Regular readers of the Lessons on Learning blog have become familiar with our #TalkTech chat over the last 2 years. It was our way of coming together once a week, curating the best learning technology articles from around the web, and holding a thirty minute discussion on Twitter. We laughed. We cried (well, I hope no one cried). We shared. And, most importantly, we learned.
#TalkTech was part of a social learning lab, you see. We wanted to experiment with using social media for learning within our own company to determine how best to advise our clients on using the technology. We shared our learnings at various events such as a panel discussion for our local ASTD chapter and an online forum for the eLearning Guild.
But after two years of success with #TalkTech, it’s time for our social media approach to evolve. I’m excited to introduce you to #BLPLearn.
What is #BLPLearn?
Simply put, #BLPLearn is our way of saving all of the great content our team curates… and sharing it with the wider community. We’ll take the best articles shared by our Learning Services, Multimedia, and Product Development teams in their weekly meetings and include them in the weekly #BLPLearn blog. We’ll usually include some commentary from the original team member who found the article, too.
Our goal is to make the weekly #BLPLearn blog a dependable source for quality, curated L&D content. Check back every Thursday.
Join in the fun
Rather than restricting the social media conversation to a 30 minute window, we’re inviting everyone inside and outside BLP to share interesting links, thoughts, and articles with the #BLPLearn hashtag on Twitter. We’ll check the feed once a week and include the best articles submitted via Twitter in the post, too.
This week’s articles
Now that introductions are out of the way, let’s dive in to this week’s articles:
Two Potential Design Trends for 2014
submitted by Erika Bartlett, Learning Designer
These links are both infographics on potential design trends for 2014. While they seem to be from more of a graphic design perspective, I think it’s important for learning designers to be ahead of the trends when thinking about suggestions we make to clients in regards to game and course design. One particular part of the Shutterstock infographic that stood out to me was the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) idea as I know we often think about smart phones and tablets when designing courses.
Exploring the features of Articulate Storyline
submitted by Michelle Eiteljorge, Learning Technologist
I thought I’d share a few Screenrs that showcase what Storyline can do. The first one demonstrates how to use PowerPoint to make a drag/drop activity template, and the second one shows you how to import that template directly into Storyline and make it pretty and functional in a couple of quick and easy steps.
This last Screenr shows how you can make a video clip interactive in Storyline. You can do this in Lectora, too, but I think it’s easier in Storyline. This example shows how you can pause a clip in a certain spot, and then set up a hotspot that triggers the video to start up again. You could set up a multiple-choice question with a submit button triggering the video, so it doesn’t have to be just a hotspot. You could also probably set up a variable that requires the learner to press a key a certain number of times or click something a certain number of times to trigger the clip to play again or branch to a new clip.
Interactive Video in Storyline
