We're kicking off our 20-year anniversary celebration at DevLearn being held this week in Las Vegas! If you are in the area or attending, please stop by our booth, say hi, and check out out the latest and greatest ZebraZapps authoring and publishing system—and to tempt the tastebuds—treat yourself to a cupcake...who can turn down a cupcake?!
by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist | @ethanaedwards
by Angel Green, senior instructional strategist | @learneradvocate
by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist
by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist
Well, it’s “Back-to-School” time. Ads all around are urging students of all ages to get new jeans and new notebooks and pencils and crayons. Often our children, if not heading off to entirely new institutions of learning, are almost certainly joining new classrooms and meeting new teachers and schoolmates. There’s something wonderful about this annual opportunity to start afresh. We can leave the problems of a few months ago--tattered notebooks, ill-fitting clothes, seemingly pointless subjects (I just read about the controversy whether cursive writing is obsolete and should not be taught), annoying teachers—behind us as we try new things.
by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist
The core of the SAM Process we use at Allen Interactions is “iterative design.” While the word “iterative” is perfectly descriptive, I fear it isn’t very useful in general discourse, as it relies on a rather specific technical definition of the word “iterative” to convey meaning. In general use, iterations are simply repetitions, sometimes repetitions of the same thing over and over--which frankly seems like a bad idea to incorporate into a results-oriented process. We’re really using the term “iterations”, though, in its mathematical sense. In mathematics, there are lots of problem solving techniques: applying a proven formula to a well-defined problem, deduction using fundamental logic to chain justify the truth of a statement, etc. In the method of iteration, or successive approximation, a problem is solved by proposing a series of candidate solutions, each one building on the preceding attempt, until a desired degree of accuracy is achieved.
