If what you’re doing isn’t worth sharing, then why are you doing it?

“This Is How I Do That.”

TOPIARIES

While it isn’t exactly “teaching,” per se, showing your work can go a long way toward helping others learn.

Pearl Fryar, one of South Carolina’s treasures, owns a gorgeous topiary garden he makes free to the public. He’s a popular speaker and frequently provides demonstrations of his work to community organizations. Taking up a pair of electric clippers, he goes to work on a plant, just talking through what he’s doing as he goes: “This is how I do that.” Likewise, there are thousands of YouTube videos on everything from “Here’s How I Built That Deck” to “How I Use PowerPoint to Create Custom Art” to “How I play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on a Guitar.” This can be enormously helpful to the practitioner trying to learn, especially one who’s a bit past the basics and just wants to see someone else’s practice. Want to know more about Pearl Fryar and his work? He’s the subject of the indie film documentary A Man Named Pearl.

DOCTORS IN SURGERY WEARING GOOGLE GLASS

Lucien Engelen of ReShape Glass describes initial experiments in having surgeons wear Google Glass while performing operations. Rather than duplicate existing medical video technologies, he found that Glass (which can be broadcast live as well as be recorded for later viewing) gave observers a better first-person view of the work. Unlike technology that allowed for fixed-camera or over-the-shoulder views, Google Glass allows students to look through the surgeon’s eyes.

DETAILED BRANCHING E-LEARNING SCENARIO

Graphic artist and instructional designer Kevin Thorn’s award-winning online course “Mission: Turfgrass” takes the learner on a journey more sophisticated than the usual read-click-read-click.

As learners complete the “mission” objectives they accumulate items in a rucksack.

Building this requires careful hyperlinking between the slides (learner achieves objective 1, item goes into rucksack, learner begins objective 2... learner skips to objective 4...). To illustrate how this was built, Thorn offers this schematic.

COOKIES BECOME A BUSINESS

Here’s a true story of the payoffs of showing work, adapted from an article that first appeared in Learning Solutions Magazine. Gloria Mercer, a retired elementary school art teacher, needed surgery on her dominant hand in October 2011 and was told she’d have to find a way to rebuild her strength and dexterity. Thinking, “You should mix something fun with something you need to do, right?” she decided to teach herself to create elaborately decorated bakery-style cookies. Gloria started with YouTube videos, many provided by bloggers whose work she then followed. A lot of her learning was through practice and trial-and-error. And along the way she decided to share her project with her Facebook friends, mostly because she investing so much time in it and was learning so much from others who were showing their work. Many of her photos included comments about what she was learning, and how.

As Gloria became familiar with the videos and blogs, she developed a growing awareness of an existing active community of people with similar interests. She began engaging with some of the bloggers, asking questions and sharing her own answers. Gloria’s daughter Marlo and Gloria’s friend Whitney, seeing Gloria’s creations on Facebook, decided they wanted to learn, too. Soon they started sharing what they were learning; all were participating with the explicit mutual goal of getting better at their new craft (per Etienne Wenger, this is the very definition of a community of practice). As they worked they emerged as contributing members of a true community of practice, with production of artifacts (recipes, actual cookies, and pictures of them), a repertoire (libraries of cutters and techniques mastered, like cartoon characters and airbrushing, and a specialized vocabulary with meaning mostly for other cookie bakers). As they went along, their friends watched, encouraged, suggested cookie ideas, and commented. Eventually, Gloria began teaching others.

Now? Gloria continues to work on her technique, but cookies remain for her only a hobby. Marlo started and operates Coastline Cookies in Midlothian, VA, USA. Whitney started and operates Beach House Cookies in Virginia Beach, VA, USA.

January 3, 2012

January 10

January 13

January 18. Gloria says she still can’t make her hand and icing “do what she wants.” Gloria’s daughter Marlo, 125 miles away, joins in, as does Gloria’s friend Whitney. Gloria describes the need to “stop and stand back” when learning to decorate.

February 2012: Marlo and her husband Mike begin taking orders for cookies. Marlo obtains a business license and Coastline Cookies is born.

April 2012

May 2012: Spinoff learning: Marlo learns web design so she can launch and manage the Coastline Cookies site.

http://www.coastlinecookies.com/

August 2012: Spinoff learning: Gloria moves on to learning about heat guns, quilting, and cookie photography.

There are so many lessons to be gleaned from this case: the social aspect of publishing your learning, getting feedback and encouragement from friends, and helping other friends as they learn; the fact that enthusiasm can be contagious; the willingness to share and not keep everything to yourself; the real ways that knowledge is “owned” and shared; the organic ways that networks grow.

And more to be learned here: that learning often spawns the desire for additional learning (like web design and photography); the futility of believing we can “capture” knowledge as discrete pieces of data in a spreadsheet; that “generations” has nothing to do with anything; the ways in which social technologies can accelerate learning and give it geographic reach; and the value of a community truly committed to improving practice.

This is social learning. This is informal learning. This is narrating our work.

