Books
Presenting Information
You might be scratching your head right now, wondering why an education enhancement company is recommending books on design. It’s simple really. When the information being imparted is easier to access and read, the chances for retention increase dramatically. With that in mind, we thought you might like to see some of our design handbook favorites.
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information, by Edward Tufte
Both these books are classics that present a minimalist view of graphic design. Their own brilliant design justifies their hefty price tag: about $40 a piece. Tufte illustrates his points with an abundance of examples, many of which are loaded with quantitative information.
Color Harmony, by Hideaki Chijiwa
Offering easy-to-use formulas, this title is an indispensable tool for matching hues to moods and audiences. Another wonderful resource is the book series Color, particularly Color 1 and Color 4.
Any general guide to desktop publishing
A must have! Bookstores stock shelves and shelves of books on desktop publishing and page layout. Your best bet is to visit your favorite bookstore and choose a title that matches your style and budget. Check out the Computer section under Desktop Publishing or the Art section under Graphic Design.
Education and Design
Since there isn’t one definitive resource on designing active educational systems, we’ve put together a list of the premier titles on the subject. We should warn you though: These books tend to be a bit dry and tough to wade through. However, reading many different books on the subject is the only way to truly understand this field–and well worth the effort!
The Timeless Way of Building, by Christopher Alexander
Our favorite design book! Though it’s about architecture, it provides an excellent metaphor for designing anything.
The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman
This classic offers numerous examples to illustrate the principles of designing user-friendly systems. While most of the book discusses industrial design, the content also applies to information design. An interesting read!
Things That Make Us Smart, by Don Norman
This book is probably the most readable of the group. It deals with the use of technology in education, and several sections cover active learning environments.
Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert
Another classic in the field! The book discusses the use of LOGO–a computer programming language for children–as a tool for active learning. Papert also reviews and offers solutions for some of the problems with modern education. Besides being a quick read, this book has its entertaining moments. To truly appreciate this book, it helps to know LOGO.
The Unschooled Mind, by Howard Gardner
Though an excellent resource on a cognitive approach to education, this book tends to be somewhat dry and heavy. The materials focuses on how children learn, but it’s just as relevant to adult learning.
Engines for Education, by Roger Schank
This is one of the few books offering an instructional design model for creating systems that empower learners. This invaluable resource is also available on the web.
Any book by or about John Dewey or Maria Montessori
The educational theories put forth by these two early 20th century philosophers are just as relevant and important today.
Brain Stuff
Theories of Development, by Crain
This book gives a methodical breakdown of the child development theories put forth by some of the most significant theorists of our time.
Frames of Mind, by Howard Gardner
This extremely important book introduces the notion of multiple intelligence. Basically, Gardner asserts that intelligence consists of seven parts, and that we all have different strengths and weaknesses among our seven parts. Vastly detailed, this resource can make for tough reading.
The Mind’s New Science, by Howard Gardner
This book reviews the history of the cognitive science movement and describes the many disciplines comprising it. Readers will gain an appreciation for the variety of cognitive science and its power. Tough to read and understand, this title is not for the faint-of-heart.
Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman
This outstanding book discusses the role emotions play in our lives. Skilled at making scientific data quite readable, Goleman demonstrates that paying attention to the development of emotions is at least as important as paying attention to the development of intellect. He pinpoints some of the “next steps” in brain and educational research that could follow the cognitive science movement. And most importantly, Goleman suggests that emotional intelligence can and should be taught!
Human Brain and Human Learning, by Leslie A. Hart
This book explores the relationship between how the brain works and how we learn best. It is slightly more technical than Making Connections, discussed below. Hart also offers an excellent overview of the evolution of the public educational system.
Making Connections, by R. Caine, and G. Caine
This fantastic book discusses the relationship between the way the brain works and the way people like to learn. It suggests that how the brain works does matter and provides a holistic view of learning.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi
This brilliant work explains how to enter a state in which we become so engrossed in an activity that we lose all sense of time. Csikszenthmihalyi examines what it takes to enter this state, and what happens once we are in it.
Creativity
A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, by Roger Von Oech
These two classics are must-haves for every bookshelf. Not only are they very informative, but they are also quite entertaining. Each book breaks the creative process into smaller steps and provides plenty of fun examples. The difference between the two books lies in how they divide the creative process. Read both and decide which one you like the best.
