Skip to main content

Free Tools for A Convenient Time

A (very) Brief History of Design


Created above is a short slideshow made with the intent to broaden some of my understanding and background knowledge regarding design beyond the educational design space. I found that Google Slides was a convenient tool for the different modalities I prefer to use when self-educating, but also in educating others. 

I like how slides allows me to cross pollinate an idea or concept with video, image, text aesthetics, graphs, and pre-provided layouts to build a cohesive but also unique learning experience. I struggle with Google Slides because there is not really any feature that can be embedded that a viewer can interact with. These sorts of tools must be sought elsewhere. It seems strange to me that I cannot even embed another Google product however (other than image from Google Photos). 

I know this was a preferred tool used by teachers during the pandemic, and I think Google Slides (and Powerpoints generally) have a great potential to shift into the AI and VR worlds when it comes to learning experiences. The imagined futures in which information and entertainment screens can literally live floating around us in simulation of the way memory in the brain is sometimes conceived of as a hallway of doors to memory 'rooms' portrayed in popular media (particularly cartoons, see here and here - combined with the idea of 'Content Agility' that first came across my radar via the movie Minority Report and is highlighted in this clip) is exciting to me and is where my mind drifted while using this tool and considering how I would want it used in a professional, educational, or personal setting.

Assignment Prompt: Go to Google Drive. In the upper-left, click the NEW button. Select either Google Sheets (like Excel), Google Slides (like Powerpoint) or Google Forms (for creating polls and quizzes). Create something in one of these apps that you feel could be useful for your work (now or future). Nothing too big or complex - just something to demonstrate that you played around with this tool. Make what you created Public (using the Share button in the upper-right) and link to what you created in a blog post. Explain in your blog post what you created and also describe what your impressions are of using this tool. How easy or hard was it to figure out how to use it? Are you interested in using it more?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Which Corporate Optimization Becomes Human Brain Innovation and the Patriarchy Lives On

 In the opening paragraph of chapter 15 Marker says the majority of businesses - who have been allowed to become the dominant institutions of our time - are so focused on profit that it "contributes to adverse social and environmental outcomes that outstrip our biological, psychological, and even spiritual abilities." (Marker, 117) Initially I read this as Marker criticizing the system that vaunts business in this way, the one he calls out for "making profit the ultimate measure of success." However, upon closer read it feels unsettlingly like rather than having an interest in changing the system, Marker is making a case for the way neurobiology can improve the methods of HPI to operationalize human behavior to match the tasks of profit better and also wouldn't it be nice if along the way businesses took on a more moral - here defined as taking into their method of profit methods of diversifying the industry in ways that allow business at large to continue into ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Transcending Content

In my comment last week I was trying to suss out what the 'stakes' of instructional design were, if the argument is that design is a need and not a privilege, and also that design is a need. In this weeks reading I appreciated that it more clearly focused on what those stakes could be through the lens of what instructional design could bring to the table in terms of educational design.   Wilson introduces the term 'principled resistance' as a response to "certain ideas that are seen as negatively impacting the profession" (p 27). And while I think the way he qualifies heavily by using the 'certain' and the 'seem' padding in his statement (illustrating what he later cops being what he terms a 'limited radical') I appreciated his use of the term for the way it makes space and acknowledges that radicalism is not synonymous with a lack of intention or that it is simply an act of unstructured rebellion. I also appreciated Martin's cautio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Welcome to the Future

 The gist of Bishop and Foshay's exchange in chapter 19 was an agreement that implementation of educational tech in schools is not scaling effectively. Foshay asserts that this is a problem with the methodology of how ET is developed. That we are not asking the right questions, considering the classroom as it is, and collaborating with stated educator needs so that what is developed is usable from the perspective of those who we would like to believe it benefits or is effective for. Bishop asserts that the problems start even further back. That there is a failure at the corporate leadership levels to listen to or champion ET development that is mindful and practical and guided by actual classroom experience rather than ideals and irrelevant experience and preferences. Both are calling for a type of activism. Bishop is calling for ID activism that challenges and disrupts organizational culture and norms so that space is opened for the kind of change and exploration that Foshay is ad...
Post a Comment
Read more