MAKING AN RSA-STYLE VIDEO

Teacher Paul Bogush embarked on a project that involved having his middle-school students create an RSA-style video. You know, one of those that shows a hand sketching out images as a presenter talks. He blogs about his rationale, the experience, and lessons learned at http://blogush.edublogs.org/2012/12/26/how-to-make-rsa-animate-style-videos-with-your-class/:

“This is a unit that was built from the beginning to end with an RSA Animate style video. Please be careful about just slapping any technology onto a unit to make it better. If the unit does not need it, then it is probably best to leave it out. What we have in education is the Instagramafication of teachers’ units. Just like people think that they can take a poorly composed picture and spiff it up with Instagram filters and it will suddenly become breathtaking, the same thing is happening in classrooms. Don’t just slap on a piece of technology, or in this case an RSA style video at the end just because you can. It won’t magically make your unit breathtakingly awesome. You really have to start off by asking why? Why is this tool or method necessary for the success of this unit?

So let’s start there...

2012 was coming to a close and I still noticed some important things that my kids could not do yet. They had a lot of trouble making connections between things that they read, not only across multiple sources, but even in a single one. They were seeing each paragraph, each sentence as individual disconnected facts. My guess is that maybe this came from years of “read the chapter, answer the question, spit the question back” without having to put the facts together into a story and make connections between them. It sounds silly, but yes, what you are reading in the third paragraph happened because of what happened in the first paragraph.

The other problem was that the words they were reading were just that...words. If they read Benjamin Franklin traveled to France, in their heads he just magically appeared there. If they read George Washington crossed the Delaware River, they never pictured a boat...or even water. They are used to simply just reading words and playing a matching game with the questions they received for classwork or homework. One student during this project actually told me that he was having trouble because in the past he would just write down everything from the paragraph and some of it had to answer the question. They also still struggle with reading something long, and making it short...getting right to the point. Another struggle is supporting their point with information from the text they read, and then putting the whole darn thing back into a story.

As I thought about these problems, I decided that making RSA Animate style videos would address all of these. It was an easy way to make them visualize their information, make connections, and re-tell their facts in a story that had a very tight story line that flowed. All skills that would transfer nicely to any traditional essay. I decided on a very straightforward topic, the Louisiana Purchase, and examined it in a very straightforward way without going into some of the nuances of the deal. I also decided to use the textbook as the main source. I have faced the reality that the kids will be reading a social studies textbook and anything I could do to make it less scary allow them to read it more fluently will be a huge help in the next 4-8 years of their life. We also did not have any time for multiple source research, so the text was our default source.

DAY ONE-DIRECTIONS AND READING

On the first day I handed out the directions:

Get to the point...

A great story teller once told me that you should never tell the audience the “point” of your story. Youshould let them figure it out and whatever they interpret as the “point” is correct. She said that is is ok to let an audience walk away with multiple interpretations of a story.

Hogwash...

Sometimes you need to “Get to the Point” and this project is one of those times.

Here is your problem...you need to tell the story of the Louisiana Purchase and at the end of the story it needs to have a crystal clear point. Nobody viewing the story should miss the point. A three year old listening to your story while jumping on a pogo stick should be able to get your point. Get my point? We will do these stories in a style made famous by RSA Animate. We will watch several examples in class.

The set-up:

Read pages 298-301 in your textbook. Break the story into ten parts, with each part having three pics. Use the staircase method that I will demonstrate in class.
Write a whu-ha-ha linking each stair (better listen to the in class explanation on that one eh?).
At the top of the stairs write your one sentence “point” you will make with your story.
Sketch out each of the pics
Write the narration for the pics
As you write the narration, decide which pics will need captions
As you write the narration, decide which pics will need additional writing to help with a transition from one to another

This is more complicated than it seems. You are telling a story with three mediums: voice, pictures, and written words. Mix them together to suck your audience into your point.

I then showed them some examples of RSA videos. We found a few created by schoolchildren.

At this point it was still hard to figure out how we were going to go from information in a textbook to an RSA Animate style video. I was very honest with them about how I had no idea and we needed to figure out how to do it all together because there was no template out there for us to follow.

The first work they did was to simply read the pages in the textbook on the Louisiana Purchase. I made them put their notebooks and pens away so that they could not take any notes as they read. The idea being that I wanted them to get the whole picture first, instead of picking it apart and writing everything that they read. Next they made ten steps, and placed one point from the story on each step. Each step had to connect to the one prior to it. They were able to have no more than ten, no less than nine. This was not random, I did this beforehand and determined that based on what they read, 10 was the appropriate number. When a kid asked if they could have 14, I knew they were watering something down, and if they asked if they could have 6 I knew they were missing a point in the story. By having ten I actually somewhat dictating what they would write without them knowing it.

Under each step they had to place three facts supporting their step. We talked about how without support the steps would collapse, and without connecting them a listener would “fall through” and not get the story straight. They had to label each step before writing the supports, and could only support each with three things. Again, based on me doing this I thought that was appropriate. At this point after reading the story, creating the steps, and then evaluating which facts to use for support they had processed the information three times and when listening to them trying to figure out which facts to use could help them making decision based on what happened in prior steps, and what was needed to make the next step make sense.

DAY 2-DRAWINGS

On the second day they tried to figure out how they would visualize each supporting fact. They had to have at least one image per fact. They also had to figure out what types of captions and labels they would need.

