Jackie Van Nice

Free to Good Home: Playful Game Template

May 27, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

Select Image to Launch Original Game

Select Image to Launch Template Demo

. . . .

The Source File Dilemma

People seemed to really like this German drinking game I created for an Articulate challenge a while back. I got requests for the source file but didn’t want to violate license agreements by handing it out with assets intact, and also didn’t want to hand out a stripped file that wasn’t fully functional.

The Happy Result & Lots of Free Games

Last week, still getting requests for the file, I finally took time to rework it so it was clean, easy to customize, and something I could offer as a free download. I wanted to maintain a sense of style and all of the functionality while still leaving it wide open to customize, and I’m pretty happy with the result.

By complete serendipity, David Anderson featured 10 free Storyline e-learning game templates on the Articulate site this week and was able to include mine as one of them. There’s a good chance that any or all of these games will get your creative juices flowing, and you can get all of them right here!

2 Free Templates: Storyline & PowerPoint!

Here’s the download page for the Storyline template, and since people without Storyline wanted to use it, too – I created a PowerPoint version you can download, too!

Videos to Help You Customize

I made a couple of videos to show you a feature comparison and the customization points you’ll want to hit. You can see them here.

Screen Captures Compared

I also created side-by-side screen captures, seen below, to help you see the original next to the template. Click on any image to see it larger.

Introduction

Game Start

Game Board

Progress Meter

Challenge Question

Feedback When Correct

Feedback When Incorrect

The Joy of Success

Let Me Know!

If you have ideas for how you could use this template – or if you’ve already used it! – I hope you’ll let me know. I’d love to hear what you did or would like to do. You can leave a comment below. And have fun!

4 Free E-Learning Tools I Use

May 22, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice Leave a Comment

Note: The sands of time move on, as do the free tools I use. See the updated version of this post here!

This week’s Articulate challenge is to share the free e-learning tools we really use. These are my favorites.

1. Redbooth: Project Management

This makes my life so easy it has to be first. Redbooth from Google makes project management effortless, and it’s free up to 5 projects and 5 users. I use it to:

Work Across Platforms: I use it on PC, Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It syncs effortlessly and tasks are immediately on my calendar.
Manage From Anywhere: I assign tasks, get feedback from team members, write up project notes, and participate in team conversations wherever I am.
Easily Manage & Share Files: I store and track all pieces and parts of a project – including email, notes, and conversations – plus sync files automatically with Dropbox. Nothing gets lost.

A “Free” Thought: I started on the free version to test it, then went to the paid one. Get creative and you could stretch those 5 projects and 5 users a whole lot farther.

I Used Microsoft Clipart For This

2. Microsoft Clipart: Images

Crazy, right? Sounds like the ’50s or something. There are a million other places to get images. Why is Microsoft Clipart still my first stop?

License & Attribution Issues: I REALLY can’t stand checking every license on every image and deciding whether it’s worth using and if there should be an attribution, and if so where do I work it in?
Editable/Flexible Images: I start with an image and think of ways to use it so it doesn’t look like everyone else’s. People loved the images in this piece, and they’re from MS Clipart. With an open mind and creative eye you’ll be amazed at what you can do.
Click & Play in PowerPoint: Since it’s integrated into PowerPoint, my quick image editor of choice, I can speedily bring in a pile of images and play around to see what works. Even if I get my final images elsewhere, it’s a great playground.

3. Pinterest: Inspiration & Project Organization

I haven’t been using it long, but already rely on it for a couple of things:

Graphic Inspiration: When I see something that resonates with me, I pin it in my Graphic Inspiration board. That’s where I went to design my interactive resume.
Project Organization: Now that you can have lots of “secret” boards I tend to create one for each new client project and use it as a catch-all place for everything from graphic and technical ideas to instructional design approaches. It’s secret, so I can include company-specific links and info.

4. Dafont & Font Squirrel: Fonts

These free font sites are so quick and easy to use, they’re hard to resist. I use them for:

Typographic Inspiration: Even if I don’t end up using one of theirs, browsing gives me ideas.
New Font Fun: I’ll often use them in the weekly Articulate challenges. They’re great to try out and see what’s possible.

What’s in Your Course Design Toolkit?

Check Out Many More!

Those are my current go-tos you can get for free.

There are tons more you can use, and many are being shared in the comments section of this week’s challenge. I’ll be using ideas from there, and you may find some new freebies you love, too.

Show Your Work: E-Learning Messiness By Me

May 18, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 2 Comments

I love when people show their work. The whole creative process is inexplicable and mesmerizing and the only evidence of the path afterwards is the detritus left behind. My desk is full of mesmerizing detritus, so I thought I’d share. If Austin Kleon can do it, so can I.

This is how I designed my CCAF design model demo for last week’s Articulate challenge. Pretty typical of my process. If I’d known I’d be sharing, this would look way better.

