Communications, marketing, instructional design, and more.
After browsing around the internet for interesting infographics on online learning, I ran into this outstanding website that has mounds of relevant infographics designed on the subject of eLearning. I have included one of my favorite which highlights 10 facts around eLearning in 2015.
Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics
Spoiler alert: The YouTube channel 10Everything put together their Top 10 list for 2015 Super Bowl 49 commercials. It's a fun peek at some of the commercials you can expect to see if you plan to watch Super Bowl XLIX.
I published this piece on The Hungry Hive in January, 2011. At the time most Utah ski resorts were testing the waters of social media with a few showing some established initial followers. Snowbird was named the 2011 top Utah ski resort on social media in the rankings. A new ski resort has taken Snowbird's place in the 2015 rankings.
Nordic Valley and Cherry Peak didn't exist in January, 2011. Neither did Google Plus. Instagram was just two months old at the time of the 2011 report. Given all the changes, I made adjustments to the ranking methodology to better measure each ski resort's ability to connect with its community. I've included a methodology section toward the bottom of this post for those interested. Now, without further ado, here are the rankings:
I had to use different methods to rank the resorts in 2015 than I used four years ago. Four years ago, I simply added up total Facebook likes and Twitter followers for each ski resort, ranked them on those two data points, and produced overall rankings. To summarize the 2015 rankings, I looked at every social media outlet Utah's 16 ski resorts are on. I collected a single metric for each ski resort for each social media outlet that does the best job representing how large that organization's reach is on said outlet; I then ranked each ski resort on each social media network; finally, I summed all rankings for each ski resort across all social networks to compare each ski resorts' aggregate ranking with each other. The result is the 2015 rankings.
Professionals in the instructional technology and instructional design space need to be skilled in a number of areas to be eligible for current job openings. I have recently become curious on what current tools and skills recruiters are frequently listing in job postings for this field. To be marketable and eligible for a job as an instructional designer, it would make sense for one to be aware of this skill and tool-set, increase one's proficiency in areas she or he feels s/he is lacking, and monitor changes in the field to stay relevant.
Job listings list requirements for basic competency in standard office equipment including computers, photocopiers, scanners, etc. As you can image, proficiency in a number of software applications is essential to most instructional design jobs. Some of the most common software tools I've seen listed include:
A number of interpersonal skills consistently show up in job postings. These include:
I found a cool list of instructional designers' tasks, tools, technology, knowledge, skills, abilities, work activities, educational requirements, and other data that commonly shows up in job postings on www.ONetOnline.org. Here's more information for those interested.
LEGO's message that was packed in whatever toy this parent purchased gives a nod to the learning theory of constructionism introduced by Seymour Papert of MIT.
Actively using a standardized checklist to guide your work can help you stay organized.
I ran across this fantastically-shot video documenting a South African distance runner running the 52-mile Fish River Canyon Hiking trail in 6 hours and 57 minutes. The film crew that put this together captured the event with many camera angles including stunning aerial shots.
It appears that those who have requested to join Ello Beta are beginning to get invitations to set up profiles now. Ello is also announced the ability to share videos and music in its feed this week, but many writers believe Ello took to long allowing others to join.
I'm still not going to give up on Ello. Its interface is so esthetically pleasing, and its minimalistic approach to functionality is intriguing enough for me, that I plan to play around with the platform for the next few months and see how people's use of the social network evolves in 2015.
Sterling R. Morris' Ello profile
If you're on Ello, connect with me at @SterlingRMorris.
I've been following reports from the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show. Two wearable pieces of technology caught my attention.
Runners can improve their efficiency by running with the right cadence and by attempting to land mid- to fore-foot. It often takes a surprising amount of concentration, time, and coaching to develop good running form. Sensoria Fitness seeks to aid runners in improving their form through the wearable smart socks that have built in sensors which send feedback on your running to an app that runners can download to their smart phones. Sensoria also builds heart-rate monitors to provide an even clearer picture for runners who want to monitor and potentially improve their activity.
What happens if someone needs information about you but you are unable to share it? It's good practice for runners, cyclists, and other outdoor enthusiasts to have a form of ID on their persons in the event that they are found in need of help and unresponsive. IDs often include the person's name, allergies, and emergency contact information. EPIC-id has released a wristband that includes basic identifying information on the band. As you can see in the video below, the band opens exposing a USB port respondents can use to access additional information about the person.
This treadmill video, released on January 5, has done fantastically well in less than two weeks seeing more than 2.5 million views and averaging a high of 8,500 views per hour.
The video's description links viewers to NordicTrack's website where visitors can get 15% or more off treadmills.
