- kim

ID6WC Part 2: Title & Learning Objectives

Since I can’t share any “real” work projects, which are all proprietary for my company’s clients, I figured I might as well make this fun.

Here are the silly topic I’ve chosen for #id6wc and some even sillier formal learning objectives that Mr. Bloom would approve of.

Soft Skillz Fur Cats™

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, teh kittehs will be able to:

  • Effectively nag owner (aka, servant) for food
  • For specified creatures, distinguish “I Am Predator” vs. “I Am Prey”
  • Select appropriate response to desirable situations (options to include: eyes closed, purring, walking around, upside-down-kitty)
  • Select appropriate response to undesirable situations (options to include: arching back, puffy tail, hissing, running under the bed)
  • Effectively nag owner for MORE food

Next step, a mind map.

ID6WC Part 1: The Plan

I’m so excited to be participating in my friend Cara North’s “Instructional Design 6 Week Challenge”!

Since I’m mostly a writer in the L&D field and haven’t worked in any of the authoring tools for nearly 10 years, I’m starting from Ground Zero as far as e-learning development.

My plan is to define, outline, and storyboard a course whilst learning the basics of Articulate Storyline via their (generous!) 60-day free trial and the Storyline workbooks from IconLogic. Then during weeks 5-6 of the challenge, I’ll hopefully be ready to develop at least a bit of my course and post it online.

All of this will help prepare me for Learning DevCamp in mid-June – so excited to attend & participate in that event!

The rest of the posts in this series will follow my progress through ID6WC.

And awaaaay we go!

Gallery of Beadwork – 2018 UPDATE!

At last!

I’ve finally uploaded my more recent beadweaving pieces to my gallery.

As soon as I get a chance, I’ll add descriptive text, but for now at least the images are available. The image file name has the year of creation and a couple words – that’s a start.

Most of the pieces are my own custom designs; some are from classes I’ve taken or patterns from magazines or online artists. That information will be in the descriptions ASAP.

I’ve felt that I haven’t done much, but … There are 29 IMAGES! Some contain more than one piece, and some have insets of details.

Enjoy!

My 2017

It was …

A year of sadness as I bore estrangement from a group of people I love and miss. Learning to respect their choices has been a good discipline, through the sorrow.

A year of joy as I found a wonderful “tribe” of professionals to chat with and learn from (more on this later).

A year of difficulty as, for the second time in my life, I had dealings with someone who was offended by cheerfulness and enthusiasm. Sad to say that I was slow to recognise it, and it cost me professionally. I tend to assume that others are more “with it” than I am, and I need to learn that that is not always the case.

A year of reconnecting with friends from long ago. I’m so grateful for them and all the others through the years who somehow were able to see the tiny sparkle in me before it was very visible.

A year when I discovered that I can, in fact, write with a fountain pen, left-handed klutz that I am. How fortunate that I saved my parents’ old Parker 51 when we cleaned out their house after Mom got sick! I look forward eagerly to getting it back from the restorer a few months from now.

A year of festivity and reading-reading-reading with the release of Oathbringer (more on this later too). “Unite Them!”

Yet another year when I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped—not by a long shot—but even still it was a good year.

Significant memories:

Writing for TFL’s Basics Conference in May. What a treat to hear each session, especially those taught by Sinclair Ferguson. I now “hear” his voice in my head when reading things he’s written, such as the fantastic book Devoted to God: it too has been a 2017 blessing.

Being part of the pilot team at TFL to edit and develop full transcripts. The work is enjoyable, especially because I learn something new on each pass through the audio.

Participating in a new and refreshing online professional group, the Training, Learning and Development Community. Such a wonderful discovery! Brent Schlenker, Luis Malbas, Cara North, Craig Sybert, and the many participants and guests have all challenged me to grow in my profession and to keep thinking beyond the next deliverable.

Finishing several pieces of beadwork, which I need to add to the gallery here asap. (Sad to report, though, that I failed at last year’s resolution to not start any new pieces till all the unfinished ones were through the pipeline…)

Surviving three days without power in (cold!) early November. If it ever happens to you, here’s the secret: boiled potatoes. Srsly, trust me on this one!

