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Since grade school, I remember being told ‘This Year, we will be learning the metric system, as this is The Year, America will be switching over to the metric system.’  Then, for the 15 year I lived with the metric system, in China, do you think I could every I get my mind wrapped around the how many cm were in a meter or how cold minus 3 degrees C would feel?  Um, what year is this now?  2010 and still America hasn’t switched over to the metric system?

Now there’s talk of digitizing the print world and for those nah sayers, who don’t think the printed world  is headed into the digital world, check out what the New York Times is saying: Conde Nast Is Preparing iPad Versions of Its Top Magazines Seems GQ will have it’s iPad version ready for the April issue [along with the launch of the iPad].  The other titles will have digital versions, by this summer.  Heck, GQ, already has a GQ iPhone app.

What’s a bit more interesting is, by selling magazine apps via iTunes [and other non-iTune formats] Conde Nast will not have access to traditional means of tracking consumer data for marketing purposes. Damn the metrics!  Not to worry, Conde Nast will have you ‘signing-up or registering’  to access….say to the fashion tips.

President of Conde Nast Digital added, “As an example, if you’re a fashion retailer or a fashion advertiser who also has an e-commerce store, how can we make the simple fact that you can click through to an item and buy it kind of great? How do you romance it a little bit more?”  Seems Conde Nast is going to use GQ as a trial, see how they can work out their ad revenue metrics, then move on to digitizing other magazines. They want to take a leadership role in this process.

All this leadership stuff got me wondering; how we instructional designers might set up our evaluations so our learners had to click through to sign-up or register?  How could we make our evaluation process a bit more romantic?  Snazz-up the evaluation in order to learn the metrics?

Would our learners click through an evaluation, if say their favorite retailer were involved in the process?  Maybe Target or iTunes could offer a $10 coupon bonus, to the educational system for students scoring on particular tests or CVS offers a $10 coupon to health care workers who reach and ace the learning of a new electronic patient tracking system?

And I think you can pretty much bet an increasing amount of that learning and evaluation will be occurring on the iPad or similar mobile digital device.  It’s just gonna take figuring out the metrics.

These days, I don’t worry too much about the metric system invading America.  I think we’ll get health care reform before we will start measuring in centimeters. Besides, to convert my measurements to metric–well, there’s an app for that.

I’ve been working on some How-to instructional design materials and came across this  How-to video:

I suggest you open this link[below] in a new window, so you can continue to read my comments, as you watch.

Cool ideas to streamline your home office:

The somewhat quirky presentation, I feel,  lends to the home-iness of this design. Which allows the viewer to be comfortable and have a sense that  ‘This is going to be ok.‘  What I really like is how well this has been compartmentalized: Intro, Get Started, Follow the Steps and Conclusion–it makes for a nicely organized feature of the presentation itself.

In Instructional Design terms, Allison Carter has included several good key design components in this video: Alison is teaching a procedure here and takes the viewer thru several steps….in her Intro and on down thru her Conclusion.  So, Alison is:

• Teaching– in this case chatting conversationally about factual information–office disorganization
• Teaching  the viewer about the concepts of an organized office
• Teaching the viewer new learning procedures to make their office more organized
• Teaching and showing the viewer those new learning processes–so they can re-organize their office
• Teaching  the principles of how the viewer’s newly organized office will benefit them.

Alison is able to do all this Content Performance by visually organizing the: Facts, Concepts, Processes, Procedures & Principles within a ‘Display Method [the video]’ that is pleasing, fun, short, to-the-point, and has created a scenario the viewer can easily relate to.

Just read the comments, below the video, to see how readers/viewers became motivated!

I even started to look around my own office and think of ideas where I can use a little re-organization.

• Did Alison motivate you to get your home office into shape?

Last weekend, I  attended the second annual Podcamp Western Mass. If you ever have an opportunity to attend Podcamp, the New Media Community UnConference, they are held all over, I highly recommend.  Roughly, they are people coming together and within a loose skeleton of sessions, a conference emerges covering all topics dealing with New Media.

In 2007, I traveled to Boston to attend Podcamp and late, last year to NYC to WordPress Camp-which is similar in feel yet has more structured sessions all focused on WordPress. I always walk away with my head spinning with ideas, new contacts and loads of concepts and links to research.

At Podcamp a small group of us discussed the applications of mlearning [mobile learning] and how it impacts all areas of content creation and delivery.  One of the more interesting items discussed were QR Codes. I first heard of these back in 2007 and sort of been watching how they are evolving.  To get a basic overview, of QR Codes, check Wikipedia Quick Response Codes.

Second Stop: Trent Watching- which has been a long-time favorite of mine!
Infolust appears to be along article, stay with it…it is light reading loaded lots of great trend information. Well worth the time, as this article goes into the global use of QR Codes.  Realllllly interesting.

Now, if you are still wanting to know more about QR Codes, head over to my Lab Notes Wiki and read much more!