One in the Chamber did a fantastic job putting this production together. The whole production, as you can see, does a great job highlighting high-quality treadmills, shows all types of people having fun, is catchy, high-quality, and fast-moving. This video was very well thought out out and pulled in a a whole community to produce including:
One in the Chamber smartly contacted a ton of YouTubers and Viners who have built their own unique audiences to participate in the film, all of whom promoted the film when it was released.
One of my favorite elements of this spot is the fact that NordicTrack did such a detailed job sharing information about the video for those who are interested in learning more about the treadmills and the process of producing the spot. Categories include "Burn Calories 5x Faster with Incline," "Touchscreen and iFit® Technology," "About the video," and "Credits." providing a lot of information for the video consumer opens up the video to a broader audience who will find different elements of the video interesting.
Did you know you can see what the most popular search topics are at any given moment? Google Trends allows you to see all sorts of information on what's trending by country, on YouTube, and on smaller topics like popular vegetarian foods, global interest in Game of Thrones, etc. It's a really interesting site and a great way to stay up-to-date on what's buzzing.
So why should anyone care what's trending? Why would a social media manager want to have access to this data? To start, trending content is:
Google Trends put together this awesome video that summarized some of the biggest trends in 2014. The production is fantastic and inspiring.
According to Google Trends, here are the most popular U.S.-based searches in 2014.
Last week, I mentioned that I would write about any wearable technology that got released at CES this week. I'm going to bump that post back a week to next week because of some big news that was recently released by U.S. News and World Report.
U.S. News and World Report released its annual online college rankings. USU's online bachelor and graduate programs were ranked #13 in the nation. Although I am a residential student – not an online student – the program I study in has trained a lot of the faculty and professors who participate in online courses. This makes me proud. Utah State University's position in Utah is that of a land grant institution. It's charged with educating students throughout the state including those who live in remote, rural locations. This land-grant charge has driven USU to innovate and experiment in the distance education space for decades. It was among the first universities in the nation to offer free online courses along with MIT, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon.
Congrats, USU; I'm a proud alumnus and student.
Photo credit: "USU Old Main" by Cami Gee is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
I'm not a sports fan who watches sports documentaries per se. Rather, I'm a documentary fan who watches any and every documentary I can get my hands on, schedule permitting. Linsanity is one documentary that stands out in my memory of the many said genre films as being one infused with a high level of production quality, interesting subject, and a thought provoking story. If you haven't seen it, you can rent it here from Amazon, watch it on Netflix, Google Play, Vudu, and iTunes.
I spent my final afternoon of of 2014 as a guest on Did You Know About Sports. I couldn't think of a better group of people to spend my afternoon with. Thanks for dropping by, Connor and McCade.
Photo credit: "Linsanity" by Suckhchander is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
It's no secret that I love LinkedIn. I've been fascinated with the network for some time and spend free time studying it. I've even been offering free LinkedIn profile reviews here for some time now – advancing my knowledge of what elements top profiles consistently include.
After getting several LinkedIn-related consulting requests along with additional offers through LinkedIn, I decided to launch a basic profile optimization course on LinkedIn to share some of the advice I'm sharing individually with people so I can help larger of quantities of professionals. I launched the course on January 6, 2015, and in less than 24 hours, I've seen more than 500 students register for it. I'm grateful and overwhelmed to see the rush of students who have joined from all over the world, and I'm looking forward to helping them improve their profiles in the coming weeks.
My Udemy course, "LinkedIn workshop: Polish your profile for a job search" is designed for LinkedIn users who have established a profile but are looking to improve it to improve their job search effectiveness or to increase potential opportunities they find on LinkedIn.
In the course, I'm teaching students how to optimize their profiles using techniques that have helped me to propel my profile to the #1 most viewed profile among more than 10,000 Intermountain Healthcare employees on LinkedIn.
We'll talk about strategies students can use to identify their personal brand and communicate that consistently and systematically their their profiles. We'll talk about making the profile easily scannable and aesthetically appealing for viewers. We'll also work on identifying and communicating each student's strengths in concise, powerful ways to maximize impact.
You've made it to my website and you're reading my content. Thank you. I want to reward you with a discounted registration price for my course.
Thank you for your support! I look forward to working with you and the learning community in my course to improve your LinkedIn profile.
Tracking, gathering, and storing data has become easier; buzz words like "big data" have been around for a few years and areas where data analytics are of value continue to be seen in the marketplace. From providing insights on what the public at large is searching for on Google to predicting how people like their coffee, data has exponentially growing use in the world. Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business nicely illustrated how Target, for example, has generated a ton of sales by smartly targeting customers with customized ads. Target does this by applying data algorithms to massive amounts of consumer behavior data to discover consumer patters – both intuitive and non-intuitive. (Click here to learn more about how Target was able to figure out that a teen girl was pregnant before her father did).
