Creating Passionate Learners
October 2, 2008
I’ve read a lot of computer training books in my time, most of which I’ve gotten through about a third before giving up. Dry, boring, completely uncompelling (hey, just like most eLearning!). I don’t consider myself particularly dense (perhaps I am, but am too dense to realize it?), but I think I’ve always been more of a “show me, then let me do it” type of learner, not a “read about the whys, hows, and what fors” type of learner.
A couple of years ago I was trying to wrap my head around CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) once and for all. I had tried several books, online tutorials, and lots of websites, but for some reason the concept never really “clicked” for me. Not even Lynda.com’s “show me, then let me do it” approach was working. Which was unusual.
Then I read Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML by Eric and Elisabeth Freeman. It was like a revelation. The teaching style used was unlike any I’d seen in a training book before. CSS finally made sense.
After that experience, I realized I wanted to try to incorporate the Head First approach into my eLearning courses.
Just today I discovered the Creating Passionate Users blog, where they are “passionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially–how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory.” Wow, I’ve really been missing out. This is a great learning-oriented blog.
Authored by Kathy Sierra (co-creator of the Head First series) and Dan Russell (research scientist at Google), it almost certainly deserves a spot in your RSS feed reader. And it’s going on my blogroll right now.
The post entitled Crash Course in Learning Theory is a great place to start.
Great stuff. Check it out.
UPDATE: in my excitement about the content of this blog, I didn’t even notice that it is no longer active. Kathy stopped the blog after being harassed and threatened by blog commenters. I remember reading about this at the time (it created quite the uproar), but didn’t associate the name (she wasn’t the author of the HTML/CSS book I had read). It’s sad what the anonymity of the Internet compels some idiots to do. So forget signing up for their RSS feed. But their past content is still worth review. Thanks Caspar for pointing this out.
Posted in Books, eLearning Design
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October 3rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
This was one of my favorite blogs, until Kathy had to close more than a year ago.
You can read what happened in the last few postings of Kathys blog.
Caspar
October 4th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Yes, I second Caspar’s comment — Kathy Sierra’s ‘Crash Course in Learning theory’ has been useful to me on more than one occasion.
Unfortunately, she is perhaps better known on the net for being a victim (albeit without violence) of the kind of harassment that women often still face on the web.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Kathy had a great blog. It’s hard to believe how obnoxious people can be. The information is still good, though. And I’m glad she left it up.