#tools for learning

See on Scoop.it - Arquitecturas digitales del aprendizaje para una educación 4.0

El software libre nos da una gran libertad para crear, modificar, copiar y distribuir. Son muchas las ventajas que obtenemos al utilizar este tipo de herramientas, todas ellas gratuitas y de código abierto. Por ello, os recomiendo que investiguéis, seleccionéis y utilicéis alguna que os pueda venir bien.

Oskar Almazan's insight:

A couple of weeks ago I saw the Girl Learns How to Dance in a Year (TIME LAPSE) video. Today I saw her FastCompany article about how she achieved virality, and followed her on her blog and twitter. She's a self-taught graphic designer, and I'm going to follow her recommended steps to teaching myself graphic design - How to Become a Designer Without Going to Design School  Starting now! Step 1. Learn to see The biggest mistake is jumping into Photoshop too fast. Learning Photoshop does not make you a designer, just like buying paintbrushes does not make you an artist. Start with the foundation.

First, learn how to draw.

You don’t have to sit in a room with a bunch of other artists trying to draw a naked woman.

You don’t even have to get that good at drawing. Just learn some basics so you can be comfortable sketching with a pen.

You only have to do one thing to learn how to draw: get the book You Can Draw in 30 days and practice for half an hour every day for a month. I’ve looked at a lot of drawing books and this is one of the best.

Learn graphic design theory

Start with the book Picture This. It’s a story book of Little Red Riding hood, but will teach you the foundations of graphic design at the same time.

Learn about color, typography, and designing with a grid. If you can find a local class to teach the basics of graphic design, take it.

Go through a few of these tutorials every day.

Learn some basics in user experience

There are a lot of books about user experience. Start with these two quick reads that will get you in the right mindset:

The Design of Everyday Things

Don’t Make Me Think!

Learn how to write

Here is a sure sign of a bad designer: their mockups are filled with placeholder text like Lorem Ipsum. A good designer is a good communicator. A good designer thinks through the entire experience, choosing every word carefully. Write for humans. Don’t write in the academic tone you used to make yourself sound smart in school papers.

Read Made to Stick, one of my favorite books of all time. It will teach you how to suck in your readers.

Method of Action is a suite of interactive courses that help instill a sense of design in rational people. They are currently in closed-beta, but you can try out their Kerning game, which helps you better understand letter spacing and kerning.

Jane Hart presenta los resultados de las quinta encuesta sobre herramientas para el aprendizaje 2011.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

A video-teaser for the Dynamic Media Institute's new publication The Experience of Dynamic Media.

You are invited to download a free PDF of this 224-page book on the DMI website. 

Edited by Jan Kubasiewicz, the book includes essays and projects by DMI professors, visiting faculty, and students. Work in this publication covers a wide range of subjects including: Design as Experience, Tools for Learning, Narrative and Storytelling, Dynamic Media History, Data Visualization, Social Media, The Language of Motion, Design Systems, Mapping and Psychogeography, Design and Computation, Projection and Lighting, Visualization of Sound and Music, Dynamic Media Scholarship, and Online Journalism.