Sketch One: The Whole Idea

First Sketch, Page 1: The Entire Interaction Idea on Paper

I never look back at my sketches, so the surprise to me is that the whole thing was there from the start. It felt more difficult than that. I think there were just a couple of details that bugged me for days.

First Sketch, Page 2: More Detail About the Activity & Feedback Sections

First Screen

It’s interesting to see the quick sketch of the first screen below versus the final result. It was the simplest screen of all, but you see how much went into image and color selection and then making the details tight, clean, and balanced.

Player Tab: I was thinking of including a player tab to offer more details about CCAF, but decided that info should only be available at a point of greater need; just before and after the activity.

Writing: I didn’t work out the text or script in detail beforehand. That comes easily once I’ve got the other elements in place.

First Screen: 30-Second iPad Sketch

First Screen: Final Result

Activity Screens

These ate at me because it took time to get both the layout and functionality exactly the way I wanted, but I was happy when they came together at the 11th hour.

Activity Screen: Quick iPad Sketch

Activity Screen: Final Result

Feedback Screens

In the iPad sketch below you can see I was looking at how many parts of the CCAF activity the user got wrong. I knew the score couldn’t be the focus of the feedback, but it helped me map out the five learner reactions that were the focus.

Feedback Screen: Quick iPad Sketch

Feedback Screen: Final Result

Colors: Obey the Wall

All of the final-version slides show my text-box color decisions. If they’re:

About the ID, they’re the same green as her jacket.
About the learner (including designing for him), they’re the same blue as his shirt.
An instruction or indicator that applies to the whole interaction, they’re the same orange as the wall.

An Eye-Opening Exercise

I don’t know if this exercise was helpful to you, but it’s helped me! I’ve never observed my own process like this before and it makes me appreciate the time and effort it takes to go from A to Z. Sounds ridiculous since I’m the one doing it, but it’s hard to see when you’re caught up in the process. Once I’m done with something I focus on the result, but I don’t go back and look at it like this.

Have You Shown the Messy Side of Your E-Learning Work?

I’d love to see if you’ve shared the messier parts of your e-learning projects, too! If you have, I hope you’ll share your shares.

7 Lessons Learned Going to WordPress.org

May 17, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 9 Comments

I’d been keeping my e-learning samples on a hosted site and my blog on wordpress.com, which WordPress hosts for free. I didn’t like the jagged user experience of following links between the two sites, so I opted to move my blog over to my hosted site, where wordpress.org must be used, to join my e-learning samples. This is the tale of that move.

After an eventful 3 weeks taking my site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org, I thought I should leave some lessons-learned breadcrumbs behind to help others through the not-always-enchanted forest between the two.

1. Find the Right Host

Can Their Servers Handle WordPress? I already had a hosted site without WP installed. This is what it took to get it going:
1. When their quick WP install failed for me, support installed it and it ran like glue. Their server couldn’t save down the latest PHP script on their Windows servers and they said I’d have to move to a Linux server.
2. Linux has been OK, but as I sat down to write this, my site was loading so slowly I had to call support because I couldn’t even load the dashboard to write a new post.
3. My host said today they released a WP-specific package with WP-dedicated servers and support, and that the transition would be seamless. I’m giving them one last try, and I’ll let you know how it goes.
  All hosts and servers aren’t the same. They have to be WordPress-savvy.

Can Their People Handle WordPress? Once I reached the permalink redirect debacle (#7 below) this happened:
1. The host couldn’t figure out where its own 404 redirect was pointing and desperate tech people started throwing random HTML files into the root of my directory that just made it worse.
2. After many calls I finally stumbled across a support person who looked at the primary .htaccess file and realized it didn’t have the 8 simple lines of code it needed to make WP work. That was a breakthrough.
3. Then the host randomly wiped it a few days later. I figured out how to fix it myself, but now I check several times a day to be sure my 301 redirects are still working. It’s kind of ridiculous.
  Make sure your host has people who are skilled at WordPress.
Ask Others Which Hosts They Use & Like: As things were looking bad during my test phase, I posted this thread in the Articulate forums and got lots of good recommendations for hosting options and much more. If you’re going to do this, check it out.

2. Set Up & Test Your New Site Before Redirecting from WordPress.com

Export your content from the old site using Dashboard >Tools > Export.
Install a plug-in so you can import your content. I used the WordPress.com Importer plug-in.
Choose a theme. Even if you paid for a premium one on WordPress.com, you can’t take it with you. Look for a free or premium one via Themes > Dashboard, or shop elsewhere. Be sure it’s got the features you want. I wanted a lot of control over fonts, colors, layout, and images – plus access to the CSS and a responsive design for mobile devices. If you’re buying a theme, don’t assume it has everything you want. Find out before you spend the money.
Set up your theme. Make it look and act the way you want using the theme options provided.
Customize your theme, if needed. For mine, I changed the fonts to Google Fonts by adding some code to the CSS. My theme designer had good documentation about how to do that. The only thing I hated about my theme was the ugly gray background added to captioned images. I got lucky and my brilliant instructional designer colleague Ashley Chiasson was kind enough to figure out some CSS to fix it, but normally you’d be heading back to your theme designer to do a custom fix, which means more money.

