EduTech gEEks…We’re a new brEEd

Need to strengthen your business/technical writing?

Want to brush up on the latest in document layout and team document construction?

Check out WOW…Writers Online Workshops!!!!

~ENJOY!

Are my blogs wordy or worthy?

Maria Schneider, in her Writer’s Digest blog, The Writer’s Perspective by Maria Schneider, talks about keeping blog word count to a limit of 300 words or less.

GEEZ, Maria! That seems so short!

It (wordiness, that is) was actually listed as the #10 tip in her previous blog titled, 20 Tips for Good Blogging (I blogged on this article too under the same title…for easy referencing).

This time, after receiving many complaints from her readers, she goes more in depth about why a word limit is necessary. Her recommendation has logical significance behind it: avoiding fluff and keeping your readers from hitting the snooze on your blog.

Anywho…I like details, not too many details, but enough to explain and define my subject matter. My blog discusses eLearning/Instructional Design specific content, so defining and detailing is necessary for clarification and differentiation of terms.

I recommend taking into account Ms. Schneider’s professional advice. She is one of the more informative and knowledgeable writers/bloggers out here in our cyber world.

Yes, good sentence structure is necessary knowledge for IDs. The project manager for my current ID project has three writing rules:

1. First Person (It’s really second person if you’re referring to the learner as “you”.)
2. Active Voice (no passive language)
3. Present Tense for Verbs

I did not notice how many times I made these mistakes, until now. Writing passively seems to be my numero uno guilty pleasure. The good thing is MS Word allows you to set these parameters. Thus, correcting your mistakes as you work. Pretty convenient.

Today, I came across a Writer’s Digest article titled, The Four Commandments of Writing Good Sentences. According to this article, the four rules are:

1. You shall not write passively.
2. You shall not overuse weak verbs like “to be” and “to have.”
3. You shall not fluff.
4. You shall make every word necessary.

Pretty good stuff, right? I’d say…oops…I say so…or I believe so. Trying to avoid that passive voice.

Discussions of such techniques occur in business writing courses and websites. So, if you want to learn more, google these writing techniques:

1. Business Writing
2. Technical Writing
3. Professional Writing

My New Goal: To make the above mentioned rules a part of my natural writing style.

Not much activity from me this week, huh?

The latest opportunity is a ~ 4 month contract content development position with Information Mapping, Inc. The Information Mapping method of organizing and presenting content is definitely one of the better forms of standardized writing. As far as my experience goes…

Most of my responsibilities will be technical writing and document design oriented. Of course….these two areas of designing instruction seem to follow me everywhere.

The funniest aspect of this job is the transformation of training documents from Word Perfect to MS Word!

Yes…I said “Word Perfect.”

I thought the industry was moving more toward Adobe FrameMaker for template-based document design needs. So to be working with Word Perfect is a true shocker. Nonetheless interesting. I guess these are the types of jobs that help grow you into a true instructional design/technical writing professional.

I think I even said in a previous post about how all my FrameMaker training wouldn’t even be considered for the next job. Boy, did I hit the nail on the head.

My SME—working with my Subject Matter Expert has also been pretty interesting. It has only been a week, but I already realize the benefits to developing a supportive relationship with good communication.

The project has had a rough start due to many external factors that pre-date the arrival of my team and I. But, you know that’s the nature of the game. Either way I am sooooo on board and ready to work.

My Primary Goal: to develop the best instructional documents with my SME that the new batch of students will find useful during their entire program.

All my years as a student should definitely have prepared me for this position.

Writing & The Design of Instruction…They go hand-in-hand?

At least within these early stages of my career, yes! The better I have become at technical and professional writing, the better I have become at instructional design.

When studying those particular forms of writing, a lot of learned typography, formatting, and layout techniques brightened up my dreary world of plain, gray-scale unstructured text. This has truly transitioned my skill and understanding of Document Design.

Now my instructional documents and eLearning modules (even my blah blah surveys) have a new spice to them!

It excites me…puts a lil’ spark in my instructional document design tasks.

In a previous post titled, “Career Choices for an EduTech Star,” I posted a YouTube video that briefly described some of the job titles under which we EduTech Geeks fall. Look at the entire ISD process of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation…our skill is truly extensive when you really evaluate what we do.

These past two months my work as a Freelance ID has really picked up, thus creating a desire to share some of the secrets or best ways to land these freelance jobs.

Mostly, I have been doing writing and design & development jobs. Small technical writing and document design seem to be the needed tasks amongst many companies; creating templates for corporate documents is another frequently posted job. Note: Knowing a little HTML/CSS wouldn’t hurt either.

To quickly summarize, the most common freelance jobs for this ID have been:

• technical writing docs/reports,
• desktop publishing (DTP)
• document design and layout of instructional docs,
• compiling packets of instructional information,
• editing instructional content,
• eLearning module design & development,
• presentation design (for instructional content),
• development of assessments & evaluations, &
• MY FAVE = audio/video scriptwriting for eLearning content.

The audio/video scripting, or just plain scripting for audio content, allows me to combine the film/theatre background with instructional design. Its a good skill to have and, usually, the content is already there, you’re just responsible for turning it into a script. I enjoy doing this because it simultaneously adds to both the design and writing resumes.