Many kids were concerned about their drawing ability so I told them a story about a bobcat sitting next to three bushes and then drew a very simple picture of a bobcat sitting next to three bushes. Now what do you see in the image above? A bobcat and bushes right? I then told them a story about a rabbit sitting next to three giant heads of lettuce and drew the same picture. I pointed to the rabbit and asked them “what is this?” The whole class said rabbit. Then I pointed to the “lettuce” and the whole class said lettuce. So I acted a bit confused since it was the same picture and they had just identified the animal as a bobcat...ah-ha moment. People will believe anything you tell them. Everyone became more comfortable. Then I made a big mistake...I told them to make their drawings very simple. They made them too simple and took so little time to draw that when the film speed was increased some drawings were barely visible.

DAY THREE-DRESS REHEARSAL...SORT OF

On day three I made a decision to have them sketch out their entire drawing from start to finish before writing their script.

This ended up being a good decision. They really needed to see what their final product was going to look like and this added a jolt of excitement into the project that made them pay more attention to their scripts the next day. It is absolutely necessary that a day gets devoted to practice. After watching, there is no way they could have gone from little pictures next to their steps to doing this for film. Many kids sketched it out on small paper before going large...something I would require next year since it really helped to do a quick version first before going big.

When they did a full scale practice some used roll paper and some used whiteboards. I like the idea of having them do it on a large sheet of paper, even though they might eventually do it on a whiteboard. This way they see everything they have drawn and don’t forget where they just were, and could look back to help remind them as to where they are going. The same impact could be had on a whiteboard by telling them to not erase anything.

THE PRACTICE DAY WAS SERIOUSLY ORCHESTRATED CHAOS!

When they were done many groups went back and edited images to make them fit and flow better. The kids that did it on paper simply rolled it up so they could use it the next day, kids who did it on whiteboards took pictures with their phones.

DAY FOUR-RECORD THE VIDEOS

The day we recorded the videos was simply wild. Everyone knew that we had just this one day to record, so they could not start over very many times. I would guess that the average group took about thirty-five minutes to get together, set-up, and record.

The filming went so much better than I anticipated. We really had no idea how to do this so everyone figured it out as we went along. What they learned is that a very tiny camera starts to get very heavy after 20 minutes so they started to set-up in some very creative ways and each class took the best ideas of the previous one.

It was important to stress that the kids filming needed to zoom in and focus on what was being drawn. So if a kid was drawing a person, the person should fill the the camera screen. It was also important to stay as still as possible...and I bet you can’t guess why. Let’s say a kid filming moves ever so slightly while filming, so little that when you watch it you don’t even notice it. Now increase the speed of the film 5x...it becomes unwatchable. Luckily what saved us is that on youtube you can click on enhancements, and then stabilize. Without that feature most of the videos would have been unusable.

Some groups did start using tripods-I have two in the class. A huge difference is seen in the final videos that used tripods, but the camera was not able to move as freely...so still undecided what to do next year.

The supplies we needed were actually easier to get than I thought. 3M donated cameras to our school system, but I think between phones and kids bringing in cheap digital cameras we would have been covered. At least a couple kids in each class used their own camera or phone. We used 12 whiteboard markers, which by the end of the day were trashed. Maybe four were still usable. Whiteboard cleaner was a must! We went through two bottles, or at least some kind of cleanser because so much writing was done that in between classes we really needed to totally clean each board. Our wet paper towels stopped working after the first class. Another thing that we figured out is that paper towels and whiteboard erasers simply didn’t cut it after a while. We took some sweatshirts that had been in lost and found for months and cut them up. That might have been the best idea of the week.

I had a big roll of white paper that we used that a student teacher left behind ten years ago! The big roll paper used for bulletin boards would have also worked. We used the whiteboard in class, you could fit three groups at once, and I also had a sheet of shower board at home that I cut into four pieces. We also went through a bunch of masking tape. The kids needed it to tape up their practice sheets from the following day so they were easier to follow.

We also established a checklist and place to return everything. You now how it goes...first period accidentally walks off with one marker, second period 2 more markers, by last class you have one marker. So everyone froze before leaving and someone went through the check-list to make sure everything was back where it belonged.

It was important to stress to the kids that they could talk during the filming and give directions and think out loud. The audio in these videos would eventually be muted. Many groups tried to be very quiet out of instinct!

Below is what it would have sounded like if you were in the hallway filming with the kids. You’ll see, the above images and videos make the reality much more peaceful!

DAY FIVE-WRITE THE SCRIPTS

I am still going to go with it was a good idea to write the script after the images. Doing the images first allowed them to visualize what they were going to write about, better understand it, and allowed the scripts to flow better and sound more like narration rather than essays. Scripts are absolutely necessary. No one could come up the next day without one. Even the kids who knew the story by heart had to have a script. Simple reasons why...we had enough time the next day to have each group come in and do one take. They would be sitting down and watching their video for the first time, it would be 5-7 times faster than when they originally did it, they would have to be able to on the fly go faster or slower to keep up with the video, and simply no one’s brain can do all that processing and keep up. One single ummm would be enough to throw off the entire thing. There was no issue writing the scripts because they essentially just took their supporting details under each step and made them into sentences. While the students were writing the scripts I spent the day processing the videos. We don’t have very good computers. The 2gb of RAM is not enough to process a twenty minute video quickly. In my head these were going to be two minute videos, but I forgot that the original file would be around 10-30 minutes long. That is how long it took the kids to film their videos in real time. The videos were shot at 720p, which resulted in a huge huge file. Too big to put into MovieMaker and have the kids watch and narrate at the same time. The file was so large that if we tried to watch it at 5x speed it would freeze. So while they wrote the scripts, I placed each video into MovieMaker, sped it up 5X, and then rendered it into another file.

