to shorten then distance between one's imagination and its manifestation in the physical world.

Now that the ESL site that I created (delvelearning.com) has been around long enough, it's time to read the statstics and figure out what works and doesn't work.

From google analytics for the last 7 days:

• 68 unique visitors
• only 9% returns
• 45% came from Google organic search
• only 37% of visits originated from US
• the first 2 lessons on the front page get the most page views. 11% and 10%
• 56% of visits only 1 page deep (front page)
• 57% of visitors only stayed for less than 10 seconds

From the numbers above, seems like users come to our site looking for a specific esl-related content, scan the front page for few seconds, then leave the site.

They can't find what they're looking for. That can mean 2 things:

1. we don't have what they're looking for, which means we don't address their need
2. we have it, but that fact is not communicated through current design 

Long and frustrating day. That's how I'd describe today.

We had 2 simple projects to create and edit html invites then send them out as an email. I explained what needed to be done to my designer and I made sure that he understood… well I thought I did. I did that by giving him step-by-step instruction and then confirm that he knew what I was talking about by asking "Do you understand?"

He replied "yes."

So I gave him more directions to take care of the project and deliver it. He said "ok."

Few hours later, I got a call from my boss telling me that the projects were not done and we're having a big problem. 

The designer who was supposed to get the projects done have left for the day and the designer who continues the work doesn't know how to handle it. So we had to start over from scratch again. Projects that were supposed to take 2 hours max, took us over 10 hours. I don't even know how that happened.

What I do know is, DO NOT ask the question "Do you understand?" to assess if your employee or student understand. Having someone with authority ask that question is intimidating and the expected response is to nod and say "yes". If you really want to know, ask the person to rephrase what s/he understand and ask questions based on what they say. 

Earlier today, I was browsing for flash tutorial online and came across the Sofia Open Content Initiative, a free online resource for design education.

Faculty members from many higher education institutions contribute content to this site. Their goal is to make educational resources available freely for students, educator and self-learners.

A great initiative.

Let’s!

While doing research on possible collaboration/teaching tools, I came across LetsPowwow, a free online conference tool that allows other users to view your desktop.

If work as advertised, this tool would be perfect online design class.

If you are interested in “attending” one of my class using this tool, please let me know. Most likely I’ll be doing a basic class like creating a tween in flash.

Here’s the link to LetsPowwow site.

Inspiration.

to teach = to inspire.

That’s my view of education. As mentioned in earlier blog entries, I believe education always results in actions. Practical. Not only head knowledge that cause paralysis.

To teach simply means to take the first (and maybe the second) step with your student so s/he knows how to walk and eventually run. Get your student experience what you’re so passionate about. So s/he can adopt that passion for him/herself.
Seeing one’s student run and dance is worthwhile. It’s inspiring.

Inspiration.

I started giving 2 private lessons in the past week. The first one is in html (basic web design) and the second one is in flash (actionscripting).

Learning is another form of communication; an intense communication where one tries to communicate the “how to” more than just the “what” like information that we get from the news. As stated in my earlier blog, one essential part of learning is knowing how to apply/use the knowledge that one has received: the next step.

I’ve always been interested in the role of technology in learning. In the past few of years, more and more communication tools have been invented that make virtual office and online collaboration possible. I believe many of those communication tools (i.e. ipod, SMS, IM, wiki, etc.) can be used to make learning process more effective.

But as with other application of technology, one has to realize that technology is not the end, it’s the mean. That is what I discovered this past week.

I thought I could just put all the information and/or demo online and anyone who’s willing to learn can just read and follow my online instruction and teach him/herself.

From the face-to-face interaction that I had, I discovered that learning process has many facets. One or two technologies cannot replace the effectiveness of in-class interaction. Based on this, I’m looking forward to employing more interactive communication tools in the learning process which hopefully can create the kind of interaction that yield the same result as in-class interaction.

I had my first teaching session on Monday.

A friend of mine introduced me to alady who would like to learn how to set up her own web site. So we agreed on doing a private lesson. Two hours per session, once a week for two months. Monday was the first session.

Before the lesson I gave her some assignments which I thought were very straightforward.  I asked her to review intro to HTML and try out various html tags from webmonkey.

In my mind, I saw her coming to “class” with sample of html files.

To my surprise, she came with this question: “what do I do with these (html tags)?”

She had no idea where to start.

She knew the tags and what they were supposed to do because she did ask me questions about some of the tags, but she had no idea what to do with that knowledge.

This makes me wonder about learning process. I used to think that learning is accumulating knowledge, but seems like knowledge is worthless if it can’t be applied to actions.

Perhaps this is where interactive media can be utilized. To add the “action” element to the learning process. Providing the guided first step which will inspire the student to take the second, third and fourth steps outside the class environment.