Ben Duffy

Riding days are done and winter is setting in quickly with consistently below freezing temperatures and a big storm today which is set to deliver 6 to 12 inches of snow.  The snow blower is ready to do its work, and the bikes are ready for their winter slumber.

I’ve put more miles in the saddle this fall then expected.  Looking at the odometer when I arrived at work this morning, I’ve run 3,000 miles on the 919 since purchasing it in mid August.  Pretty good for mostly lunchtime riding.  Looks like winter and generally bad weather is setting in and I’ll be filling the tank and putting in some Sea Foam to make the fuel system for a winter of rest.

From the great minds at LearningEngineer.com

Google’s Docs applications have been extended to include Forms.  With Forms you can perform survey’s, evaluations and with some simple functions quizzes or assessments that can correct themselves.

Here is the spreadsheet view of the quiz.

Make your test form.  I created a multiple choice test.  You can see the questions and the answers.

Row G represents the total number of answers that are correct.  The formula =ARRAYFORMULA( (H2:H) + (I2:I) + (J2:J)) should be place in row 2.

You do not need to put =ARRAYFORMULA( (H2:H) + (I2:I) + (J2:J)) in the rows beneath row 2. This is automatic with the “ARRAY” part of the function.

Column H, I and J correct rows D, E and F of course.

Columns H, I and J use the same formula except for the part in quotes.

Col H checks for the answer Browser. “If” it finds the word “Browser” then the answer is correct and marks a 1.

Otherwise Col H is marked as a 0.

Then Col G totals the other adjacent columns to provide the score.

IMPORTANT: YOU HAVE TO DELETE ALL THE ROWS BENEATH YOUR INITIAL PLACEMENT OF THE FORMULAS.

Otherwise they won’t be automatically inserted as new entries are created.

From David Hamill over at Good Usability:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are a very popular way of providing the answer to users’ questions. In this post I give you some tips to help you provide a better user experience with your FAQs.

http://www.goodusability.co.uk/2009/05/faq-usability/

From Ars Technica:

Temporary FCC Chair Michael Copps offers his Rooseveltian take on the question of rural broadband development.

“The problem is that what he’s got now is the Recovery Act’s $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus cash, and a labyrinth of federal and state agencies that will oversee its deployment. Copps’ obvious hope is that this inadequate mess is just the beginning. “We are at an early stage in the national effort,” he observes, and is cautiously writing the story as he wants it to play out—a story that will continue with the National Broadband Plan Congress expects the FCC to complete by February of next year.”

Great post over on the Articulate Rapid eLearning Blog: 7 Tips for Better E-Learning Scenarios

Scenario based eLearning is an important way to get away from the boring page turners and adds some true instructional design value to the content we receive from SME’s

Thanks for the great post Tom!

In a previous post, we looked at how you can make your elearning courses more effective and engaging by getting your learners to pull the course content rather than you just pushing it out to them.  A great way to create a pull-type course is build it around problem-solving scenarios.

A scenario can put the course content into a context that is relevant to the learners because they can use the information in a real world setting.  Even if you don’t create a pull-type course, scenarios are still effective in helping your learners.

As always the challenge for many instructional designers is that as you have to work with time and resource constraints.  Many times it’s just a lot easier to build an information-based course than it is to build a scenario.  Scenarios can take more time to develop and not everyone is a Hollywood scriptwriter (not that it means anything considering most of the movies that are released nowadays).

The good news is that pulling together scenarios is not as hard as it might seem.  In today’s post I’ll offer some ideas to help you get started.

 

Follow this link for all 7 tips 

The great guys over at Moto Milano are making up a new +4 oversize clutch cable for my K6 so I don’t have to tear down all the hand controls for lower bars.

The bonus was talking over the merits of the sport 1000 biposto with the owner.

This is one beauty of a bike and is sadly not mine:

Ducati Sport 1000 Biposto

Little things can get in the way of a good ride. A notchy throttle is one of those. My K6 throttle was getting so stiff I was worried about a break. PB Blaster down them helped for a week or so while fresh Motion Pro’s were on order.

I managed to change them out last week and they’re nice and smooth now. Took a bit to dial in the throttle, have it solid feeling and not have the RPM start to climb on me but finally made the last tweak on Friday.

I picked up 1/4″ tubing and connectors to make a manometer. There’s various success with these but for $10 in parts I thought it was at least wort the try. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow when I build it.

The family and I are enjoying a relaxing weekend here in Camden ME.  Happy Mother’s Day!

Camden Harbor

Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) / Personal Learning Environments (PLE) 

18 interesting ways to use Google Docs in the classroom