Each video could take 15++ minutes. I started at 6am and finished at 3:30pm. To give you an idea...using a simple school laptop with 2GB of Ram, each minute of video would take one minute to get loaded into the video editing software, and then to save it as a movie would take almost 2 mins per minute of video. Again...cruddy laptop. Almost every laptop in the world has more than 2 GB of Ram and would do this process faster. One idea next time is to take lower quality video, or do larger groups so there would be fewer videos. If you have better computers, this probably won’t be that big of an issue. Also keep in mind that you might need a universal card reader to get the videos off of your camera or cell phones.

DAY SIX-RECORD THE NARRATION

When the kids came in to record the narration they knew that they would have a 5 minute block of time. So they could make a mistake at the beginning, and re-do, but other wise it was probably a one shot deal. So is our schedule in school and the reality is that I knew that there would be people in our community who would not approve of us doing this and spending multiple days on scripts would not be a good thing. If you have time and support for big projects, I think three days would be a perfect amount of time. One day for practice, and two days to record groups with enough time for multiple takes.

Because we were short on time, and quality computers I had a crazy set-up.

I had two computers hooked up. I would have two videos set-up when the class walked in. One group would be recording using one, then I would switch to the other. While the second group was recording I would save the first movie that was narrated and then load up another video on that computer. It is very important to remember that you need to mute the volume in the original video so that their narration is the only audio. So looking at the picture above, the kids are recording their narration on computer #2, and up on the screen #6 is their video playing at 5X speed. I used a very simple microphone #5 that I threw into the middle of the table. While they are doing this computer #1 is saving the narration from the last group, and then I will load up a video for the next group on #1.

So how to switch between the two computers? I had a microphone #3 and speakers #4 hooked into the computer the girls are recording into, and as soon as they were done I would flip the microphone and speakers to computer #1.

To get the video up on screen I had to take the cable that ran to the projector #1 and simply switch it to the computer being used to record. Since my desktop computer obviously does not have a monitor directly connected to it, after you disconnect #1 from it you would have to reconnect the monitor #3 to where #1 was so that you can see what is happening on the desktop while kids are recording using the laptop. Easier than I made it sound! The recordings went smoothly, some kids came back during lunches to either re-do it, or to do it again because they simply kept making mistakes the first time.

Here is a video of a group recording at lunch so the set-up is a bit different.

We added music just messing around to one and what we found was interesting. I think the music is necessary because the kids simply are not great script writers yet and the music makes it more interesting. It also helps fill in the dead air when they got stuck or had nothing to say. Because they did not see the videos before narrating they had no way of knowing how long each step would be, and I only had time to make each video 5X faster than normal, so if we had time we could have messed with the speed, or even changed the speed throughout the video, but again we had 5 minutes per group. The music also helped block out the background sounds of feet shuffling, sniffles, and doors opening and closing. We just threw a bunch of songs into a folder and just slapped on into each video. Again if we spent more time I think choosing the right music and matching it to the action would have been awesome.

We have 17 videos finished, and will do the rest after break. They are all “finished,” we just have to pop the music into most of them and upload. Here is a playlist with the completed videos.

THINGS I WISH I DID...

Had more rags available
More cleaner
No more than 8 groups per class
Have the kids be more complex in their drawings, and draw slower. There is no rush while filming the drawing.
Have kids write key words on board that match key words in script to make it easier to glance up and see where they are
Fix cameras on tripods, music stands, anything
Better directions for camera people
Have each video end with a zoom out so that entire board could be seen
I didn’t have enough time to go over anyone’s drawing or scripts in any detail...which is why you hear almost every kid say things like “Haiti.” Modern name, not historically accurate.
Wish added one more day, we never got to really add just a bit more to the research and writing about the implications of the purchase
Keep in mind, this was our first time, so I kept it simple, maybe next time each video focuses on one aspect of the Purchase, like the Constitutionality of the purchase

This is an activity for any class, not just social studies. Also, pretty much any obstacle you can think of can be overcome. Even if you paired your kids up and each pair did one step and one did only one video per class.

We also talked at the end about how no professional would have worked under the constraints we did. You can read about how one professional did her film by clicking —> here. My kids did an incredible job considering the time and supplies they had. Imagine if they had a chance to practice their drawings twice! Narrate once, check for sound, and then do it again...I could go on and on. It’s just if you can give more time to this than I did please do. I think the final products would be awesome. Remember that what you read about happened during 45 minute periods, so after the teacher yapped for about ten minutes they had about 35 minutes of work time each period. This was also done with incredibly mixed classes. My kids are super, but we are from average town America. If we could do it, so can you and your kids.

