Week
11
Agenda
- storyboard show
- individual consultation
- Test your instructional unit for usability
- blog and wiki articles
- audio (with Audacity)
- video (iMovie and Movie Maker)
- screencasting (Camtasia, etc.)
Fun
A few brain teasers and puzzles from the National Institutes of Health Kids page.
Links
TheTheory into Practice database (TIP) from Greg Kearsley is a valuable resource. It contains descriptions of over 50 major learning and instructional theories. These theories are valuable for instructional designers, because one cannot instruct effectively without some level of understanding of how humans learn.
CBI Testing
As you develop your CBI, conduct some usability testing by viewing (and having others view) your instructional unit site in various browsers, (Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, etc.) and at different resolutions and on different computer platforms (various versions of Windows, Macintosh, Linux, etc.) if possible. This is how professionals check the usability of their web-based products.
As an example, you will find that if you used Microsoft Excel to create a chart for the web, the chart does not appear in some browsers. This is due to the non-standard HTML that Excel (and Word) generate.
If you do not have access to other computers, platforms, and browsers, you can download and try various browsers from this site. Try at least Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Netscape.
Post a brief summary (50-100 words or so) of how you tested your site. List the browsers and platforms you tried.
Blogs, Wikis, RSS
Weblogs, or "blogs" are an interesting web phenomenon, about which you must be conversant. To understand what blogs are and how they work, read this article (PDF) I wrote with David Wiley. David is an expert on learning objects and social software.
For the technically curious, this is how blogs work.
Here's a short article about blog use at Harvard Law School.
RSS as a syndication model is probably more important. You should be very familiar with RSS, and be using an aggregator to follow at least a few RSS subscriptions.
Spend a few minutes at this site, and choose one or two articles to read. Also, try at least one of the tools.
Wikis
A wiki is server software that results in a web site composed of linked pages that anyone can edit. First, read "What's a Wiki", from extremetech.com.
Read this interesting commentary, "Wicked (Good) Wikis" from darwinmag.com.