3. Have Your Security Options in Place

On WordPress.com, they handled the security. Now it’s up to you, so be sure you and/or your host have some protection in place. I tried out a recommended security plug-in, but uninstalled it while troubleshooting all of the other issues. Instead of mucking up my WP install any further with more plug-ins, I opted for back-end security from my host.

4. Have Your Back-Up Plan in Place

On WordPress.com, they backed it up. (Though if you deleted your own content, you were on your own.) There are lots of options. Again, I went with a full back-up service provided by my host, but I also make sure I export a back-up of my content every time I post or make similar changes.

5. Redirect Your Site from WordPress.com

After you’re really sure the site looks and feels and acts the way you want, you’re ready to redirect from WordPress.com. It costs $30 per year, but works well. Just be aware of my final tip at the end of #7 below.

6. Install the JetPack Plug-In & Choose Options Carefully

JetPack adds some helpful features. For me, it made it easy to bring over followers/subscribers and I like their stats display better. There are a lot of options, but I’d suggest only activating what you need. JetPack features are the number one things that tend to interfere with my theme’s features, and the Photon one resulted in very poor-quality images.

7. Coddle Your Permalinks

I always say (and mean) that everything is a gift. Once I realized that not one link from my old site could possibly forward to my new one without going to a host-supplied 404 page that made it look like my site no longer existed (#1 above), I knew I had a real gift on my hands. My host’s lack of WP knowledge was half of it, but permalink issues were the other half.

My permalinks completely lost their minds on WordPress.org. After troubleshooting (could have been several causes), I ended up having to go back to the default permalink format, which then changed all of my permalinks yet again.
I found the Quick Page/Post Redirect Plug-In that let me set up 301 (permanent, individual URL) redirects for every page and post. It still failed until my host figured out that they hadn’t set up my .htaccess file properly, but once that was resolved, this plug-in worked beautifully and was a lifesaver.
Pay attention to your permalinks when you redirect from WordPress.com. The redirect will only go to the exact URL you want if the permalinks are identical, and if you experience any permalink insanity like I did, you’ll want to use a good 301 redirect plug-in.

How Did You Become an Instructional Designer?

May 16, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 2 Comments

The Tweeted Taunt

The fine folks over at ttc Innovations were inspired by Cammy Bean‘s The Accidental Instructional Designer to ask me (and all other IDs) how I (we all) got here. History proves I can be goaded and challenged into any number of things (note my extensive Articulate Challenges activity) – and this Twitter tactic worked perfectly.

Just One Problem

The only thing is I don’t have a great “accidental” story. The only accident was when I discovered, after taking a whole lot of college German because I loved it, that the only way to continue that particular romp in the park was to get a grad degree, and that involved teaching German if I wanted the university to pay for it.

Instructional Design as a Survival Tactic

After playing through the terror in my head – (“I’m not a public speaker!” “My colleagues are native speakers of German!” “I’ve never taught anything and I’m starting by teaching real classes that real students really pay for at a real university?!”) – I just did it.

Four things ended up making me incredibly successful:

The terror. My response was to be the best-prepared human who could walk into that classroom. I’d spend 4 to 6 hours every night – 5 days a week – designing the next day’s lesson, using methods nearly identical to what I now use to create e-learning.
The University of Oregon’s wise move to require classes on instructional education before allowing just any fool to start teaching their classes. This was my intro to instructional design and I loved it.
An outstanding and extremely forward-thinking textbook. It provided a good framework for teaching the specifics of the language, but the real focus was on creating a fantastic environment for endless creativity and real practice.
My adoration of the topic. I’d just returned from a year of grad school at the Universität Konstanz in Germany and my enthusiasm for learning German, traveling, and being an exchange student was literally inescapable.

I didn’t realize how well classes were going until the students coming in for the class after mine began stopping me to ask what the heck I was doing in there. All they could hear were rounds of intense group concentration, roars of laughter, and sustained cheers and applause (for their peers!) – followed by happy chatty people exiting at the end. I guess that wasn’t what the class after mine was like. Crazily, I never even heard all of that because I was so intensely in the moment of what we were doing. It was awesome.

Then There Was More Stuff

After that there was more education and more teaching and lots of other stuff (it would take at least 20 blog posts to get through it all), but in the end I decided I just wanted to be an independent ID, which is what I wrote about here.

Share Your Story, Too!

I hope that’s what ttc Innovations had in mind when they took to Twitter to call me out. I suggest you play along too! Share your story by visiting their blog and/or blogging then tweeting using the hashtag #MyIDStory – and have fun!