogging platform and therefore another important tool for personal learning. What I learned about learning in 2007 is how much RSS and blogging really have enhanced my own lifelong learning efforts.

4. Gmail:
Gmail is a productivity tool for me more than a learning tool, but it is one of my favorites and I use it constantly.

5. Google Docs & Spreadsheets:
Google Docs is one of the main tools for collaborating with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) during the course development process.

6. Dreamweaver:
Dreamweaver is where nearly all of the final content I develop for courses is created. The content from the Google Docs with SMEs is put into webpages, then those webpages are used within our LMS. It’s not the typical process flow, but it works for our instructor-led graduate courses.

7. Captivate:
Captivate is how I develop self-paced e-learning content that is embedded within the instructor-led courses. Sometimes this is as simple as a graphic or flow chart with rollovers or hotspots; sometimes it’s a complex branching scenario. Captivate’s a good tool for all of it.

8. Diigo:
Diigo is my primary social bookmarking tool and how I generate my daily bookmark posts for my blog. I do so much online research for both the courses I develop and for my own personal learning; a good system to track all the resources I find is indispensable. Diigo’s also improved a lot since I started using it, and they’ve learned to take user feedback seriously.

9. Skype:
Working from home, Skype is one of my connecting lines to the world. I use it to chat with and call SMEs as well as the other members of the online course development team.

10. Toodledo:
I track everything I need to do for developing courses and personal tasks in Toodledo. The ability to sort tasks into contexts (work, home, blog, etc.) as well as folders (one for each course or project) means I can stay organized without getting overwhelmed. This is my personal project management tool.

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Predictions for E-Learning in 2008

January 7, 2008

The Big QuestionJanuary’s Learning Circuits Big Question is about predicting what might happen this year in learning. Several of my predictions are pretty general and safe, but I did put a few specific ones in for good measure.

Blogging as Professional Development

I think (and hope) we’ll continue to see more individuals taking control of their own learning by creating and using blogs. We’ll see a number of new e-learning professionals starting blogs and joining the conversations. I expect to hear of at least one or two learning professionals who get new jobs through their blogs too, as Wendy Wickham and others have.

Online Conferences, Webinars, and Backchannel Discussions

Much of my personal professional development in 2007 was through online conferences and webinars. This included the Online Connectivism Conference and the Future of Education conference, both free and organized by George Siemens. I also attended a paid (but very reasonable) online conference called Technology, Colleges, and Community. The online conferences were great. Innovate, Elluminate, and Adobe put on a number of webinars; I expect more organizations will follow their lead in 2008.

I also think that more of these synchronous learning events will include backchannel chat discussions, with more people figuring out how to use them successfully as both participants and presenters. I hope that this will be part of how Clive Shepherd’s 8th prediction happens; backchannel chats could be part of what helps synchronous chat move to a more collaborative pedagogical model.

Sneaky Innovation

As it has been in the past, a lot of the innovation in organizations and schools with technology will happen because people are sneaky about it. Lots of people will try out web applications, social network tools, open source software, and other tools on their own, regardless of whether it’s officially sanctioned or not. This isn’t something new; we’ve had conversations about this before. Janet Clarey’s post Do it now, apologize later generated great conversations; I think her ideas really resonated, and this trend will continue.

Conversation Tracking

One technology that I feel is lacking with reading blogs is a really effective way to track blog conversations across multiple blogs. Several options work for tracking comments on a specific post, but what happens when someone continues the conversation on their own blog, and it isn’t one you regularly read? Keyword-based search options are a possibility, but it would be nice to have a way to visually track the history of a conversation or meme. It might be just wishful thinking, but I’m predicting that this year we’ll see at least one new tool that lets you effectively track any conversation thread across multiple blogs.

E-Learning 2.0

I agree with Tony Karrer that e-learning 2.0 will continue to grow, but that we won’t see anything drastically change. Lots of small changes will happen, and we’ll continue to make the organizational culture changes needed to integrate Web 2.0 tools more fully.

Instructional Design

Like with e-learning 2.0, I don’t see a great revolution in store for 2008 about the role of instructional designers. However, I do think we’ll continue to have questions and discussions about what our role really is, especially as we move away from developing structured course content to helping create Personal Learning Environments and less formal learning.

Privacy Concerns

This isn’t strictly e-learning related, but generally related to technology and social networking. I think we’ll see several companies make privacy goofs in 2008, like 2007’s Facebook Beacon and Google Reader sharing items with chat contacts. Most of these companies will realize their mistake and backtrack fast enough to minimize the damage (as both Facebook and Google did in December). However, I think at least one company will push the privacy limits too far and won’t correct the problem fast enough to avoid losing huge numbers of users.

Final Prediction

My final prediction is that when I revisit these at the end of the year that I’ll discover that I was wrong on a bunch of things that that I missed several big trends and events in the field.

