Living in cold, snowy New England, I need something to do in the winter between bouts of snow shoveling, so I read a bunch. Now that it’s getting to the point where MAYBE it’ll start thawing, I thought I’d post a quick overview of my favorite learning/simulation/game-type books from the last couple of months. Since posting about books is something that I’ve done a couple times now, I’m also planning to create an ongoing list of all of these books under a Related Books heading at the top of the blog. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Jane McGonigal. MORE >>

Compliance eLearning, defined loosely here as eLearning that covers some sort of rules or regulations, seems to have a high rate of boring PowerPoint-ism, with slide and slide of text, some standard stock photos, a next button, and not much else. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.  In fact, compliance courses are often really fantastic opportunities to present users with scenarios and meaningful decision making. An example that I built recently revolved around getting reps to read and follow a set of guidelines for expense reporting in a highly regulated environment.  Eek!).  MORE >>

About a year ago, I had the revelation that the time I spent creating marginally appealing graphics for eLearning could be much better spent elsewhere.  Compared to several hours of struggling to just make the darn smile on that darn person NOT look ghoulish, $18 for a person who already looks normal seems like a bargain.  So, now I buy stuff in several categories of graphics, and it’s lovely. Here are the types of graphics that I buy for eLearning and where I currently buy them: Stock Photos. This is actually the category of graphics that I use least often in eLearning development.  MORE >>

Even though I generally play more with creating learning activities than representing information, I’m fascinated by data visualization. couple of weeks ago, I created an infographic as part of Information is Beautiful’s first visualization challenge. Information is Beautiful provided a spreadsheet of data about when the reserves of various non-renewable resources will be depleted.   I carried the data in my handbag and periodically pulled it out to peer at it while waiting at doctor’s offices, restaurants, and the like.  I decided to go for it anyway. So, my design regrets. MORE >>

I was the type of kid who devoured the Sim-genre games, from the traditional SimCity to lesser known games such as SimFarm. In addition to just playing them as intended, I loved that they were essentially worlds in a sandbox, where I could impose my own rules to experiment with concepts that interested me. friend and I used SimLife to create virtual horse farms and racetracks, where we’d breed generations upon generations of  horses, with the goal of creating horses with the tendency to not turn around. This was THE essential trait for winning virtual horse races in SimLife. Now you know.) MORE >>