Dr. Victor Lee of Utah State University has been conducting research on how elementary school-aged kids have been advancing their data knowledge through wearing and gathering personal activity data from wearable technologies. Dr. Lee recently presented some of his research at USU. He pointed out the potential benefits and learning opportunities young science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students could be exposed to through interacting with these new devices.
If you've got a few minutes, take some time to watch Dr. Lee's presentation to learn more about his research.
Very much related to the field of wearable technologies, the annual Consumer Electronics Show starts tomorrow through Friday, January 6 through 9. There will no doubt be a lot of wearable technology with data tracking abilities displayed for the first time at this international show. I'll be watching what comes out and highlight a few technologies of note right here on Instructional Technology this time next week.
I had the chance to go to the screening of "White Waves: A Powerdersurfing Documentary" a few weeks ago. Jeremy Jensen of Grassroots Powdersurfing did a fantastic job documenting a movement he's played a key role creating. Snowboarders, skiers, and outdoor enthusiasts are ditching their bindings in growing numbers and surfing down a mountainside with nothing more than a board and snow clothing. I highly recommend checking out this documentary if you're interested to see what all these people are up to. Here's a teaser:
I recently put together this presentation on selecting the perfect profile photo. Since producing it, I've thought of a few other things to avoid with your profile photo.
I'm currently knee deep in the process of developing my online Udemy course that will be teaching students how to effectively update, optimize, and polish their LinkedIn profiles. Course development for this project has been fascinating in its own right. Udemy has done an outstanding job providing detailed instruction that sets instructors up for success. Many instructional design principles are built in to how Udemy instructs instructors on how to set up a course (I know – it's a mouthful). Udemy has what appears to be a highly rigorous model of helping instructors build and revise their courses.
Developed by researchers at Florida State University, the ADDIE Model helps guide instructional designers in the process of design. Curriculum development is broken down into a series of phases that are part of the process of building instruction. These phases are:
Between each phase, developers are encouraged to revise areas with apparent issues to improve the course. I have completed much of the analysis associated with my course. Through that process, I identified several areas where I needed to revise goals and more clearly outline objectives.
Udemy has provided a lot of tools that help in designing and developing the course. Since this online classroom marketplace is a well-thought-out platform, a lot of the design of course tools and layout has been addressed by Udemy. As I complete the development and implementation of my of my course, the guiding principles of the ADDIE Model will become increasingly important. This model places emphasis on the evaluation phase of a course. An instructor needs to observe what areas of the course students seem to be benefiting from and which areas need improvement. I plan to interject a few quizzes and open discussion threads throughout the course where I ask students what they are enjoying and what I can do to improve the course. I'll also look for areas where students are repeatedly asking questions; multiple related questions are a good sign that clarification on material would improve the course experience for students.
As an instructor in an online setting where students can publicly rate your performance, where a portion of students' "tuition" goes toward compensating instructors, taking full advantage of feedback provided to the instructor from students is a crucial. Guiding principles from the evaluation phase of the ADDIE Model will be of high focus for me following the launch of my course.
Photo credit: "LinkedIn Chocolates" by nan palmero is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
100 years ago on Christmas Eve, 1914, the Britain and Germany were at war. The british empire was a part of the Allied Powers that was fighting against the Central Powers with which Germany was affiliated. It was during this time of war that there was a unofficial ceasefire along the Western Front. British and German soldiers their trenches and met opposing forces, played football, sung Christmas carols together, and experienced peace for a small moment in the extended time of World War I.
Here's an excellent feature on the truce produced by History.com.
Sainsbury produced this thoughtful ad that tells the story in a cinematic way. Well done, Sainsbury!
Banner image credit: London News's illustration of the Christmas Truce: "British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches". Originally published in The Illustrated London News, January 9, 1915.
A friend recently shared this Kickstarter campaign with me. HashKey is in its final days of its Kickstarter campaign. If you've ever wanted to have a go-to key for your hashtaging needs, look no further than the HashKey. No longer will you need to tediously hold down the shift key while looking for the hash sign somewhere there up in the hinterland area of the keyboard. Now, everything a socially connected computer users needs could literally be at her finger tips. This funny video looks like there's still a chance that it gets funded. You can reserve your key for about $27, here. Here's the video:
Ryan Brierley is a digital media specialist with more than a decade of experience in instructional design. He currently works for Intermountain Healthcare, the largest healthcare provider in the Intermountain West. I sat down with Ryan to ask him about what it means to be an instructional designer in the healthcare industry. Enjoy.
Photo credit: "bridging knowledge to health" by Paul Bica is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
What does it mean to learn? Is it the reception and storage of knowledge and information, or does learning encompass more than instruction and learning often exemplified in traditional classrooms?