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One Year of Blogging

December 26, 2007
blog
Image created with
typoGenerator

My first two posts on this blog were published a year ago today. I posted about learning through blogging last week, but I want to look at some more of the stats. If you’re not interested in my self-indulgent meta-analysis and navel-gazing, go ahead and skip this post.

  • Total number of posts: 284 (counting this one)
  • Number of non-bookmark posts: 90
  • Number of comments: 254
  • Top categories (excluding bookmarks):
    • E-learning (31)
    • Instructional Design (29)
    • Blogging (2 8)
    • Lifelong Learning (26)
    • Read/Write Web (22)
  • Number of views: over 16,000
  • Subscribers: around 150

Obviously, I’m not breaking any records with my statistics and number of readers. I wasn’t sure when I started whether I’d ever have more than a handful of readers, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my numbers. It took me over three months to get that first 1000 views, so I certainly spent my time preaching to empty pews. I’m thrilled with the number of comments I have–almost one for every post. Especially when you look at how many of my posts are just linkblogging, which doesn’t usually inspire much discussion, the number of comments feels like a more meaningful statistic to me than just the number of views or subscribers.

If you’d asked me a year ago what topics I thought I would write about the most, I doubt I would have put lifelong learning in my top five. I guess it just feels like a natural topic to write about here though, as this blog is certainly a lifelong learning tool for me.

Looking forward to another year ahead!

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Communicating with SMEs

October 21, 2007
Communication
Image citation
Communication by DailyPic

A large part of what I do as an instructional designer is working with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). These are the people we hire because they have the deep knowledge of a specific area. In my company, they also often eventually serve as facilitators for the course. Of course, some SMEs are easier to work with than others, and every SME has individual quirks that I need to figure out to work with them successfully. One of the great things about our team is that we spend a lot of time discussing our SMEs and sharing ideas and strategies. Even though I’d worked with SMEs before, I feel like I’ve learned more from my experiences in the last year, and I know that bouncing ideas off the others on the team is a big part of that.

I want to start recording some of the strategies that have worked (and some of the ones that haven’t) here, to clarify my own “lessons learned.” This won’t be a structured series the way my Instructional Design careers set was where I had all the posts planned out in advance. I haven’t organized my thoughts that well yet–that’s what I’m going to use the blog for. So, please forgive me if they seem a bit unstructured.

And now for the first strategy…

One of the most helpful strategies I’ve used is asking SMEs directly how they best communicate. Yes, the strategy is that simple: Ask how they want to communicate. So much of the success of the relationship rests on how well we communicate with each other. I try to ask this question during my introductory phone call with the SME. At this point in the process, I’m mostly just looking for the technology: email, phone, IM, Skype, etc. I can work through any of those methods, but I need to know what’s going to be best for the SME. I’ve had several SMEs who really need to talk through ideas on the phone; they need that interplay with a live person, and they need the auditory to make connections. I’ve had others who did almost everything in writing, usually through email with a little IM. Knowing that upfront means I don’t waste time writing long emails to a SME who really needs to hear my feedback on the phone.

As the development progresses, I try to refine the communication a bit more. On one of the very first projects I worked on with a SME, I gave my initial feedback in long paragraphs. My observations were mixed in with what I needed him to do next, and none of it was particularly succinct. I did a lousy job of communicating what I wanted, but fortunately that SME called me up and told me point blank that he didn’t understand. After that, I gave him bullet points spelling out specifically what I needed changed, plus we went over the to-do list on the phone. I’d never give a SME a rambling paragraph like that now, but I do try to tailor my feedback. Some SMEs really need hard deadlines to work to, but I’ve had others who do better with some flexibility. Some need me to break down the goals and give them very detailed tasks, but others would go crazy if I micromanaged them that much.

It can be tricky to find the right communication method and style with SMEs, but I do find it’s getting easier with time. I learn something new from every SME I work with, and I feel like I’m accumulating enough of a “bag of tricks” now that I have strategies for most situations.

If you have a great strategy for communicating with SMEs, I’d love to hear about it.

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Does Ning Crash Your Browser?

September 3, 2007

I had given up on Ning several months ago when it suddenly started crashing my browser whenever I tried to access messages or friend requests. However, I thought I’d try again after seeing mention of the Building a Better Blog group and several others related to learning and education.

Unfortunately, things don’t seem to have improved at all. In Firefox 2.0, it completely crashes, leaving me with a blank white page under the title bar–no menu bar, no toolbars, nothing. I’ve tried letting it sit for several minutes, but I always end up having to shut the program down through the task manager. In IE6, sometimes I get nothing; sometimes if I wait long enough, I see just a “Loading…” screen that doesn’t actually load anything. I just tested IE7 and got to the Loading screen quickly, but then it just sits there indefinitely and I never see my friend requests. I even tried testing on Opera and Safari for Windows this morning; Safari shows the same page as IE does, and Opera crashes like Firefox.

I tried submitting a bug report through Ning’s site, but of course, that crashed too.

