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Learning by Doing by Clark Aldrich
Free Executive Book Summary
Clark Aldrich is one of my favorite e-learning gurus because he's not only deadly with a 2x2 matrix but he's also our leading poetic muse covering simulations. His first book chronicled his efforts and learnings while building Virtual Leader. His newest book, Learning by Doing, describes different types of simulations and explains which type is most appropriate for different types of learning goals. Clark's writing style is fun and creative -- a refreshing change from most of the dry e-learning books out there.

Click here to read the free 4-page Guru book summary. (PDF)

Click here to buy the book from Amazon.

Guru Interview with Clark Aldrich
Karl Kapp is back this month interviewing Clark Aldrich. Aldrich provides his thoughts on the current and future world of e-learning including:

• A cornerstone of effective simulations is "frustration and the resolution of the frustration"
• "One of the great travesties of western civilization and probably all civilizations is how proud we are of books as repositories of content."
• There is an "ecosystem of e-learning" with Google and other types of information-applications as being at the bottom of the food chain
• Many of the next generation of educational genres will be developed by "college dropouts in their basements."

Click here to read Karl's in depth interview with Clark Aldrich.

e-Learning for Kids -- New non-profit needs your help
Nick van Dam, Global CLO for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, recently founded e-Learning for Kids as a non-profit dedicated to providing online educational programs (reading, math, language) to teachers and students around the world -- free of charge. This is a very worthy cause; schools in the US have difficulty finding the budget for these kinds of programs and, obviously, schools in less developed countries are even worse off.

Click here to learn more about e-Learning for Kids and see how you can help bring quality e-learning to kids around the world.

Buttonless Mice? Innovations in Interface Design
I've always said that interface design is a very relevant and under appreciated part of e-learning design. If the user can't get in your house, or gets lost wandering around, his or her visit won't be very productive or enjoyable. This experimental site shows that the click-to-activate approach (and thus left and right mouse buttons) is really unnecessary. Fun to play with.

Visit www.dontclick.it.

Will you help me build the Guru community? If you send two friends the free book summary for Learning by Doing, and they tell two friends...

Here's to the frustration of e-learning,

-- Kevin

Kevin Kruse is the author of Technology-based Training, and President of AXIOM Professional Health Learning. He can be reached at kkruse@e-learningguru.com.