Good places to add a profile:

• www.ifreelance.com
• www.linkedin.com

Also, consider the creative staffing agencies in your area. I live in Chicago, the city flooded with many creative types, here are a few I know of:

• www.paladinstaff.com
• www.creaitivedir.com
• www.creativegroup.com
• AD AGENCIES!!! Ad agencies are always a good professional contact. Many DTP, document design and web-based design jobs come through their network.

“Your net worth is your network.”…can’t remember who said it, but it rings true. So get out there and get those freelance jobs!!!

The money is great! The networking is awesome! The professional independence is unparalleled!

1. Adobe Captivate
   • A flash-based eLearning tool with great interactive content presentation and assessment tools; great multimedia packaging
2. Trivantis Lectora
   • Easy to use authoring tool with great assessment and multimedia capabilities
3. eXe
   • eLearning xHTML editor with such ease of use any teacher or beginning ID could use it, also integreates easily into LMSs
4. CourseLab
   • eLearning authoring to, FREE and easy to use
5. Microsoft PowerPoint (w/ Adobe Presenter aka Breeze)
   • Presentation software that is good for training and tutorial purposes when used with Adobe Present

InDesign vs FrameMaker…What is the difference?

Since they both are used for our DTP needs, that was my question. This morning, I viewed a really good tutorial that helped answer that question. To give credit and thanks, it was created by the people over at Lynda.com (YouTube ID: “lyndapodcast”).

This InDesign CS3 Tutorial focuses on workflow, showing how efficient InDesign3 can be for the following DTP tasks:

• creating a layout,
• creating text and image frames,
• importing text and images from other non-ID files,
• editing those imported frames,
• working with multiple layers, and
• working in between multiple Adobe programs (as I do daily).

…Know of any other good tutorials out there that cover Adobe products? If so, Please leave the URL as a comment.

“They’ve done it again!” Adobe’s Technical Communications Suite is just that, Sweeeeeeeeet!

Finally!!! I am so proud of them for actually recognizing the needs of the eLearning and Instructional Design communities. I simply think it is “hott” idea that couldn’t have come any sooner. Some of the most effective software programs I have used for instructional design and learning media are included:

• Adobe FrameMaker8: for all our technical document publishing needs (You already know how I feel about FM8.)
• Adobe Captivate 3: for creating some of the hottest & interactive (Flash-based) courses, presentations and assessments
• Adobe Acrobat 3D: Okay, Pause! I have yet to use 3D because I do not need do much collaboration on engineering and architectural type of projects (i.e. those where I have to view ‘all sides’ of an object…Urgh! Blah!). Still, it’s a niiiiiice product for those who need the whole “3D Collabo”
• Adobe RoboHelp 7: for the creation of help systems. I have used this product once before during the development of a mock Computer-Based Training (CBT) Learning Program. But, from what I recall, it is also really helpful for any designer or new media artist who has difficulty relinquishing all control over to IT.

…Applause.

I was thinking of doing a whole ‘page’ dedicated to Adobe Products and their role in Educational Technology. Specifically, for the instructional designers responsible or interested in Desktop Publishing (DTP). But, for the sake of time…one post will have to do for now.

For my current position as an instructional designer, I was asked to have some knowledge of Adobe FrameMaker8 (FM for the purposes of creating structured templates for documents to be accessed by students in an online learning environment. Another eye opening moment in the Instructional Technology Design job search! Previously, MS applications such as Word and Publisher are what I preferred to utilize for my technical writing documentation. A new application just meant more time dedicated to a program that the next job wouldn’t even consider. So I thought!

Since working with FM 8 over the past few months, I learned there is a huge advantage to using this authoring/publishing software. As with just about all of the products created by Adobe, FM 8 takes into consideration the needs of (instructional) designers with varying levels of talent in document layout and use of white space. For a person who used to own a Coogi Sweater Dress, tasteful layout was not necessarily my best skill.

Therefore, I honor Adobe and the FM 8 Team for making my job a bit more enjoyable. Here are some of the features of FM 8 that I enjoy most:

1. Typical word processing/publishing projects can be combined with XML to create more visually stimulating templates for books, newsletters, reports, data sheets, etc.
2. When converted to a pdf, FM 8 will automatically create bookmarks based upon the layout and hierarchy of the document. Such a time saver when you have a 10+ page document to map/bookmark.
3. Ability to include rich, multimedia from Adobe Flash and Adobe Captivate (both of which I use heavily for the creation of learning objects and assessments)
4. MS Excel Graphs and MS Word Documents are easily integrated into the FM 8 templates.
5. There are a fair amount of structured and unstructured templates that I have used to lay the foundation for creating templates that fit my needs.
6. Top 5 Templates: FAQ, Index, Graduate Thesis Paper, Newsletter, and Harvard Outline…all of which can be time consuming when developing from ’scratch’
7. Picks up where InDesign leaves us hanging…FM 8 is made specifically for the creation of looooong, exhausting template-based textual documents (i.e. eBooks or eContent for an online course).

It is good practice to give the cons with the pros. So, here they are…the 2 (yes, only 2) issues I have with FM 8:

1. No integration with MS Publisher, and
2. Not enough varying font color choices…Step it up ADOBE!!!

Obviously, these are the opinions of a fairly new Instructional Designer. For more info on Adobe FM 8, check the following resources:

• FrameMaker FAQs
• FrameMaker Tutorials & Training
• InDesign vs FrameMaker
• FrameMaker vs Word