Chanced upon this cool video entitled “MIT Sketching” on YouTube this morning (00:04:42):
Curiously, the MIT guy chose to call this “Assist Sketch Understanding System and Operation”. I believe this is a revised version of the Physics Illustrator that I was exploring a month or two ago. The software is basically “a motion simulator for the Tablet PC”:
Bring your drawings to life with the Physics Illustrator, Simply draw two-dimensional bodies, connect them in various ways and apply forces, then watch as animation makes the bodies move, collide, and interact.
A reflection by Elliot Masie in the latest LearningTrends newsletter:
Dear Learning & Training Colleague,
You have watched me, as reader of Learning TRENDS, experiment my way through the design of a very different event, Learning 2005, over the past 12 months. (Me: “It has been truly interesting to watch.”)
In just 3 days, I’ll have the incredible honor of welcoming 1,500 learning colleagues from two dozen countries around the world to the start of a very different type of “conference”. We changed a lot of assumptions during the design process and I wanted to share those with you, as a personal reflection:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” — Romeo to Juliet, in reply to her complaint that his name is all that keeps him from her (a play by William Shakespeare)
AFTER HEARING MAISH NICHANI SPEAK at an e-Learning Practitioners’ Forum in the National Institute of Education last Thursday, i felt excited and yet later, vaguely uneasy.
Excited that Information Design was finally introduced to e-learning practitioners, and Maish has done it very well, with lots of diverse and interesting examples. Particularly liked revisiting the first two — Charles Joseph Minard’s Mapping Napoleon’s March, 1861 and The New York Times’ From One Hotel Guest Many Infections (SARS) infographic.
Concerned though about a few probable issues: (1) The examples were mostly CBT-like, with little indications of actual information design principles at work (perhaps not enough time), (2) Maish’s focus had been wholly on visual design and nothing on the writing, (3) How are we going to teach this complex stuff to our academic staff (or students) who have very little time and motivation?
I believe this is a revised version of the Physics Illustrator that I was exploring a month or two ago. The software is basically “a motion simulator for the Tablet PC”:
WHILE BROWSING IN THE LIBRARY two weeks ago, i happened to pick up a book published in 2002 by Diana Laurillard entitled, “Rethinking University Teaching — a framework for the effective use of learning technologies”. Was quite excited when i learnt about 
