Jackie Van Nice

What’s Your Favorite #ELHChallenge?

December 30, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 12 Comments

In the wake of David Anderson sharing his current count of #ELHChallenges by entrant, Kimberly Bourque asked “What’s your favorite challenge?” But how do you pick a favorite – and a favorite what? Favorite challenge idea? Favorite week of entries? Favorite design of your own? Though nearly impossible to choose, I’ve tried.

My 3 Favorite Challenges From David

I’ve learned something every single week from every single challenge, but these stand out for me.

#11: Design a Comic Book Theme. I loved this because unless David had made it a challenge I’d never have tried it. I ended up convinced that this style needs to be used far more often.

#39: Education Podcasts in Online Training. This was a great change of pace from the standard demo, and a true challenge since most of us had never created a podcast before.

#41: Hand Drawn E-Learning Courses. Again, this was an unusual challenge format that demanded a lot of creativity and I liked that we had to think in a very different way.

My 3 Favorite Challenges Where I Loved The Entries

Every week is a good week to see what everyone’s been up to, but these I found especially entertaining.

#41: Hand Drawn E-Learning Courses. I think the fact that this challenge required so much ingenuity made these entries truly fascinating.

#39: Education Podcasts in Online Training. How could you not love hearing your fellow challengees come to life before your very ears? The individuality and energy of it was great.

#32: Death, Taxes, and E-Learning Mistakes. For obvious reasons, checking out everyone’s chosen examples of bad e-learning was both fun and painful – but mostly fun.

3 Favorite Entries of My Own

This really is like choosing your favorite child – but here are three I love.

#63: Is Marsala a Good Color for George Washington? This one is so stupid I’m completely in love with it. Love the way it looks, the way it met the challenge, and the comments it elicited from readers.

#39: Dapper Dans & Pictograms. These guys make me so happy – plus I thought there was a lot of value to the post. I’m also noticing that I apparently like entries where I line up 4 guys in a row.

#37: Cop vs. Kid Spelling Bee. In the end, this one feels so wrong it just becomes right. It’s also the most trouble I’ve had producing challenge audio without laughing.

So what are your favorite #ELHChallenges?

Is Marsala a Good Color for George Washington?

December 22, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 11 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to use marsala – Pantone’s color of the year – as the primary color in a template or interaction. (Is it my fault that was the only guidance we got?)

The Idea

First, marsala just looks like lipstick to me. I don’t get “cocoa” or “wine” or anything else from it. So I googled lipstick history to see if I could find something to play with.

That’s when I discovered that at least one prominent gentleman in our nation’s history used to wear it. Naturally I wondered what he’d look like in marsala, and the rest is – of course – history.

The Colors

In addition to marsala I used three colors inspired by the Pantone color pairings David Anderson supplied, but I made up new names for them. “Cherry tree” is my favorite, but I’m equally proud of “venison” and “war”.

Enjoy!

I hope you like it. This may be my favorite challenge entry so far. I’m also pretty happy that I have an interaction ready to go for Presidents Day! If you haven’t already, you can check it out right here.

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The 12 Days of Data Presentation

December 21, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

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This week’s ELHChallenge is to present data using interactive charts and graphs. With just 4 days until Christmas, I succumbed to the theme.

What to Chart?

There are a million Christmas-related things you could present, but I kept it light and charted the gifts given in the song The 12 Days of Christmas. I’ve never paid much attention to the totals in it, so the sheer mass by the end was a little eye-opening.

How to Chart It?

I went for a simple slider that lets the user choose the day and see the resulting total for all gifts given to that point. I tried to provide enough visual interest and information to make the concept clear – but it does assume familiarity with the song.

The Gift of a New Challenge Year

I’m hopeful that none of us give or get quite this many gifts, but I’m looking forward to the gift of a whole new year’s worth of ELHChallenges – and I hope you are too!

Giving and Getting Free (and Beautiful!) Images

December 18, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

If you’re an Articulate E-Learning Hero who’s also a designer you need good images and appreciate the benefits of a community whose members share their work and expertise.

The morgueFile Community

You probably know morgueFile as a place to get free images, but I never knew their intention was to have a give-one-take-one sort of self-sustaining community. I thought their contributors were professional photographers and it never even occurred to me they’d want my contributions!

Since I’ve used some of their community’s photos to good effect for recent Articulate #ELHChallenge demos about digital magazines, freelancing tips, and ways to survive the holidays – I thought it would be fun to give back, too.

A Quick & Easy Way to Contribute

(Update: I’m no longer seeing the app or finding images I’ve contributed – but they’ve still got lots of images you can use!)

Last week I found out about their morgueFile #Quest app for iPhone*. Each day they issue a daily challenge (“red” for example), you snap a photo to answer it, upload it, and voilà! You’ve shared your work in a quick and easy way that helps both you and others.

Lucky for me I took a week of vacation right after discovering the app, so I had time to play with it and had oodles of fun taking pics and entering them into current and past challenges. You can see some of them on this page and get a glimpse of my vacay at the same time!

The Win-Win-Win-Win-Win

Not only do I find it more motivating to take pics with the app like this, but I get to be creative in a different way, I have more photos to use for my own projects, I have new sources of inspiration, and it makes me happy knowing that someone else might benefit from these little bits of color and light I’m sharing too.

If this sounds like fun, you might want to give it a try! They even have a Classroom where you can learn more about the basics of photography and how to take better pics, if that’s your goal.

*You don’t need the app to contribute to the site, of course! You can upload your contributions via any browser.

9 Stress-Free Low-Cost Ways to Enjoy the Holidays

December 6, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to come up with some ways to help survive the holidays.

How could you be stressed around this guy?

What’s so Stressful?

To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything terribly stressful at first. After a bit of pondering I decided that money and high expectations might be the biggest culprits – so I came up with some low-cost (largely no-cost) ideas that don’t have to involve much frenzy.

Have a Peek & Happy Holidays!

I dipped into MorgueFile again for the images. I love the ones that look “real” as opposed to slick or professional. Feel free to take a peek at my handy little demo right here. Here’s wishing you nothing but wonderful, stress-free holiday delights!

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