Quick common core connection at the end here...one of the things that could be positive about the common core standards is that they want kids to behave like professionals. Do the things, read the things, create the things that real professional artists, historians, scientists, and authors do. I just also hope that they give us the same amount of time that real professionals spend on their tasks. I can only dream of being in a place where we could have spent a week researching, a week preparing, and a week recording...along with decent equipment.

So if you made it this far, you have got to try this. Come back and leave some advice in the comments. I feel like I need to do this for at least three more years before I have a good handle on it!

“THIS IS WHAT I DO ALL DAY”: MÉDICINS SANS FRONTIÉRS/DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

We make assumptions that we know what others do all day: “he’s just a pencil pusher,” “teachers spend all their time in front of a classroom,” “the Project Managers are always in meetings.” Finding out what colleagues actually do all day can go a long way toward breaking down silos, finding common ground, understanding another’s situation and context—thereby building better ideas for communicating and working together—and locating expertise across the organization or across disciplines.

Here’s an example of a “day in the life” from Médicins Sans Frontiérs (MSF)/Doctors Without Borders: “Follow us today as Canadian Doctor Anne Marie Pegg updates a day in the life of a humanitarian aid worker on International Women’s Day.” The organization posted on both their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/msf.english and via Twitter. Here are some Tweets from that day, captured in Storify http://storify.com/MSF_Canada/a-day-in-the-life-of-anne-marie-pegg-msf-doctor-in

Médicins Sans Frontiéres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, exclusion from healthcare, and natural disasters in more than seventy countries. To learn more visit www.msf.org.

“THIS IS HOW I SPENT THIS DAY”: DESIGNING A MOBILE APP

Designer Kevin Thorn was offering a workshop on building a simple performance support reference tool to use on a mobile device. He took photos throughout the day and posted them to a Facebook group of designer friends to show us both the steps in building the actual product and how he taught it. Participants moved from brainstorming ideas, to using index cards to lay out a storyboard of their idea, to wireframing (sketching out how it will look/work to the user), building a prototype, and publishing it online to be accessed on a device. As Kevin was posting photos in real-time, those watching could offer suggestions and ask questions as well.

“THIS IS WHAT I DO”: THE CONSULTANT

Consultant Steve Woodruff (Clarity Therapist: http://www.stevewoodruff.com/) shares notes from a breakfast meeting at which he helps a client find focus for a job search based on her past roles.

“THIS IS HOW I DECIDED”: VISUAL DESIGN CHOICES

Kathy Sierra (aka Seriouspony) reminds us that interviewing experts is often pointless as they really don’t know how they made a decision. Finding the few who can, and watching how through reflection and articulation they can share that, might help.

37 Signals designer Mig Reyes talks about the importance of choosing the right font to support your message.

Designing Outward

“Blog” has such a temporary, read-and-forget tone to it. On SvN, we take our time writing and editing every article. So rather than treating this like a “blog,” I shifted the mindset to that of a tenured publication. So, the entire rede sign process starte d with typesetting the post, and designing outward.

Instead of poring over other blogs, I spent a week studying books, magazines, and of course, Bringhurst. Capturing the right feel for body text was step one—it sets the tone frorn here on out.

Perhaps it’s me, but there’s something about 13px sans-serif faces on the web that feels like “my Raus app just spit this out of a database.” I want you to read arricles, not text rendered on a screen, Kepler, set at a comfortable size. wound up being a beautiful serif that added the touch of humanity I was looking for. Setring the headlines in Acta added to the look I was going for, and Freight Sans wound up being a great sans-serif pairing.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3285-the-typography-and-layout-behind-the-new-signal-vs-noise-redesign

“THIS IS HOW I DECIDED”: YAMMER

Yammer offers an overview of the product. The video is at https://player.vimeo.com/video/66173844

“THIS IS WHAT I DID TODAY”: ATTENDING A CONFERENCE

Craig Taylor traveled from England to attend the DevLearn conference in Las Vegas. At the end of each day he offered recaps of the sessions he’d attended, along with key takeaways, to share with colleagues back at home. At the time this screenshot was taken, more than seventy people had viewed it.

“THIS IS WHAT I LEARNED TODAY”: ATTENDING A WEBINAR

Heidi Matthews tweeted her takeaway from a webinar session, sharing her notes with the public and with the facilitator.

“THIS IS HOW I LEARNED THAT”: HOW I TAUGHT MYSELF...

Startup ZenCap’s founder David Sinsky regularly blogs about what he’s working on. The following blog post gives an overview of a self-directed learning project and ends with a short recruitment pitch.

How I Taught Myself to Code in Eight Weeks

21 Tuesday Aug 2012

(originally posted on the Yipit Django blog, later reposted on Lifehacker)

To a lot of non-developers, learning to code seems like an impossibly daunting task. However, thanks to a number of great resources that have recently been put online for free—teaching yourself to code has never been easier. I started learning to code earlier this year and can say from experience that learning enough to build your own prototype is not as hard as it seems. In fact, if you want to have a functioning prototype within two months without taking a day off work, it’s completely doable.

Below, I’ve outlined a simple path from knowing nothing about software development to having a working prototype in eight weekends that roughly mirrors the steps I took.

INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO THE WEB STACK (10 MINUTES)

The presence of unfamiliar terminology makes any subject seem more confusing than it actually is. Yipit founder/CEO Vin Vacanti has a great overview of some of the key terms you’ll want to be familiar with in language you’ll understand.

GET AN INTRODUCTORY GRASP OF PYTHON AND GENERAL PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES (1 WEEKEND)

Learn Python the hard way: Despite the title, the straightforward format makes learning basic concepts really easy and most lessons take less than 10 minutes. However, I found that the format didn’t work as well for some of the more advanced topics, so I’d recommend stopping after lesson 42 and moving on.
Google’s Python class: Read the notes and/or watch the videos and do all of the associated exercises until you get them right—without looking at the answers. Struggling through the exercises I kept getting wrong was the best learning experience. I would have learned far less had I just looked at the answers and tried to convince myself that I understood the concepts.

These two resources are somewhat substitutable and complementary. I recommend doing the first few lessons from both to see which you like better. Once you’ve finished one, skim through the other looking for concepts you aren’t fully comfortable with as a way to get some extra practice.

GET AN INTRODUCTORY UNDERSTANDING OF DJANGO (1 WEEKEND)

Work through the Django tutorial.
Delete all your code.
Work through the tutorial again, from scratch.

The first time I went through the tutorial I inevitably ended up just following the instructions step-by-step without really understanding what each step did since everything felt so new.

The second time through I wasn’t as focused on the newness of the concepts was better able to focus on understanding how all the parts work together.

GET A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF PYTHON/GENERAL PROGRAMMING CONCEPTS (2-4 WEEKENDS)

Udacity’s intro CS class: Udacity’s courses are generally 7 session classes (2-3 hours per session) that you can at your own pace. (I’m a huge fan of Udacity’s pedagogy and recommend the intermediate programming class or the web development class as follow-ups to this two-month curriculum.)
Unit 1 of MIT’s intro CS course: Really well taught and surprisingly approachable.

Again, I would sample each and see which you like the best. I ended up doing both but that was probably overkill.

PRACTICE BUILDING SIMPLE WEB APPLICATIONS (1 WEEKEND)

Work through a few of the exercises in Django by example. These exercises don’t hold your hand quite as much as the Django tutorial but they still provide a fair bit of guidance so I found it to be a nice way to start taking the training wheels off.

BUILD YOUR PROTOTYPE (1 WEEKEND)

Build a prototype in just one weekend? Yes, you’ll be embarrassed by what it looks like (I sure was) but that’s the whole point.

That’s it. Eight weekends (or less) and you’ve gone from zero to a functioning prototype. Not so daunting after all is it?

Author’s Note: It goes without saying that there’s a huge difference between the relatively cursory amount of knowledge needed to build a simple prototype (the focus of this post) and the depth of knowledge and experience needed to be a truly qualified software engineer. If you want to learn all that it takes to build modern web applications at scale, getting professional web development experience at a fast-growing startup like Yipit is a great next step. If you’re smart, hard-working, and passionate about creating amazing consumer web experiences drop us a line at jobs@yipit.com—we’re always looking for great people to join our team.

http://dsinsky.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/how-i-taught-myself-to-code-in-eight-weeks/

“THIS IS WHY I LEARNED THAT”: NEW EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING

New Hires at Aspen Dental are required to post to the class blog, explaining not just what they are doing but what they are learning and how that learning fits into the bigger organizational picture. This can be enormously helpful to the new hire who doesn’t always understand why a process or practice exists, or the importance of following it.

Used with permission from Aspen Dental Management, Inc.

“THIS IS HOW I LEARNED THAT”: USING NEW WEB TOOLS

Terry Brock learned to publish to blog from iPad by creating a video talking about how he ... published to blog from iPad. From http://terrybrock.com.

“THIS IS HOW A GOVERNMENT AGENCY SHOWS ITS WORK”: THE UK MINISTRY OF JUSTICE DIGITAL SERVICES BLOG

In an age when government seeks to be more transparent to its taxpaying public, the UK Ministry of Justice’s Digital Services offers a refreshing, frequently updated blog featuring real people enacting real work, free of bureaucratese and the usual obfuscation. The blog includes the services’ live Twitter feed offering shorter, more frequent updates. It is very explicit: “This is what this government agency does. This is who does it. This is what it involves. This is what is accomplishes. This is where your money is going.”

“THIS IS HOW I CREATED THAT”: MATT GUYAN

“Showing My Work”

Recently at my workplace, I’ve been involved in a project to train a group of employees to become relief operators for some items of plant (which are machines like tractors, graders, excavators and trucks). I was working on this project with the HR Co-ordinator and the L&D Officer for the outdoor staff in our organisation. My role as the instructional designer was to develop some materials to help the new operators learn how to drive and use the various machines (there were 9 different types in all).

Armed with a Sony Handycam, we met with each operator who was also our subject matter expert (SME). The reason for filming was that we thought it would be easier to capture what the SME was saying and showing, rather than having to make lots of notes and take photos. The SME took us through the pre-start checks, what the cabin controls are used for and how to perform some of the operating tasks—things that a new person would need to know about. I filmed the SMEs as they talked about their machine and explained how it worked. After this, I went through the footage and took snapshots to create images (using VLC media player). I then annotated the images using the SMEs descriptions and explanations. It all came together in a ‘New Operator Guide’ for each piece of plant.

