Thursday, December 21, 2017
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Step Back and Zoom In
Ha, ha. My last passport picture suffers from this problem. The clerk kept the camera lens short and moved the camera right into my face. I look like Gollum from Lord of the Rings... The headshot could have complied with the passport rules AND been flattering if she had backed up and zoomed in.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Monday, November 13, 2017
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Tell Us a Story!
When someone says to include a scenario or a story problem in a lesson, I'm transported back to elementary school: "Train A leaves Chicago at 7:57 am and heads east at 45 miles per hour. Train B leaves New York at 8:10 am and heads west at 50 miles per hour. When will Train A and Train B meet?" In my imagination, they don't pass each other, they collide. I don't do the calculating. I imagine the crash. All kidding aside, storytelling can make a concept "stick" in the minds of the learners.
While working on the faculty at a career college, we received some guidance from our leadership. "Cut back on the stories!" Excuse me? What problem does THAT solve? It seems that some of our faculty were getting carried away with their stories and experiences and the students were complaining. So I complied and did my best to limit storytelling time in my classroom. I was lecturing not soon after that and actually got stumped on how to get a programming concept across to my students. I even said out loud, "How can I get this across to you?" A student called out, "Tell us a story!"
"I thought you were all complaining about too many stories," I answered.
"You're good to keep them on-point," he told me. "You've got such wide experience that your stories are interesting and you don't let yourself get carried away."
"As a matter of fact, I have one that applies," I said. So I told the story, got the concept across, and then moved on in the lesson.
Even in e-learning experiences (you know, with no instructor present), stories and scenarios teach the "how" of a concept, but also teach the "why." I'm good for getting double-value from an instructional tool.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
All Kinds of Light
...fluorescent light, incandescent light, reading light, artificial light, natural light...
Monday, September 18, 2017
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
I Hear Voices
First, beauty tips from the guy with the perfect face for radio! Actually they're from Audrey Hepburn.
I got into the instructional media business as a small-town radio announcer. We broadcast from a place in the mountains east of Salt Lake City. I had the morning shift, so I was "big-time," competing with the metro drive-time DJs. My most popular program, though, was something that I never heard the big-market announcers read. My most popular feature was reading the school lunch menu. If I ever neglected to include the school lunch menu in my news line-up, I got angry phone calls. "How am I supposed to send my kid to school if I don't know what they're serving for school lunch?" You try and make the menu sound interesting. It's tougher than a server telling you the day's specials in a restaurant. So I'd try to liven up my presentation with false enthusiasm: "Pizza slices, cheddar cheese sticks, green beans, crisp carrot sticks, and milk!" (Ha, ha, I just looked up my local school's menu online and there are
far better offerings that when I was reading... and I can get the
nutritional info on everything!)
As I got into media production, I'd actually hire and direct some of those big-market voices to read my scripts. Since I read several myself, it's easy to see why those ladies and gentlemen have the reputation and the following they do. They make the content seem understandable, easy to learn. One of the best narrators we ever worked with was a schoolteacher. She was accustomed to reading stories to her students. Perfect!
Once, not too long ago, we were auditioning voices for a project. The voice was a low-key male version of Apple's Siri. "Sorry," we said. "We don't want an automated voice for this project."
"Oh, that's not an automated voice," we were told. "That's so-and-so, who must have been in a quiet mood that day."
"Uh, how 'bout you give him a cup of coffee and give us a different narrator?" If our learners have to listen to someone for a long bit of training, we'd like the voice to sound interested in the content and sound interesting in its own right.
I've worked with some wonderful voices over the years. Those voices belong to some wonderfully professional people. Let me gather up some stories and contact info about them and I'll include them in an updated post.
To steal some of Billy Crystal's cachet, "It doesn't matter how you feel, as long as you sound good. And darling, you sound maaarvelous!"
As I got into media production, I'd actually hire and direct some of those big-market voices to read my scripts. Since I read several myself, it's easy to see why those ladies and gentlemen have the reputation and the following they do. They make the content seem understandable, easy to learn. One of the best narrators we ever worked with was a schoolteacher. She was accustomed to reading stories to her students. Perfect!
Once, not too long ago, we were auditioning voices for a project. The voice was a low-key male version of Apple's Siri. "Sorry," we said. "We don't want an automated voice for this project."
"Oh, that's not an automated voice," we were told. "That's so-and-so, who must have been in a quiet mood that day."
"Uh, how 'bout you give him a cup of coffee and give us a different narrator?" If our learners have to listen to someone for a long bit of training, we'd like the voice to sound interested in the content and sound interesting in its own right.
I've worked with some wonderful voices over the years. Those voices belong to some wonderfully professional people. Let me gather up some stories and contact info about them and I'll include them in an updated post.
To steal some of Billy Crystal's cachet, "It doesn't matter how you feel, as long as you sound good. And darling, you sound maaarvelous!"
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Capitalization: Your dog's name is Dog?
Even in the most professional of settings, over-capitalization sneaks into our writing. Unless you're Karl Marx, you generally don't do business with the State... you do business with the state. You could do business with the State of California, since that's the full proper name of that state. The sentence, "I just became a Grandpa," just isn't right. "I just became a grandpa, so everyone in the family is calling me Grandpa Les," is better. It lets nouns be nouns and proper nouns be proper nouns.
