The Best of Learning, Design & Technology

“A year from now you will wish you had started today.” –Karen Lamb

Last week’s most clicked item: Pre-Recorded Videos Prove More Effective for Student Learning Than In-Person Instruction

Knowing When Tech Does (and Doesn’t) Promote Positive Relationships

In this super relevant article, Jenna Clark tell us that if we want to understand the role technology plays in our well-being, we need to start with the role it plays in our relationships. Sometimes, superficially similar behaviors have fundamentally different consequences. Sometimes online socialization is good for you, sometimes it’s bad, and the devil is entirely in the details.

https://behavioralscientist.org/knowing-when-tech-does-and-doesnt-promote-positive-relationships/

Wonder Tools for Running a Program

The latest edition of Jeremy Caplan’s Wonder Tools newsletter has a great look into the collection of tools he uses to run the online Journalism Creators Program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. See how he weaves tools from Pathwright, Notion, and Otter to Grain, mmhmm and Slido together with each other. (And subscribe to his newsletter while you’re there.)

https://wondertools.substack.com/p/wonder-tools-for-running-a-program

The Rise Of Personal Infrastructure

This is an interesting take by Herbert Liu on rescuing time and energy by regaining control of it with a “personal infrastructure”, to expand your capabilities so that you are free to pursue more important things.

https://herbertlui.net/the-rise-of-personal-infrastructure/

A tactical guide to kickstarting your community

An inside look at how Orbit grew its community from scratch — how to bootstrap early conversations, ways to connect members to each other, and other specifics of what people did.

https://orbit.love/blog/a-tactical-guide-to-kickstarting-your-community/

The Future of Nudging Will Be Personal

Nudging, now more than a decade old as an intervention tool, has emerged as a noncoercive way to live better in a world shaped by our behavioral foibles. This article by Stuart Mills explores two ways nudges could be personalized: by personalizing the choices or by personalizing the delivery.

https://behavioralscientist.org/the-future-of-nudging-will-be-personal/

A few other things just because I can.

Podcasts

Here are three podcast episodes from this week that are worth a listen:

• Charles Jennings on the influence of knowledge management, the conspiracy of convenience that hampers learning evaluation on the Learning Hack podcast.
• Technology to Make Virtual Feel Less “Virtual”, with Nick Martin on the Train Like You Listen podcast
• Demystifying the Learning Ecosystem with Matt Donovan on the Learning Sharks podcast/webcast

Tools, Tips & Resources

I also publish a daily L&D Tech Toolbox newsletter. You can find those and subscribe here.

• Sizle.io — Track when a PowerPoint file or other type of document is opened. See when and how viewers engage with your documents with live analytics so you can discover actionable insights
• ipsm.io — Placeholder content (text, graphic, & video) for developers and designers https://buff.ly/3cpDrjt
• Amigos Illustrations — Free customizable illustration library
• Form2Sheet — Replace Google Forms by creating a personalized HTML Form and save the responses on Google Sheets.
• Perfect Recall — Perfect Recall transcribes your calls, lets you take time-stamped notes and make Zoom clips your team will actually watch

Where You Can Find Me

• Learning Solutions – May 3-14
• Pushing the Elearning Envelope – June 9/10
• Canadian Elearning Conference – June 10/11
• Nashville ATD – Using Technology for Training – September 16