Design
Tonight I started surfing around. It all started from a Tweet. I ended up over here, evidently an interesting discussion that piqued my interest and delayed my tiredness and demand for sleep.
I was once accused of being a perfectionist, and I didn’t much like it. Of course, I’m not perfect. But I’m a critical sort, and that criticism can turn into self-criticism. And folks see that as perfectionism. Okay, maybe a little is true.
Today I worked on a new Promethean Flipchart using ActivInspire, their newest software package. I like the Promethean platform, but finding good-quality, well-designed training materials (for teaching with the damned thing) is hard to find. So, invent your own.
I think a critical piece at succeeding with this–using the same platform to teach what you are teaching–is that good instructional design be at play. That means that we use the best-quality examples, and those should be of a high design quality (aesthetic design). Aside from qualities of beauty, aesthetic design maximizes the impact of the message.
I design things all the time, but lately I seem to have fallen into a rut. Without the creation of something new, the rutness comes in. Recent projects have allowed me to focus on video and even a little video compositing using 3D. But I’ve not nearly enough developed in that medium as my experience has given me in print and Web design.
The big project of late that most are seeing is this website and the presentation handouts: I’m using a mild yellow backdrop with a white border. There are other elements, like some of the colors in the blog; the blue text in the PDFs, and the brown text here. While this design was aesthetically motivated, there were other reasons for making some of these decisions.
So, when it came to this new flipchart, immediately I had a few goals pop into my head. These are not profound, thoughtful things I spent days contemplating. These came to me, a la minute…
- No Arial. Use a high quality typeface, but something other teachers will have. I load all my computers with high quality fonts. I chose Optima. All our teachers will have that with OS X.
- Consistency. I wanted “branding” for these. All the instructional flipcharts should look/feel the same. This means using the same orange color for title fonts, text sizes, etc.
- Tools. I don’t like opening flipcharts, oblivious to what I’m supposed to do on a page that doesn’t read like a PowerPoint. I really like when authors put “big” versions of the tools on the page.
- Interactivity. I want cool things to demonstrate concepts and make learning discoverable. These will take the most time and thought: this is where good instructional design plays the most crucial role.
- Opening/Closing Slides. I want the opening slide to clearly identify the intent and what level of training it is. It should be like seeing the familiar introduction to your favorite sitcom. The closing slide should use a design element to discreetly end the experience, and include author information (i.e., e-mail or web URLs).
- Notes. Embeddable notes inside the flipchart not only help someone who downloads my work, but helps ME remember what I was thinking. The new browser in ActivInspire makes this easy while you teach.
- Best in Class. Teachers aren’t likely to take the basics and invent something better. They can, sure, I’m not cutting down teachers. But I have far more time to think about a creative, elegant, well-designed solution than they do. Our examples deserve to set the “gold” standard in what to shoot for.
Underlying everything is this basic assumption:
The knowledge required for creating good flipcharts for use in the classroom (insert PPTs, Keynotes, SMART notebooks) hinges upon an understanding of how to use a variety of digital tools to get a variety of your audience engaged.
This is critical. So many teachers use PPT to put up “notes.” Stuff to copy down and memorize.
Some folks forget some of the best methods they know when they make the experience more digital. Some never knew. Others find it difficult to translate their tested method into a digital, flat format.
Sorry for the ramble… I just have some passion for this topic and want to make it a personal focus to learn more about it.