TheDesignspace

Word 2007, 2008: “Insert Section Break” commands grayed out after Endnotes

Posted on January 6, 2013 by ellen

If you are having trouble inserting a page or section break at the end of a Word document with Endnotes, you have two choices. You could either insert the new section BEFORE the Endnotes area, or change the Endnotes settings to display Endnotes at the end of each section .

Word considers the end of the document to be the one and only end, so nothing can come after it. It is easy to mistake the white space after the last Endnote for normal document space, but it is an “endnote-only” area.

Mandelbulb 3D Parameter: Metallic Fountains

Posted on December 26, 2012November 18, 2013 by ellen

For the Mandelbulb 3D enthusiasts out there, I’m putting up some of my best images along with their formulas. Click here to see the complete list. Parameters for this one are below the fold.

TinCan API Sparks: Matters of Authority

Posted on December 25, 2012November 21, 2013 by ellen

One thing a Learning Management System does very well is convey an implicit, if perhaps unearned, sense of authority to the learning activities it contains. To those of us who tend to do our learning informally, it may seem a bit quaint, but in the TinCan era, as the corporate LMS becomes a side-show to the main act of “all that other content out there,” issues surrounding authoritativeness and quality will have to be addressed.

In the healthcare domain I work in, worries about quality of information, compliance, risk, consistency, and up-to-date-ness are very real. They don’t prevent anyone from searching the web for whatever they need, but they may be barriers to the spread of good ideas, perhaps using some type of chain or cascade of authoritative approval. Whose judgement do you trust, and whose judgement do they trust, and what are they using? And is there any data anywhere that supports it?

IIS not recognizing .aspx extension (404 error)

Posted on December 12, 2012 by ellen

While trying to install a .NET application on a Windows Server 2003 box, I ran into a problem where the .aspx extension was not being recognized. Browsing .NET pages resulted in 404 (“page not found”) errors. Since the same set of application files had been installed on several other servers without incident, it seemed likely that there was something different about this server. The same version of .NET had been installed on all the servers, but never used.

I had assigned .NET 2.0.50727 to the application using the drop-down menu in the Application properties window in IIS Manager. But apparently, sometimes the .NET installer doesn’t register .NET to IIS, and it has to be done manually.

You can tell that this is the problem, if you have assigned .NET to the application, but when looking in IIS Manager > Web Service Extensions, it does not show up in the list.

TinCan API sparks: Bite-sized Learning

Posted on December 1, 2012November 21, 2013 by ellen

Like many corporate learning departments, ours spends a substantial amount of effort creating and delivering mandatory learning programs. Fire Safety, Infection Control, and Corporate Compliance are just a few of the required activities taken by thousands of people every year. Because they affect so many people, it would be nice if they were as relevant, interesting and responsive to changing institutional priorities as they are ubiquitous.

One idea that came up in a recent brainstorming session on the problem, was to allow learners to choose between a variety of new methods of taking their yearly requirements, methods that TinCan might make possible.

The Usability of Windows 8

Posted on November 27, 2012December 3, 2013 by ellen

Just finished reading a fairly devastating review of Windows 8 by Jakob Nielsen. I have to wonder if some of the choices they made in designing the interface were forced because of patent considerations, considering all the air has been sucked out of the room in that regard by Apple.

Worth a read, if you are wondering what to expect of a tablet interface that has been shoehorned onto a PC. Perhaps it will make more sense if they start selling 70″ touch screen high-performance tablet PCs. We’ll all work standing up next to the wall or something, waving our arms. It will be better for our figures, at least.

Thoughts on the TinCan API after a week with hands-on.

Posted on November 17, 2012December 3, 2013 by ellen

The Tin Can API (Experience API ) is the next generation evolution of the SCORM elearning standard, but it does far more than simply improve SCORM.

Although the immediate benefit for the health care organization I work for will come from the elimination of some of the technical limitations of SCORM, the main point is the thoroughly transformative nature of Tin Can. It will take years to demonstrate how deep the rabbit hole goes. But I can tell you the direction it is heading right now:

We’re out of the learning management business and into the big-data business.

The infrastructure for figuring out “what really works” is now here. The infrastructure for relating actions to outcomes is here. Assuming, of course, infinite access to all possible sources of data everywhere, we could now ask questions like:

Getting and setting data from Captivate 6 for custom integrations

Posted on November 11, 2012January 2, 2014 by ellen

We use Captivate with our LMS both as standalone SCORM modules that communicate directly with the LMS, and as embedded quizzes inside custom learning modules. Communication of the Captivate score back to the learning module was done using a trick suggested by Adobe’s Andrew Chemey which involved redefining the built-in sendMail function Captivate used to send an email report of the quiz results.

Captivate 6 removed the built-in email functions, so we’re now using the very powerful Captivate API to do the same thing. The new API is very powerful and makes it much easier to get and set variables from outside the Captivate, using javascript.

Here’s how to get started:

Javascript: use setTimeout() for detecting whether an object or element exists yet

Posted on October 23, 2012December 3, 2013 by ellen

This is an example of the use of setTimeout() to detect if an element or object exists yet. In Javascript, timing is crucial. If an element hasn’t been loaded or rendered on the page yet,

Friction

Posted on October 23, 2012January 3, 2014 by ellen

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, since we have been looking at learning systems, is the idea of friction. My definition of friction is anything that either lowers our expectations of the results we can get from a particular tool or process to the point that we either change our expectations of the results or abandon them altogether.

Examples of friction include: bad usability, frustration, unexpected results, bad user experience, steep learning curves, cognitive overload, lack of critical mass of the right participants, hardware problems (slowness, breakdowns, etc.) – in short just about any sort of obstacle. It is anything that gets in our way enough to make us change what we hope to get out of the process we are engaged in, even if only slightly. Friction plays a part in how we choose to use devices, apps, and services and even what route we choose on the way home.