Is anyone else having these issues, or is it just me? If you’ve experienced any of this and have found a way around the problems, please share!

Update: Ning is working for me now in Firefox 3. If you’re on Firefox 2 and having problems, try upgrading to the new version.

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Learning Flash by Reading a Book

June 29, 2007

I’m starting to learn Flash now. This is something I want to do, and I’m looking forward to having the ability to do more interactivity in my courses than just what I can do with html or even with Captivate. Things are a little slow for my job right now, so it has seemed the perfect time to get started. Flash really does feel a bit overwhelming to me; there’s just so much information and so many tools. I’ve tried a little bit of picking apart existing files, but this really is so new to me that I don’t even know where to start.

Therefore, I’ve decided that I need some help, starting with one of those 1000+ page books you see for every application in the bookstores. I’m using is Macromedia Flash 8 Bible by Reinhardt and Snow. It’s not a bad book; it has very comprehensive information and I’m able to follow the writing fairly easily even though the terminology is unfamiliar. I finished the first chapter on drawing tools today and realized that I basically just read it without actually doing anything in the program. No practice, just reading, learning terminology and icons and purposes. I flipped back to the table of contents and realized something: I won’t reach “My First Flash Project” until chapter 20.

OK, that’s not going to work. I’m going to need to do at least a little application of the new skills as I go along or there’s no chance that I’ll remember them by the time I get to chapter 20. Maybe I’ll just skip to that chapter and then refer back to the earlier chapters as I run into issues. The thing is, I really do think the information in these early chapters is valuable. I just wish it was in the context of more activities or tutorials or something.

So I made my own practice activity. Back in my corporate trainer days, I always ignored the “official” lesson for teaching drawing objects in our books. Frankly, it was lame; just disjointed shapes in a boring presentation. Instead, I copied and adapted the idea from another trainer to have everyone draw a house. It was planned out so they practiced using the different shapes and lines, plus duplicating, grouping, and aligning. We always had much more fun doing that, and sometimes I was fortunate enough to have some terrific artists in the class who shared their art.

House drawn in Flash

Building on the same kind of image as my old PowerPoint exercise, here’s what I did in Flash today. For a first practice, I don’t think it’s too bad, especially since I’m just drawing with the mouse. Yeah, laugh at it if you want. I know it’s flat and simplistic and it looks like a 5-year-old did it, but it was fun. It gave me a purpose for using each of the tools, and I felt much more productive than simply reading.

It’s good to be in the role of learner for a while and remind myself how boring it is to just read content without applying it. Of course, that’s why I’m learning Flash–to give my students a better learning experience with more practice and interaction.

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Two Big Technology Skills

June 10, 2007

My previous post about Technology Skills for Instructional Designers has prompted some good discussion. Check out Do Instructional Designers Really Need Technology Skills? for my response and more comments, as well as Cammy Bean’s reply, Instructional Designers Tools.

I still think that learning technology skills is a good route to go if you’re hoping to get into instructional design. As Wendy Wickham said, “more skills = more opportunities.” But, based on the comments, this obviously isn’t a universal experience. Sometimes you can get a job without those technology skills, just with the instructional design knowledge. It depends on where you are and what jobs are available.

Two “big skills” seem to be important though: learning technology quickly and using it effectively. These are underlying skills which support the rest of what we do.

Learn Technology Quickly & Independently

Even if you aren’t doing any of the programming for an e-learning course, or aren’t even creating e-learning, being able to ramp up quickly is a crucial skill. To some extent, learning how to learn technology is a literacy skill for everyone, not just instructional designers. But especially in this field where we create learning materials for others to improve their technology skills, you can’t do without the ability to learn quickly and independently. You also need to be able to pick up software and fumble around with it to figure it out for yourself without documentation or formal training; after all, you might be the one creating the training!

I know the list of technology skills I created will be outdated quickly. The technology changes so fast that it’s impossible for it to not become outdated. The pace of change is one of the other reasons teaching yourself quickly is essential.

Use Technology Effectively

Even if you’re not doing the Flash programming yourself, you need to have some idea what Flash is capable of (and what isn’t possible). Even developing face-to-face training, knowing what PowerPoint can do and when it will support learning is important.

Three factors for using technology effectively:

  • When to use technology
  • What technology to use
  • How to use it

Confession time: my decisions about what technology to use are based mostly on just my experience, reading, asking other people, and trial and error. I don’t have a real system for this. This has worked for me, but I won’t promise it will work for you.

Kim Cofino at always learning has written about some systematic ways to choose technology. (She’s writing about middle school classrooms, but I think the technology design models could be applied elsewhere.) If you’re looking for a more organized way to approach technology, check out some of her posts.

If anyone else has a great system for choosing the right technology, I’d love to hear about it. Please add a comment or trackback letting me know if you agree or disagree with the two skills I’ve identified here.

Update: Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers here.

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