The footage turned out pretty well especially given it was unscripted (although, no Oscar this year!). As a result, we also decided to burn the footage to disc and give this to the new operator to go with the guide.

All of the guides followed a similar format—Entering and Exiting, Pre-start Checks, Cabin Controls and Operation. The aim was to keep it as simple as possible and easy to follow. Safety was also important, given that the items of plant can be quite dangerous if used incorrectly.

As always, the guides were given back to the SMEs for review and comment. This was then incorporated into the guide. The operators were very passionate about their item of plant, so it was great to talk to them and work with them. The materials will essentially be a support for the new operators to supplement the practice sessions they will receive until they are competent (which will take some time).

Here are a few samples taken from different guides:

In this example, we can see how to enter and exit the vehicle safely. The ‘Key Safety Tip’ boxes were a suggestion from the Safety Officer who I also sent the guides to for feedback from a safety perspective. The tips are used throughout all of the guides and generally, the information came from the Work Method Statements (WMS) for the particular item of plant.

The pre-start checks are completed each day before operating the piece of plant. I wanted to step the learners through the process. This example comes from the grader and shows how to check the engine area. Where possible, I’ve tried to orientate the learner to where a small part sits within a larger area. I’ve done this by magnifying the views of some parts. This way the learner can see where the item sits within the overall picture and then gets some enhanced detail of the part—in this case the isolation switch and a light switch.

This example shows the cabin controls from one of the trucks. These varied in complexity from machine to machine. For ones that had many controls, I again used the method that showed the whole thing and then enlarged relevant sections which were labelled.

The final part was to show how to operate parts of the machine. This example shows some of the steps to fill a pothole.

The real test will be when the new operators receive the materials once the program starts. I intend to talk with them to gather feedback from their perspective as a learner that I can then incorporate into the materials for future groups.

http://learningsnippets.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/showing-my-work-1/

“THIS IS WHAT I DID”: DEMOFEST

While work in progress is often interesting, sometimes it makes sense to show work after the fact. Many people already do this by publishing completed presentations to sites like SlideShare or storing them on shared internal spaces.

As part of the annual DevLearn Conference, the eLearning Guild hosts “Demofest,” at which learning experience designers are invited to showcase their best work. While there is a competition/award ceremony/prize component, the dozens of entrants value the recognition for their work (which often trickles back to the company) and enjoy discussing it with their peers. Attendees rave about the value of seeing what others have done, with a chance to talk with them about how they did it.

**DevLearn DemoFest photo courtesy eLearning Guild.**

“THIS IS WHAT I DID”: HOW I SOLVED A PROBLEM

Steve Hopkins blogged about how he solved a problem by taking it to a Yammer community.

“THIS IS WHAT I DID, AND WHY”: BRUNO WINCK AND UX DESIGN

Bruno Winck is working to create a better experience for users accessing his company’s site from their smart phones.

Prototyping the new UX design

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Bruno Winck

I wish to share how I’m designing the new UX for Kneaver.

The goal is to streamline the use of Kneaver, specially on smart phones, according to common scenarios (taking notes in urgence, searching for information while doing something else, reviewing while idle, etc..)

Following advices from Mayra, Andrew and posts from LukeW, I started with the smallest breakpoint : handsets (480∗320). I will use responsive design inside a native app.

So what I wish is:

Use paper, pencil, stay away from the computer while designing. Not disturbed, not tempted to lookup existing stuff, not tempted by perfectionism.
Being able to reuse and redo
Explore different aspects, different scenarios, storyboards.

It turns out that even with the lastest HTML5 technology we also end up with only different screens and region changes. So I use cards readily available in commerce, 7.5×12.5, squared. Roughly the size and aspect ratio (1.66 for 1.5) of a small smartphone. I number them in the back. I place them of a sheet of paper, surround them by a large black marker border.

It’s small, I can play with it, bring it outside and try to manipulate it while walking. All cards form a deck and suffice to pick a card to simulate a change of screen.
Placed in the A4 paper I can add plenty of explanations. Each zone is explained and has a number in a round : this is the priority. if I had to replace, reorder, remove a zone I would go for items with the highest priority. I can write down how I imagine it will be used, thoughts, ideas, critics, alternative I have. A card and a sheet will have parallel lives.
Placed on a large sheet of paper I can think about all possible transitions. What cause them, what is carried along.
Later I will reuse it for scenarios.
I wish to video prototypes as I did for xAPI. Now I realize I could almost do plays. It really opens up a whole world of possibilities.

So now that I have some ideas on how to proceed I will restart from the beginning: doing some interviews on how you learn, stay abreast, apply, retain, capitalize and prepare your knowledge for sharing (email me if you’re volonteer for being interviewed!).

This is what it looks like.

The large sheet and my tools:

Detail page:

In action low-res prototype. Sufficient to explain it to someone and gather feedbacks.

http://www.kneaver.com/blog/2013/08/prototyping-the-new-ux-design/

“THIS IS HOW THE COLLABORATIVE PROJECT LOOKS”: A LARGE ALUMINUM MANUFACTURER ENGAGES IN NARRATING WORK. BRIAN TULLIS AND JOE CRUMPLER OFFER AN EXAMPLE IN ONE OF THEIR PRESENTATIONS.

