Learning so much and loving this class!

In the past couple of weeks we have been learning about absorb-type, do-type and connect-type activities, as well as many cool free programs!  The types of activities I mentioned are from our textbook, E-Learning By Design by William Horton.  Horton describes absorb-type activities as ones where the learner absorbs knowledge, "typically by reading text, watching an animation, or listening to narration" (Horton, 2006, p. 38).  A do-type activity is where the learner is involved in exercise, experiment, and discover activities.  Connect-type activities link the learner to "prior learning, to work and to life" (Horton, 2006, p. 41).  I have been using my Windows 7 upgrade training from work for my activities.  It has really helped me to make my training more interesting and streamlined.

The coolest freeware that we have used is called Jing.  It is from Techsmith.com.  It is a screen capture software product that is extremely easy to use.  However, I had a very frustrating time at first because my internal microphone no longer is working.  I ended up going to Best Buy and buying an external microphone and fumbling around for days trying to get it all to work properly.  But, it was well worth it!  I think I will be using Jing to create all kinds of training!

We discussed the value of using blogging and Twitter as viable learning tools.  I'm not crazy about Twitter, but I can see where there may be times when it might be useful.  My suggestion was to use it for a scavenger hunt.  Overall, I have learned a great deal about constructing training and I think our instructor, Dr. Rhia Roberts is awesome!  I wish I could have her in every class!

Do-Type Activities

This week, we are working with creating "do-type" activities.  Most of the training that I have created has been what is known as "absorb-type" activities where the learners watch a PowerPoint presentation while I instruct them in person.  I have created some practice lessons that learners have completed and sent back to me.  The first time I did this was way back in the late 1990's when I conducted a training on Microsoft Word basics.  The assignment was to edit a fairy tale that I had written and left blanks for the learner to fill in using some of the things they had learned like changing font color, size and style.  The fairy tale was about Princess Colleen, so it was really funny to read the things that people wrote.

For this week's assignment, I went to a website that I have used for years, http://www.puzzlemaker.com/.  This site gives you several options for creating puzzles, such as crosswords and word search puzzles.  It's really easy to use!  Give it a try.  I created a word search puzzle using Windows 7 terminology.  All I did was enter the words separated by commas and it created the puzzle for me.  Here it is:

C O N A O H Y R X J R W B X S 

D P J G B G S Y U H S E M P A 

Q E J V D W N M B H P I R B Y 

G R S M O P P I A A V V Q F G 

T A K D M L Y K N H C E F S F 

V T N E I Z E S Y N J R Z R P 

L I B S E S E T O N I P X T Q 

W N T Q X P L S M J A P P S Y 

X G E F H M R B E W O K J Y P 

N C U C A W T R I A D V Z S V 

P T P D S T I C K Y R Q F T Z 

A V D V Z X I G T Q F C T E O 

R A B K S A T H I R Z U H M R 

H O D F T B D X W M P I C I E 

S M T M G Z U U J Z A S A X A 

AERO

JUMPLIST

NOTES

OPERATING

PEEK

PINNING

PREVIEW

SEARCH

SHAKE

SNAP

STICKY

SYSTEM

TASKBAR

WINDOWS

Until next week...happy learning!