When I was teaching basic programming, students could come up with some pretty impressive code. The real test was whether or not they could repeat it. Did they stumble onto their solution, or did they really understand what they were coding? Were they throwing pasta against the wall to see if it sticks, or were they cooking pasta with purpose? "Whatever you do, do it intentionally, not by accident."
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Run 'n Gun Videography
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| https://runandgunvideography.com/run-gun-videography/ |
The book is a fun read. It grew out of this website: https://runandgunvideography.com/ or the website grew out of the book, a chicken-and-egg relationship. Both get my recommendation.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Learning and Play
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| Learning and Play according to Leo Buscaglia at wiseoldsayings.com |
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| Leo F. Buscaglia (1924 -1998) |
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| Write about common things from an uncommon point of view. |
Thursday, August 24, 2017
We Knew This Already about Presentation Slides...
Sometimes
you come across something that backs up with data what you learned
already from the School of Hard Knocks. I read an abstract on the book
Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic and had that kind of validating experience. I already knew that overloading slides with
distracting details was counterproductive. This book's going on my
reading list.
http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/book/
http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/book/
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Thursday, August 17, 2017
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Concrete Teaching
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| Write "concretely," that is, write in such a way as to invoke concrete images in the mind of your reader (yes, even in technical documents). |
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| The best way to learn something is to teach it. Anonymous (that ubiquitous Greek philosopher) |
Friday, July 28, 2017
Monday, July 17, 2017
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Since We're Talking About Patriotism...
I had to go see this flag... and I had to take my vidcam along, too.
Monday, July 3, 2017
A Writing Tip and Patriotic Quote for July Fourth
Difficult if you're being paid by the word...
A Prayer for Leadership
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Five Educational Games I Wish I Had Invented
Jeopardy! - Growing up on the Monterey Peninsula, we were all aware of the local greats: John Steinbeck, Bing Crosby, Clint Eastwood, Paul Anka, and Merv Griffin. I knew of Merv Griffin, a mild-mannered talk-show host and former big-band crooner. Our claim to fame as teenagers was that one night we jumped the fence at Griffin’s private tennis club and swam in the pool. I had no idea he was a game show superstar and media mogul, creating shows such as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! For Jeopardy!, he credited his then-wife, Julann, with the idea of reviving quiz shows by giving the players the answers and making them come up with the questions. It demanded the same kind of retrievable knowledge that quizzes require. Griffin even wrote the ear-worm jingle for Final Jeopardy! What Griffin may not have known was how easily teachers could adapt the game for whatever content they were teaching. “I’ll take HTML Tags for $600, Alex.” Jeopardy! was created in 1964, definitely before my time. But talk about staying power. As a show and as an online game, it’s still incredibly popular. But don’t forget to phrase your answer in the form of a question.
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? - I was on a team tasked with creating online training for insurance premium entry systems. Our solution was to create a near-simulation which allowed students to try out the system without wrecking it. Another goal was to make the training engaging. Just up the road from us was Broderbund Software. They released an edutainment title that took the market by storm. By chasing a cartoon villain all over the world, players were pulled into locations, learning geography all along the way. I must say, as instructional designers, we were impressed: dreary education made engaging. Years later, I consulted with a geography teacher who wanted to create a geography game, but we couldn’t come up with any design improvements on what was already on the market. (Now I know it’s crying out for an Augmented Reality (AR) component…)
Pictionary® (MattelGames) - Charades was a classic party game. So Pictionary was a variation on that theme, using a marker. I can call it educational because drawing is a language in its own right, yet in our schools it gets relegated to the level of recreation or arts & crafts. I like it because I think visually and I like to draw. That gives me an unfair advantage over casual opponents. “Just watch what Les draws…”
Pokémon Go - I described training ideas for AR in an earlier blog entry, so when Pokémon Go took off last year, I felt vindicated… and left behind at the same time! It didn’t hurt to launch the new idea with an established, popular franchise. But by exploring the possibilities of AR for both entertainment and education, Pokemon Go really stepped out as a pioneer. It got fans off the couch and out looking for their favorite characters. Now let your imagination run wild. How can AR help museum tours, fix-it auto repairs, or local history stops? Gotta catch ‘em all!
Brixo blocks - Here’s an idea that’s emerging on the market. These bricks are “wired” so you learn about electronic connections and even the Internet of Things by assembling your own creations. Why didn’t I think of this next-step twist on a tried-and-true system?
What’s next? Think… think… think...
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Monday, June 5, 2017
Let's End Endless Lists!
A couple of weeks ago, I made a case for ending bullet-point lists by thinking visually. Here are some examples of replacing lists by presenting information with graphic organization:
Two items fit well on a seesaw. If one has priority, or greater "weight," it can be shown lower on the seesaw.
Placing tiles is a great way to present four items.
Five items can be presented around a five-point star. They can also be presented around the fingers of an open hand.
Two items fit well on a seesaw. If one has priority, or greater "weight," it can be shown lower on the seesaw.
What's a better way to present three items than a triangle or a pyramid?
Five items can be presented around a five-point star. They can also be presented around the fingers of an open hand.
Now you're getting the idea. There are graphic ways to present multiple pieces of information. So, let's end endless lists.
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