“THIS IS WHAT I DID”: MY PORTFOLIO

Where once upon a time online portfolios were the purview of those with web design skills—or the money to pay for that—new tools make it much easier to create and make public a record of one’s skills and accomplishments. Here is an online portfolio from Marianne Abreu, currently a product designer for Samsung.

“THIS IS WHAT I CAN DO”: RÉSUMÉ

Amy Potts went with a different approach to résumé preparation that offers a snapshot of her interests and her work—and her personality.

“HERE’S SOMETHING FROM MY WORK I THINK MIGHT BE USEFUL TO OTHERS”: DAVID BYRNE

In his 2012 book How Music Works musician David Byrne, famous for his work with Talking Heads and more, offers extensive down-to-the-penny detail about his Grown Back Wards album, from the risks to the advance to royalties to costs of production, distribution and advertising, down to the amount he pocketed from his work (shockingly little, as it turns out). Why did he offer such an unusual level of self-disclosure? He says:

“I also thought that by being transparent and using my own experience as an example, I could let other musicians see what their options are—and how their decisions might pan out.”

∼David Byrne

“WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT THIS SECOND?”: SNAPSHOTS OF WORKING DAYS

Capturing a snapshot from someone’s day—a moment in the trenches—can be illuminating in understanding what people do, who they interact with, and can open the door to opportunity to help or get help.

Employees of Yammer use their own product to “work out loud” as an everyday activity. Yammer’s manager of Learning & Development for Yammer Education Services at Microsoft, Allison Michels, regularly asks her team via Yammer, “What are you working on right this second?” Everyone gets a quick snapshot of work in progress, skills being used, problems encountered, and issues at hand. This helps to capture real work in the real moment, not just highlights mentioned at meetings or, as with many workplaces, as lists of activities buried in reports few will see. It also provides a good time to ask for help, which in turn supports a culture of collaboration and sharing. Every now and again the question changes to: “What are three things that have gone really well lately? What are three things that haven’t?” This, again, surfaces information often of use to others about how work gets done, not just what is done (“I had the same problem with that vendor”; “I learned that if you call Linda by noon on Thursdays she can usually get a purchase order done the same day. She’s slammed on Fridays with her accounting stuff, though”). This builds trust, and openness, and ultimately supports productivity and morale.

“SHOWING WORKFLOW”: 2 APPROACHES TO ORGANIZING A CONFERENCE

Many professionals work with event planning meetings and events, some with more success and less panic than others. It’s easy to drop a ball when juggling so many. The eLearning Guild and Training Magazine both offer several live events a year, with thousands of attendees. Planners must juggle event sites, hotel reservations, complex multiday schedules with dozens of speakers in dozens of slots and dozens of rooms, complicated by presentation equipment needs of each presenter. And snacks. And lunch. And a trade show expo floor. And handouts. And much more. Planning for these events begins literally years ahead with venue and hotel reservations and picks up momentum about a year before the actual event. Seeing how people handle this can be helpful to those facing a large task like this.

Training Magazine’s Julie Groshens uses conference-planning software.

Meanwhile, David Kelly of the eLearning Guild works from a detailed calendar built from sheets of chart paper and Post-it Notes:

Like David, it turns out many people, even heavy users of technology, still often turn to paper and Post-its for planning tasks, a somewhat surprising finding in researching this book.

“SHOWING WORKFLOW”: STORYBOARDING MY THESIS

Linda Kirkman, after reading about an author who storyboarded her thesis by laying out visual representations of chapters and ideas on paper, decided to try the same approach with her graduate thesis. She found outlining it with Post-its a useful approach and said talking it aloud to her cat helped her articulate her thoughts. The piece that inspired Kirkman was in turn a reflection on reading about an author who storyboarded novels.

“SHOWING WORKFLOW”: THE EVOLUTION OF A PAINTING

“SHOWING WORKFLOW”: SKETCHNOTING TO SHOW ... SKETCHNOTING

An example we’ve seen earlier is sketchnoter Sacha Chua.

It seems only fitting to close the examples of “This Is How I Do That” by sharing the ways in which two authors approach planning a book.

“SHOWING WORKFLOW”: TWO APPROACHES TO PLANNING A BOOK

Nancy Duarte, author of the highly visual books Resonate and Slide: Ology, builds the first draft of her books in PowerPoint.

“SHOWING WORKFLOW”: BOOK LAYOUT

Author Jane Bozarth, meantime, gathers ideas first in Evernote, then prints off bits and pictures and big ideas, organizing them on the wall with notes on color-coded Post-its. This helps her see how the items will fall into big buckets of ideas, while being able to move items around lets her try different ways of organizing the content.

The point of all the rapid-fire examples here is not just to show what people share. Or how. Or when. It’s that it can be done in so, so many different ways, using so many different tools. Formal. Informal. Professionally reviewed. Freehand. Every item here is of value to someone else. Finding ways to make showing our work part of our daily workflow is a challenge worth meeting.