Sharon Oviatt Seminar: Future Educational Interfaces

Photo Credit: Anoto AB, Flickr 

Can we learn and perform better if we use a digital pen instead of a tablet, or a tablet instead of a keyboard?  Sharon Oviatt, leading researcher in educational interfaces will share her insights on how the unique affordances of various physical interfaces (digital pen, paper, multimodal, keyboard/mouse, etc.) impact how well people think, solve problems and

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Europe's treasures at your fingertips

Europeana is an astounding mega-library of cultural artefacts from VanGogh paintings, and Newton's laws of motion to sheet music, letters and historical photographs.  What's really impressive is that these artifacts are nested in the knowledge and inspiring stories that surround them.

All in the public domain!


"Explore millions of items from a range of Europe's leading galleries, libraries,

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Gaming for science

Supporting cancer research is undoubtedly important, but playing computer puzzle games is undoubtedly more fun.  The makers of Foldit have literally managed to combine the two by building a game around the problem of deciphering protein structures, and then letting this scientific challenge loose on the world.

Fold-It takes crowdsourcing and educational gaming up a serious notch. Not only do

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UX London - 6 highlights

UX London saw the convergence of inspiring veterans and fresh new designers.  Concepts as diverse as Big Data, humility, abundance and the "Internet of Things" were ever-present, and  experience was described as an ecosystem of multiple events and touchpoints running across many devices, places and moments in time.

Here are just a few highlights from some of the UX leaders at companies like

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The PBS Kids Lab

Best part of the job?  Playing educational games.
Take an online field trip to the the PBS Kids Lab on your lunch break today.   It's a great place to check out new developments in educational online games and mobile apps created by the long-time leaders in children's educational entertainment.

Get physical, situated and embodied with some of their delightfully web and mobile camera enabled

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Elegant activism - Infographics at Bashir Watch

BashirWatch.org is an impeccably crafted site that succeeds in allowing users to explore difficult but important information in ways that add clarity and interest.  Bashir Watch is an organization promoting the prompt arrest of Omar Bashir, the Sudanese leader behind the genocide in Darfur.  There is a warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court for multiple counts of human

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Extreme Accessibility - How to save lives with eLearning

Far from the typical audience of corporate or university eLearning, Thare Machi Education designs lessons on topics like human trafficking and cholera for learners who are extremely poor, mostly illiterate, totally unfamiliar with technology and speak hundreds of different languages.  How's that for a brief?



Thare Machi Education makes very simple life-changing and life-saving messages  

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Graceful interface scaffolding - Learning from Letter School

Letter School, an app by Dutch game maker, Boreaal, is one of the several apps on the market created to leverage touch-screen advantages for supporting preschoolers in learning to make letter shapes.  Like the others, kids use their finger to trace and write letters of the alphabet.  



The animations and sounds in Letter School are delightful, but what I found especially notable was the

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On Memory and the Life of Maps

There are so many childhood objects that leave indelible marks as one grows up, from the microscope that gives you a secret window into invisible worlds, to the medical kit which made you a superhero with the power to fix people.  In his articles, The gears from my childhood, renowned MIT professor and educational technologist, Seymour Papert, explains how playing with and loving gears gave him a

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Paper still the cutting edge

Amid the carnival of EdTech excitement you'd be forgiven for forgetting that our digital technologies are still just tools, added to a bag of tricks that has accumulated over millenia.  Sure, there are some tools we'll probably never go back to (punch cards? slide rules?) but then there are the work horses that have survived for a reason, like pencil and paper.

Educational interface design

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10-year Survey of Online Education

A new report by the Babson Group and the College Board has tracked ten years of online education in the United States revealing that over a third of higher education students now take at least one of their courses online.  Most staff view MOOCs as more of a way to learn about online pedagogy than as a sustainable long-term mode of operation, and although online education is growing, higher

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ELearning for Healthy Minds

A growing number of learning programs dedicated to psychological wellbeing are finding their way into schools and workplaces across the globe.  This is probably due, in part, to the concern over technology-induced stress and mounting scientific support for the value of practices like mindfulness and meditation.

This new type of education has begun to manifest digitally in the form of mobile

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Caution: Color, culture and convention

As designers of learning experiences, we know that color can have a powerful impact on learning. It can improve recall, understanding and appeal when used well. But it's easy to forget how culturally embedded color meanings are.  Americans, for example, can forget green is only the color of money in the US. While red indicates debt and downturns in the financial world, it's prosperity in

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TocaDoctor - An Irresistible Ed App Interface

Toca Doctor is so gorgeous I had to blog it.  With its retro chic style, adults are transported while kids have the bright aquas, pinks and yellows to guide them through a collection of quirky doctor puzzles.  Move the germ through the brain maze and out of the nose, pull the thorns from a sore foot, or mop up and bandage an abrasion.  Instructions are clear, and function without words.  this app

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The Institute for the Future

If you haven't already, head to the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Their site abounds with projects and infographics of interest to eLearning Interface Designers.

For example, they have a project on The Magic of KidsTech which shares insights on unique applications of technology, such as mobile apps, for kids learning, health and wellbeing.

Reknowned game designer Jane McGonigal is an

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Educational Apps connect learners with scientists

Educational apps can connect students with science and scientists with students in remarkable new ways.




Take Project Noah with its stunning interface and jaw-droppingly beautiful photos taken by volunteer nature spotters across the globe. This web community gives learners of all ages a unique  networked learning opportunity: Learn about animals and plants while you contribute to scientific

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EdTech for kids - the tablet explosion

The LeapFrog LeapPad 2

 Apparently IT parents had to wrestle for their iPads one too many times, because the world is suddenly a fireworks display of tablets and digital devices for children, customized to be safer, cheaper and more educational than the parent version.  New learning devices open up opportunities for new learning apps and interfaces, and thus more exciting work for elearning

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UX and UI for eLearning - Presentations online

The eLearning Guild recently hosted an online forum on Graphic design and UX/UI design for eLearning.  One of the highlights for me was the talk by Erin Sappington Kreb and John-Carlos Lozano of SweetRush.  Their slides were impeccable and their advice well communicated.

In a later session I presented a series of research-based guidelines for eLearning interfaces to a dynamic audience of

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Connie Malamed - Visual Design and eLearning

If you don't know her work already, Connie Malamed, author of Visual Language for Designers combines expertise in both eLearning and Visual Design and as such, is a great source of knowledge for the eLearning Interface Designer.

Check out her high quality articles at E-learning Coach, some of which relate specifically to eLearning Interface Design.  For example...

Using graphics to improve

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UX for Learning - Design guidelines

UX for Learning - Design guidelines for the Learner Experience was just published in the online professional publication UX Matters. In the article I elaborate on a list of practical guidelines drawn from multimedia learning research.  Check it out.

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