2011 bests

by nejron 

You don't need to tell anyone who works in learning the value of reflection, and the coming of a new year is the best possible excuse to start looking back.  And who can resist the superlative? Best lists are simply the bestest fun.

There's so much to learn from the ground breakers, game changers, success and failures in design, from incredible new approaches to user interfaces to

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Francotoile - language learning with video

FrancoToile is a showcase in presentation simplicity. It's a resource for French language learners, created  in Canada that leverages what web video has to offer to expose learners to the various sounds, dialects and slang of native French speakers from diverse communities across the globe.


The video library is a work in progress with new videos being addedand a great resource for language

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Learning Interface roundtable debrief

The 2011 Learning Technology Research Fest, held annually at the CoCo Research Centre in Sydney,  was as stimulating and spirited as last year, and this year's roundtable menu featured two sessions on learning interfaces.  These roundtables emphasized the general agreement that this area needs special attention and gave some glimpses into the future of learning interfaces...


The first

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Learning Environments for the 21st Century

Award winning classroom in Tokyo.
Credit: ScarletGreen 

"Learning environments for the 21st century",  chapter 2 in a new book on educational facilities released by the OECD gives you a few glimpses into the historical evolution of the classroom and looks at what education will need by way of learning space in the 21st century.  Although it's about physical space, author Christian Kühn makes

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Crowd-sourced filmmaking

It's not too late to join an amazing adventure:  CrowdTV, whose first project is a group-created documentary film that anyone can take part in by writing parts of the script, submitting ideas, graphics or audio, and then voting on the ideas you like best!  The concept and title have already been selected democratically.  If you earn enough contribution points you get an Assistant Producer credit!

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UX Mag on Learning Interface Design

The folks at UX Magazine have agreed it's the right time to put Learning Interface Design into the spotlight.  See the article "Say hello to Learning Interface Design".

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Roundtable on designing interfaces for learning

Join in the upcoming Learning Technology Research Fest - an energizing and informal free event in Sydney that brings together people at the cutting edge of learning technology research. There are two roundtables on learning interfaces this year, including one (which I will be chairing) called "Designing Interfaces for Learning: Towards best practice in the multimedia design of educational

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Learning in Virtual Worlds - 10 year review

Photo credit: Torley

What have we learned in the last ten years about learning in 3D virtual environments?   Are they worth the significant resources required to build them?  Do students learn better in them, and how do teachers feel about them?  Mikropoulos and Natsis conducted a review of the research over the last decade to help us find out.  Here is an informal summary of their findings..

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eLearning environments - embodying the language of the field

How often is the content for an eLearning experience written to specifically embody the language, values and philosophies of the discipline that is being learned?  Dr. Lucila Caravalho of the CoCo Research Centre presented her work in this area looking at informal learning in the fields of engineering and design, and there were lessons to be learned for Learning Interface Designers...




The

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MIT Center for Mobile Learning

MIT is launching a new Centre for Mobile Learning as part of their world-renowned MIT Media Lab.  The centre sprung from Hal Abelson's work with Google on the educational tool App Inventor which allows anyone to create apps for Android mobile phones.  These guys will certainly be worth keeping an eye on.

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"Do Lecture" - Games as teachers

See Alice Taylor, Channel 4 Education Commissioner discuss "How games can become teachers".

This lecture is part of the "Do Lectures" series which is kind of like the TED lectures gone camping.

Their beautifully art directed website explains: "Ideas + Energy = Change" and hosts talks from activists, designers and technologists the likes of Tim Berners-Lee.

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Learning stages for User Experience Design

What a delighter to find my weekly helping of "A list Apart" this morning came topped with the title "UX for Learning".  A List Apart is an impeccably produced online publication from the makers of some of the industry's best websites and books on websites.  The latest post by Tyler Tate shows that  Learning is beginning to slide its foot in the door with a larger design audience.

Tate

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Turn to the sherpa

Check out this highly informative, expertly crafted (and so pretty it's like dessert) new web publication: The Web Standards Sherpa.  "Journeying towards best web practices."  Everything here can be applied to the design of web-based learning environments.

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HTML 5 for learning interfaces

The global design scene has been nutty for the promise of HTML 5 for a while now, but can we use it for building elearning activities today?  Find out in the recent trial and report published by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework...



The Interactive e-learning using HTML5 trial just released a report that shows how 5 online learning activities, originally created in flash, could be

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Time management principle for design

Design is about details.  But then it's also about deadlines.  As such, I have developed this tenet to keep me focused...

