StoryboardTrek – the Search for the Sweet Spot

I originally was going to make a comparison between Storyboards and educational quicksand, but having seen reactions to similar polemics, I figured I needed to adjust my stance somewhat.

The concept of planning out a highly interactive learning asset has its roots in film-making and – in principle – is a good idea. After all, movies are expensive enough to make without wasting time and film on shots that will end up on the cutting room floor. But the storyboarding process for media is pretty well understood and (I think?) follows some generally accepted conventions so you can(I think?) go from one production to another and make sense of what’s going on.

That hasn’t really been my experience with storyboarding for interactive learning assets. In fact, it’s anything but.

Educational Ennui

With my wife tackling her B.Ed. (and hoping to transfer to my alma mater for Grad School) and one of my colleagues also starting the MA program I did, I’ve been tripping down educational memory lane of late.

That came to a head a little while ago as I participated in a FB message exchange with some of my former classmates as we responded to a query from one of our number about an instructional design challenge.  My friend Peter summed it up well:

As an aside, you have no idea how much I miss this kind of dialogue with you guys. This thread made my day.

With that, I got a pang of sadness. 

Wholeperson PLN Thoughts and Thanks

Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) has thrown out some queries in support of #plym12 that asked about people’s Top 3 tools for their PLN. Many of the results followed a similar theme: Twitter, Blogs, Social Bookmarking…that sort of thing.  My Top 3 were: Twitter, my Blog, and Evernote. Niall Gavin (@niallgavinuk) responded with a Top 5 and made the interesting inclusion of Instagram as part of his PLN.

That made me stop and think.

My experience with Snapguide: Thoughts, implications, and a wishlist

It was one of those “Just in Time” moments for learning. I had been sharing some photos of a trip into Toronto through Instagr.am and cross-posting them to Facebook. A grad school classmate asked me how I achieved the effects. After listing the tools I used, she jokingly asked when I’d have the e-learning course ready for her to teach her how to do it all. Undaunted, I figured this was a good opportunity to try out Snapguide.