Read on for notes from a webinar today, April 9, 2009: Building Better Learning Games: Leveraging Game Design and User Testing for Results Our hosts today: Enspire Learning (Ben Katz) Doorways to Dreams D2D -- financial entertainment. Interested in building casual games for your learners? Work with and for consumers how to better manage their money. Focus on casual video games. Nick Maynard) Skillpoint Alliance (Kristy Bowden) Partnership of profit and non-profit organizations. Poll: Do you play any of these? D2D's vision is financial entertainment. Player controls that celebrity's job. MORE >>

I stumbled across this on a writer's blog today: "Officially, I’m now an Instructional Designer. fancy term for writing training material." Blog link not provided to protect the innocent]. Koreen Olbrish asks "Is Instructional Design Dead?" If all we do is write training material, then perhaps yes. The debate has raged here and elsewhere as to whether instructional designer's need to have advanced degrees in ID. The ID survey on this blog now has over 200 responses: 62% do not have advanced degrees. We have questioned the value of Instructional Designers. Some folks are curriculum designers. MORE >>

Note: you can generally tell if info was provided by a real user or by an authoring tool company ;) Bryan Chapman, Brandon Hall Research Report, Authoring Tool KnowledgeBase 2009 (A Buyer's Guide to 120+ of the Best E-learning Content Development Applications). I had the great pleasure of speaking last night at the Massachusetts chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI). It was a lively conversation and a wonderful opportunity for me to meet some of my online colleagues from the twitter sphere (thanks for coming, y'all!) asked "What do you use it for?, MORE >>

You're at a playground and you start talking to the mom sitting on the bench next to you. Eventually, she asks you what you do for work. What do you say? Are you met with comprehension or blank stares? This was me yesterday: Playground Mom:  So, what do you do? Me:  I'm an instructional designer. I create eLearning. Playground Mom:  [blank stare] Me: corporate training. Playground Mom:  [weak smile] Me:  I create training for companies that's delivered on the computer. Playground Me: weak nod."Oh, Oh, I see." I see that she really doesn't see and I just don't have the energy to go further. MORE >>

Cammy Beans Learning Visions Musings on eLearning, instructional design and other training stuff. Tuesday, May 01, 2007 Beginning Instructional Designers Toolkit I want to incorporate a reading list for the next level of the 30-minute masters (taking a crash course in Instructional Design). This would be for those who want to take their own learning to the next level. list of important books, key terminology, basic theory. Because its true -- you can impress your clients and peers by working "cognitive load" into a sentence. Im not a big theory person. Im much more into practical application. MORE >>