"I vow to cultivate the discipline to not spend time on the details that don't matter, the patience to spend time on the details that do, and the professionalism to know the difference."
Thus today I will not double proofread my chats, or spend hours crafting email witticisms

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Clark Quinn on Educational Games

Clark Quinn, author of Engaging Learning: designing e-learning simulation games recently gave a masterclass in Sydney.  He introduced categories of educational games, how they differ from scenarios and simulations, and made suggestions for how they can best be used for learning.

Although the information he shared is primarily for instructional designers of elearning, rather than for interface

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Design inspiration: Naughtyfish

For utterly standout and inspired design, check out the work of Naughtyfish.
Including...


The greed poster and the Africa poster for something immediately different, captivating, raw and effective.
The Ordinary Day booklet for an inspiring approach to the use of photography that privliges mood and sophisticated emotion over the usual canned and oversaturated stock landscapes.
And Sweet Little

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Educational game for a healthier world

Health Month is a fabulous game that leverages online social behaviour and technology to turn healthy living from a chore into a pastime.  "Live healthier, for fun!" is the tagline and the whimsical and clean website lives up to the promise.  If this game gets "eating your greens" trending or causes tofu to go viral, I'll buy a cow for my backyard.  Health Month is the Brainchild of Buster

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7 ideas for designing your own Prezi template

Powerpoint going stale in the cupboard? Boss banging on your door for a Prezi template?  I hear ya.  But how can you create a consistent look and feel to represent your organisation that isn't too restrictive, and in a program that breaks all the rules?!

Prezi has a growing bank of reusable prezis but these are pretty content specific.  So how to make a compelling and generic

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When to use animations for learning

picture credit: Yamaggio

You get one of those sudden urges to learn how to poach an egg or make an origami jedi master and what’s the first thing you do? I’m guessing, being the modern nerd that you are, you google for a video demo.  We’ve taken to using resources like YouTube to teach us things. Why are we drawn to learning by watching and when does it actually work?

The research into using

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50 tools for e-learning

The Knowledge / Network / Learning site provides a reviewed and selected list of interesting digital tools available for learning.

"The applications range from simple email (Gmail) to sophisticated visualisation applications (Manyeyes), including examples of all the standard applications which are usually discussed (blogging – Posterous - and wikis – Springnote - for example) as well as many

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Interactive graphics and HTML5

The promise of graphics that can change on the fly as users adjust them or enter data is delightfully web-appropriate.  People do it, but it's not excessively common-place for the same age-old reasons of browser incompatibility and scripting required.  The famous HTML5 "canvas" tag aims to allow browsers to handle interactive graphics natively.  Nice!  But what about Scaleable Vector Graphics?

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Space for learning

According to psychological studies, even small differences in distance and spacing can have a strong impact on a person's sense of security and their attitude towards what they are doing. The studies triggered different emotions by asking subjects to do something as subtle as drawing dots on paper closer or farther apart.  The difference in the distance between a person's dots statistically

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10 principles of usability for learning

Nielsen and Loranger’s book, Prioritizing Web Usability is a world of value
and a bookshelf essential, but what does it have to say about designing for learning on the web?  The Nielsen Norman Group offer detailed reports on specific genres like e-commerce,
but, nothing yet on education.  Nor does the book showcase any
educational sites or make reference to these in user studies. This, of

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How to innovate and get away with it - Learning from Prezi

When it comes to education, the slide presentation is harder to dodge than a bullet.  So PowerPoint haters are loving Prezi.  Its worth a play, not only because it's such an 'outside-the-box' take on presentations, but also because of the way they've innovated the user interface and handled user training.  Most applications take well understood user interaction standards and put them together

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Icon bliss

IconFinder. The secret you almost don't want to share.
Having access to free or cheaply available sexy icon sets can create that polished look even when you have the least amount of time.  IconFinder is great as it turns out high quality stuff.  It's not like sifting through free clipart websites.  It's top notch.  Go swimming in glorious icons. 

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Does your content make sense?

We talk a lot about testing designs, technology and interaction, but what about the words?  Educational websites, like university and research sites can be most susceptible to writing styles and jargon that don't communicate well to their audiences.  So don't miss the A List Apart article by Angela Colter on "Testing Content" for strategy on making sure your site's content is doing its job.

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Don't just make it easy, make it look easy.

It's not enough to make your design easy to use, you have to make sure it looks easy to use too.

Information foraging theory helps explain how good visual design can increase the users who stay on your site.

According to the theory, on the web, we are all "informavores" who act like animals hunting for food in the wild.  This theory stacks up to the user research and supports usability

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