Jackie Van Nice

E-Learning Goodness by Jackie Van Nice

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Free Tic-Tac-Toe Template in Storyline!

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Click Image to Launch Demo

Click Image to Launch Demo

I made a punctuation tic-tac-toe game this week for an ELHChallenge. Folks liked it and wanted to know how it was built, so I made it into a game template to share. I’ve replaced the images with a generic smiley face from Microsoft clipart, standardized the colors, and put in placeholder text – but other than that you’ve got the original file.

Tips to Help You Customize It

  1. Download it: Grab it on the download page.
  2. Tic-Tac-Toe Grid: The lines are on the master slide. To change it go to View > Slide Master.
  3. Disabling Clicks on the Grid: To keep the user from clicking on a question they’ve already answered, I added an invisible rectangle on top of each grid image on the base slide named “disable 1”, “disable 2”, etc. The initial state is set to Hidden, but once a question has been answered the rectangle is triggered to go to a Normal (yet still invisible) state to block mouse clicks. If you choose to keep this functionality, be sure these disabling rectangles are in front of the grid images rather than behind them.
  4. Images: Replace them by right clicking on each and choosing “Change Picture”. Keep in mind you’ll be replacing them on the grid and on all 27 layers that include images. (There are also 8 results layers, but they don’t include images.)
  5. “Learn More” Buttons: On each feedback layer there’s a Learn More button that originally linked to a URL. I left the trigger intact, but if you’d like to use it you’ll need to update it with the link of your choice.
  6. Compare it to the Original: If you’re not sure what to put where, just compare it to the original game. That should clear it up.

Have Fun!

I hope you enjoy making your own game. If you have questions just let me know in the comments below!

DIY E-Learning Icons (+ Free Download!)

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This week’s ELH challenge is to create and share a set of icons for the e-learning community. (I’m in!)

Theme: Language Learning

Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

List or Knowledge Check

List or Knowledge Check

Listening

Listening

Reading

Reading

Role Play or Discussion

Role Play or Discussion

Speaking

Speaking

Viewing

Viewing

Writing

Writing

For last week’s emoji challenge I created a language learning demo. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart, so I kept the theme going this week. These are the icons, and they align with most of the basic activities you engage in when learning a language.

Design

I created them in PowerPoint and made them simple and flat. To save time I took one of David Anderson’s challenge suggestions and pulled the basic images from The Noun Project. Credit and links back to the original images are in the file.

Colorize Your World

Snack Pack Colors

Snack Pack Colors

To show how you can customize them I mocked up a few color combos. They’re in the PowerPoint file, too. To color the PNG images I used Format > Color, and to add texture I used Format > Artistic Effects.

Download Them Now!

Black & White

Black & White

If you’d like to download the PowerPoint file with these fully-customizable icons, you can grab it on the download page.

Feeling Neutral

Feeling Neutral

Icon Feel the Blues Coming On

Icon Feel the Blues Coming On

Texture Becomes Electra

Texture Becomes Electra

Podcast: How I Get Things Done As an Instructional Designer

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Pencil-Sketch Version of My Recording Set-Up. See The Original Below.

Pencil-Sketch Version of My Recording Set-Up. See The Original Below.

This week’s challenge is to do a podcast to answer David Anderson’s questions about how we work as instructional designers. Here’s mine, and I explain how I created it at the end of this post.

If you’d rather listen to all of the tracks on autoplay, listen here: Podcast: How I Get Things Done as an Instructional Designer.

1. What’s your job title?

2. What software tools do you love?

 

3. What’s your workspace setup?

 

4. What is your creative or design philosophy?

 

5. How do you stay fresh and keep building your skills?

 

6. How do you avoid burnout?

 

7. How do you save time and boost your efficiency day to day?

 

8. How do you manage your workflow?

 

9. What books or blogs have been influential to you?

 

10. What kinds of tasks do you love to do? What gets you excited to sit down at your desk?

 

11. What do you like to do least? How do you keep yourself motivated to do that stuff?

The Process

My Recording Set-Up

My Recording Set-Up

This is how I did it:

  1. Wrote down some thoughts the day before I recorded them, and probably used about 20% of that. The rest I winged.
  2. Used my trusty Audio-Technica AT2020 desktop USB mic to record in Audacity on iMac. If you’d like to see a photo of my setup, along with some of my favorite recording tips, they’re right here.
  3. Added some noise removal to get rid of ambient noise, then exported individual tracks as mp3s.
  4. Headed over to SoundCloud where I uploaded them as a playlist.
  5. Headed here to my WordPress blog to write this up. To embed these tracks I referred to the SoundCloud instructions which work well; though rather than doing a link-type post I simply pasted each of the track links into the body of a standard post.

Here’s an Easy Way to Make Money…

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Click Image to See Larger

This week’s challenge is to come up with a creative invoice design.

I’m pretty sure David wanted us to create graphs of awesomeness to remind clients of why they should be excited to pay us (a genius idea!) but in the interest of time I went graph-less.

The Design

In real life I currently use a very vanilla invoice. To create one that’s a better reflection of my work I started with the general look and feel of my website, then added some color.

My first drafts were graphically bolder in both shapes and colors, but I kind of like this tamed-down-yet-colorful version. I also played with adding my logo and some other images, but just didn’t like them. I preferred the cleaner look you see here.

There were a lot of comments about and interest in my paper doll slider interaction today (featured on Articulate’s E-Learning Examples page), so I went with that and themed my invoice accordingly.

This is a mock-up I did in PowerPoint because it’s so easy to quickly play with shapes, color, and text there – but I may build it in InDesign next. At that point I’ll also add in a tiny bit more text to capture the practical details.

So What’s the Easy Way to Make Money?

Just remember to invoice your clients! It’s easy to get so caught up in the work that minor details like actually charging them can slip through the cracks. Make yourself a kicky little invoice and bill ’em!