Category: Blog

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Abraham Maslow. Maslow’s hammer is a cognitive bias that I bring up because instructional designers can sometimes see every problem as an opportunity for training. Instructional designers are also often quick to…

Rapid prototyping is beginning to be seen in instructional design more often. In essence rapid prototyping is the development of working samples of learning materials, especially eLearning materials, which are then evaluated and revised. In many ways, it is an approach that emphasizes the formative evaluation process that should be a core component of each…

One of the key areas in course design that I see neglected is the area of accessibility. This poses several significant issues. The first is when you forget that “ALT” tags and audio transcripts are for accessibility and not SEO you neglect an important population. Second, the ADA and 508 requirements are not to be…

This past December I completed my doctorate in instructional technology and distance education from Nova Southeastern University. One thing I did not do while I was there was much in the way of publishing. I was, for the most part, overly focused on my dissertation. Now that I am finished my mind has turned to…

Over the past few months I have really fallen in love with with Adobe Spark. Adobe Spark is a free tool from Adobe that enables rapid development of images, simple webpages, and videos. This translates into a quick and easy way to produce portfolios and presentations. The video is the briefest of introductions to the…

One of the things I always enjoy is watching students produce rather than consume media. Below are my go to list of tools for a quick bit of audio editing, video editing, or image editing.  These are not the tools for major media production for that I have the Adobe Creative Cloud suite but for…

Recently I shared a list of sites where students and teachers can find free images for using in presentations. A related question that came up for me personally was where to find free audio for presentations and video.There are some fantastic resources in my two favorite video editing tools (iMovie & WeVideo) however there are…

  In this video, I will show you how you can quickly pull down the citation information for PDF files that are in your Zotero library but un-attached. Over the past few years, I have collected a few PDFs that are in Zotero of different articles from here and there. Finding them can be a…

The other day I received a quick question. “Hi Chris! Is there a free user-friendly website maker that you would recommend for kids to use?” My answer changes depending on who is making the website and for their situation but here is a quick guide that can help point you in the right direction.  While there…