Attending the book release event for Oathbringer, the latest volume in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives. First and foremost, it is Dalinar’s book, and Dalinar is my favorite. Brandon has said that he feels OBR is the best book he’s ever written and I agree. On top of the book (all 1,235 pages!) being so awesome, my trip to the Salt Lake City/Provo area went as smooth as silk. I especially enjoyed Sunday morning worship at the EV Free Church where I met some lovely sisters in Christ, heard a solid sermon, and added my voice to the great congregational music. Another pleasure was the (just opened!) El Pollo Loco right up the road from my hotel—I do love me some El Pollo Loco! (Please please come to Ohio!) At the book release party (1st photo below; green circle is me … well, the top of my head anyway!), my cosplay went over well: lots of knowing nods for my “awespren” hat (2nd photo below), and Brandon himself re-tweeted the photo I shared online! I’d thought the OBR release a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me, but I had such a blast among those 1,600 rabid Sander-fans that I might just go again; if so, I’ll for sure stay at the same hotel which was convenient and provided excellent customer service.

Continued blessings this year have been my awesome friends, my Parkside Church family, my great job at CinĂ©craft, my good health (thanks Mom!), JoJo and Maria (meow!), Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Severance Hall (my “team” always wins!), lots of fun genre movies that came out (Wonder Woman! Thor Ragnarok!), my humble home where my neighbors are so amazing … too many things to name. Most of all I’m thankful for the gift of knowing God through His Son the Lord Jesus—how He knows me to my core and loves me anyway. Praise His glorious grace!

I can’t know what 2018 has in store, but a possible theme has formed in my mind:

Love reaches. Love covers. Love hopes.

May God help me to learn it well.

Social Learning vs. Reflection

So many learning and development initiatives today involve the use of online interaction via video chat.

There are more and more apps and online tools for this all the time, and I agree that discussion and debate can be a good thing, allowing us to learn informally from peers.

Yet …

“Hanging out in a chat” can also be a lot like high school socializing.

And if we never want or need to do any more for the world than we did while hanging out next to our lockers in high school, that’s perfectly fine.

But if we want to pursue goals with more of an impact on humanity than that, we can’t spend most of our time kibbutzing.

We need –

  • time to focus,
  • time to think our own thoughts,
  • time to reflect,
  • time to plan,
  • time to be creative and productive and actually DO the things we dream about.

Training time spent on social learning isn’t wasted, but its value is diminished if it’s not guided by an overarching purpose.

Self-discipline is a good thing.

Tea from Adagio!

For the past 15 years, I’ve been a loyal customer of Adagio Teas.

Adagio has enabled me to become somewhat of a tea connoisseur, in that they tell you not only what country your tea is from, but (usually) which estate, the time of year it was picked, how many leaves were picked from each branch, how it was processed, and more.

I also love how they share stories of the actual workers and farmers who harvest and process the tea and that they buy straight from the origin, not through middlemen.

Add that to outstanding customer service, and it’s a huge “win” all round.

Here is the formula for my own custom blend:

8 parts Darjeeling Rhapsody No. 22 (aka Darjeeling Sungma Summer)*

4 parts Assam Harmony*

2 parts Ceylon Sonata*

1 part Keemun Encore*

Brewed up in Adagio’s IngenuiTEA Pot, it’s DE-lish!

And even though my blend is made of top-quality gourmet tea, each cup costs only about 25 cents!

If you’re looking for a tea supplier, you can do no better than Adagio.

* (The lovely tea images above are from Adagio’s site!)

Postmodernism as a Wall

A while back, I thought about going into academics. I was working on a Masters in the humanities and all was well except … I just couldn’t do postmodernism.

Maybe it’s my background in the hard sciences, but when people would say that nothing really exists, it was difficult for me not to respond, “Well, why don’t you just give me all your money then? It exists to me.” When recognized experts insisted that words have no intrinsic meaning, I fought with myself not to say, “Well then, why should I pay you to teach me? Why shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

Yet I do see value in postmodernism. To me, it’s kind of like a wall. Not the Great Wall of China – more like a wall in an obstacle course or a garden wall.

I can take my ideas, opinions, and theories and bounce them off that wall, paying attention to which direction they bounce and how far, etc. This kind of testing of our ideas can reveal hidden presuppositions and prejudices, helping us to refine out thoughts and better line them up with reality. I was doing that instinctively before I even knew what postmodernism was.

The wall is really useful, but …

You can’t live on it. And I think maybe that’s where people go wrong.

They try to live on a vertical surface, instead of on the ground. It’s a little like the ancient pillar saint Simeon Stylites. To be sure, it’s an achievement to live your life in such an unlikely position. But gravity will catch up with you at some point, and then what’s it all been for?

 

Originally posted July 26, 2009 on White Tree Ideas