David Kelly’s Curated Content for the Week of 12/19/16

I read through a number of articles and blog posts each day, and every Monday I curate a few of my favorites for members of the eLearning Guild Community, and for the learning and performance field as a whole. Each shared resource includes a brief introduction explaining why I find the link to be of value and recommend you read it.

Here’s the content for this week:

21 Amazing Sites With Breathtaking Free Stock Photos by Christopher Gimmer
The images and other media we use in elearning can be very expensive. It’s for this reason that many elearning designers find resources with free content so valuable. This post shares over 20 different sites that have free images available. It’s worth a bookmark, and I give the post extra points for acknowledging and providing context around creative commons and attribution in the list.

Research Besmirched—When Practitioners Just Don’t Believe! by Will Thalheimer
Many learning professionals have a love/hate relationship with research. On the one hand, we love having research that backs up our practice. On the other hand, much of the research out there isn’t practice-based. What’s a learning professional to do? The answer isn’t as complicated as it sounds, as explored in this post by Will Thalheimer, one of our industry’s best sources for translating research into practical terms.

Mesmerizing Commute Maps Reveal We All Live in Mega-Regions, Not Cities by Aarian Marshall
While this article is interesting and worth a read, I don’t share it here for it’s content itself. I share it as an example of both data and visuals being used to tell a story. If you read the article, you’ll understand the massive data that was analyzed, and what that analysis uncovered. Even if you don’t read the article, you can read the headline and look at the images and get a basic understanding of what the data is saying. One last interesting point – this is also a great example of a possible limit to data visualization. As much as the visuals do an outstanding job of conveying the data into a simple story, you need to read the article to understand the context of why that story matters.

Designer’s Guide to Promoting Yourself and Your Work by Jake Rocheleau
Regardless of how happy or satisfied you are with your current role, you should always be preparing for the next one – even if it’s within the same organization. If you want opportunities for growth to present themselves to you, you need to take the reins of your career and be intentional in how you drive it. This post shares four great tips you can use to build a reputation that can help drive your career. I can honestly say that had I not applied many of the ideas the author shares in my own life, I would not have the career I do today.

Six Powerful TED Talks to Inspire Instructional Designers by Linnaea Marvell
I’m a big fan of TED Talks. They’re short, and usually have an interesting idea that makes the viewer think. I recommend people explore talks from inside and outside their comfort zone. This post curates towards the former goal, selecting six TED talks that the author finds valuable for today’s instructional designers.

52 eLearning Experts Share their Best Tip for Creating Engaging eLearning by Bryan Jones
The title of this post pretty much says it all – it’s a huge list of short tips from some great industry minds. It’s well worth a read.

What are you reading?

If you recently read an article, blog post, or other resource from someone else that you think we should consider sharing in a future Curated Industry Content post, please feel free to send a link to the resource to David Kelly along with a few sentences describing why you think the resource is valuable.