Daily Bookmarks 7/29/09

• Here’s a Free PowerPoint Template & How I Made It – The Rapid eLearning Blog

  Excellent post from Tom about using inspiration from well designed websites to create PowerPoint templates for elearning. Includes a 30 minute screencast and a zipped file of all the elements created.

  tags: powerpoint, elearning, templates, articulate, howto, rapid elearning

• eLearn: Best Practices – Seven Steps to Better E-learning – Annotated

  "…a distillation of cognitive research on learning intended to make your e-learning more effective, and to create a better experience for the learner. These seven principles integrate cognitive and emotional components of learning, and the more that happens, the greater the outcomes."

If you have Diigo, I’ve added some highlights and notes on this page.

tags: E-Learning, elearning, education, pedagogy, learning, elearn, theory

• Create The Fanciest Dropdown Menu You Ever Saw | Web Design Tutorials | Creating a Website | Learn Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver

  An easy to follow tutorial on creating dropdown menus with CSS and jquery. It also includes zip files of the images, css and jquery used in the tutorial.

  tags: dropdown, menu, dropdown menu, jquery, webdesign, web design, web2.0, css, webdesigndev

• Use Bloom’s Taxonomy Wheel for Writing Learning Outcomes

  Several versions of Bloom’s Taxonomy for use in developing learning outcomes and related activities. Rather handy, actually!

  tags: education, e-learning, elearning, web2.0, tools, zaidlearn, edtech, bloom’s, bloom’s taxonomy, learning objectives

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Cathy Moore’s “5 Ways to Make Linear Navigation More Interesting”

I really enjoy Cathy Moore’s take on eLearning and instructional design. She makes me laugh, think and apply what I’ve learned from her and those who comment on her blog. In the following Slideshare, Cathy offers a few suggestions on how to make horrible elearning (or just regular) PowerPoint presentations just a little more palatable.

Are there any other tips or tricks you could add to the five ways to make linear navigation more interesting?

I can think of at least one: challenge learners’ preconceptions. For example, start with “everyone knows A,” then use the other tips Cathy mentions and some sound logic as to why “A” is so obviously wrong, and end with “but A isn’t true/real/applicable.”

Of course, challenging learners’ preconceptions may fall under the “Create a Dilemma” or the “Contrast & Compare” tips. What do you think?