Friday Finds: The Best of Learning, Design & Technology | March 1, 2019

Learning, Design and Technology by Mike Taylor

The design process is weird and complicated because people are weird and complicated. —Mark Boulton

It looks like March is coming in like a lion here in our neighborhood with a little snow today and the temperature heading well below zero this weekend. Here are a collection of the best things from learning, design, and technology this week. Be sure to bookmark and share all the fantastic learning science and instructional design goodness I compiled in this post earlier this week. Cheers!

Seven essential elements of a lifelong-learning mindset

Many of us are facing significant changes in what we do, how we do it, and even why we do it. To survive and better yet to thrive in this environment, we have to keep learning new skills. Studies show that workers who maintain their ability to learn outpace other professionals.1

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/seven-essential-elements-of-a-lifelong-learning-mind-set

PowerPoint Morph Improvements

If you use PowerPoint and don’t use the morph transition, you should stop what you’re doing and go learn all about it right now. Microsoft has recently expanded what is possible with morph. By renaming slide objects with a !! at the front of the name you can now do things including:

  • Force different shapes (such as a circle and a square) to morph
  • Force two instances of the same shape – but with different text in each – to morph
  • Force two images to morph
  • Force any two objects of the same type to morph (table/table, SmartArt/SmartArt, chart/chart)

https://blog-insider.office.com/morph-improvements-more-control-over-which-objects-morph-insider-on-windows-and-insider-fast-on-mac/

Content Curation Webinar by Sprout Labs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=481&v=P-k3Ywft69g

A Look Back At The Years Best From Learning Science And Instructional Design

https://mike-taylor.org/2019/02/27/a-look-back-at-the-years-best-from-learning-science-and-instructional-design/ …

Learning, Design & Technology Miscellany

A few other things just because I can.

Design Resources

  • PixelMob – Search thousands of royalty-free photos from around the web
  • Joe Schmoe – An illustrated avatar collection for developers and designers

Apps & Tools

  • OneLinePlayer: The simplest free web video player without branding and quality loss, which loads 2x faster than others and support HQ previews.
  • Ribbet – This is an old favorite of mine for photo editing that now has a downloadable option.

Books, Podcasts, Courses:

What I’m listening to:

Conference News

  • The Training Mag Conference was this week Check things out via the #TRGCONF hashtag.
  • Down in Australia, the iDesignX conference was also happening #iDesignX
  • Look in on the LnDConnect Unconference from Manchester #LDCUMan19 @LnDConnect

Here’s a peek at the conference action for this week and next:

Looking for your next conference? I’ve recently updated my global collection of L&D events with new 2019 dates. Let me know if you see one I missed or have a new one to add.

Speaker Proposals:

Thanks for reading! If you found anything good, forward it to a friend or spread the word with a tweet.

You can find me at these UPCOMING EVENTS:


Interested in the things that didn’t make the cut here? Follow me on Twitter or even better, subscribe to my newsletter.

I’m looking for great people and organizations who want to help people learn and work better. If you’re one of them, let’s talk! Speaking and Workshop Information Sheet.

Looking for a previous edition? Check out the archives

Published by Mike Taylor

Born with a life-long passion for learning, I have the great fortune to work at the intersection of learning, design, technology & collaboration.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.