Lateral Thinking, by Edward De Bono
One more must-have title on creativity. It’s a bit more serious than Von Oech’s books, but it has more content. Plus, it offers many examples and wonderful insights into the creative process.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards
This is another creativity classic! Get through this book and you will not only have heightened your creative abilities significantly, but you will also have learned how to draw. Great fun, but you must be committed to the drawing exercises. Edwards proves that everyone can learn to draw and be creative.
Pumping Ions: Games and Exercises to Flex Your Mind
This fun book presents techniques for strengthening the brain muscle. It covers the various aspects of the creative process and provides many entertaining puzzles.
Lateral Thinking Puzzlers, by Paul Sloane
This enjoyable book of word puzzles offers some great mental warm-ups you can do before sitting down to tackle a tough a problem.
The Creative Spirit, Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray
Very readable and fun! This companion volume to the PBS miniseries on creativity presents examples and analyses of creative acts. Watch for the re-broadcast of the TV series.
Interface Design
Designing the User Interface, by Ben Schneiderman
This classic is the most popular academic book on the topic. In a nutshell, it provides an excellent overview to the entire field.
User Interface Design, by Harold Thimbleby
This is another academic book on the topic. It discusses interface design from a cognitive science perspective, and though it’s interesting, it’s not easy reading. This technical resource is only for the very committed.
User Interface Design (ACM Press frontier series)
Tog on Interface, by Bruce Tognazzini
This very readable, amusing, and practical book offers advice on a variety of interface topics.
The Human Factor, by Richard Rubenstein and Harry Hersh
This book thoroughly covers task analysis. Great heuristics!
Usability Engineering, by Jakob Nielsen
A must-have for any interface designer! This classic provides an excellent overview on usability and an outstanding plan for assuring a program works. Good mix of theory and heuristics!
The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, edited by Brenda Laurel
This must-have book serves up a variety of articles on designing interactive environments. Many of the writers are experts, and many of the articles are excellent.
Websites
We’ve put together a list of websites we find ourselves returning to again and again. Let us know what you think. Which of these sites grabbed you? Which ones had you running from your computer terminal, vowing to never to venture online again? You can let us know by filling out the Funderstanding feedback form.
Education
When it comes to reading up on current trends in education, here’s our list of tried and trues:
Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Model Sites
And here’s a few sites we think make excellent use of the online medium. They’re well-designed, innovative, and intriguing.
Add a Comment No CommentsRevo–A great interface and clean layout make this site a pleasure to navigate through.
The Davelockwood Daily–This site successfully taps into the power of the metaphor. Simple and small, yet suggestive and powerful.
Killersites–This ultra-clean site is constructed by David Siegel, author of Creating Killer Web Sites. Siegel’s site boasts an interesting look, gives excellent navigational clues, and successfully accommodates changing information.
Spiegel–The wonderful graphics suggest this company knows and respects its audience.
Garden.com–Despite all the clutter, this site touts some fantastic features, most notably “Design a Garden” and “Select a Plant.” They give you a tool you want to use and will no doubt find invaluable. Then they ask, “By the way, wanna buy it?” How can you resist? It’s brilliant.
Amazon.com–Amazon books does an excellent job of incorporating people’s feedback on books they’ve read and building a “reading” community. Plus, they have a great model for Push. We know it works–we’ve bought books because of it!
PBS Hong Kong ’97–This site is nice and clean, is easily updated, and offers interesting content to boot. It’s also one of the few websites that features a high-tech toy (Java script rollovers) without being clunky or messy.
Campbell’s Soup–The designers have done a smashing job of capturing the look and feel of this household brand. We also liked the recipes–and what a coincidence–you need to buy some cans of soup to make them!
Honda–Check out the feature in which you select the paint color. What more can we say?
Salon Magazine–This highly usable site is not overly impressive at first. But the more you use it, the more you like it. (It goes way beyond the wow factor.) And to us, that defines good design.
Intellectual Capital
Intellectual Capital is one of the hottest topics talked about in today’s Knowledge Management field. In fact, FastCompany magazine proclaims it one of management’s fastest growing trends. But just what does Knowledge Management mean? How can you and your company can capitalize on what your employees already know?
First, you need an appropriate environment, one in which people are free to dialogue and experiment. Second, employees must be supported by the appropriate technology. Tom Stewart, on page 114 of Intellectual Capital, suggests three areas that justify investing in the construction of knowledge databases. They are:
Corporate yellow pages that track where the knowledge within a company resides
A best practices system that captures lessons learned
Competitive intelligence
Check Out These Additional Resources
Assess how your company is managing its Intellectual Capital.
Touraj Nasseri suggests that Intellectual Capital is a company’s most important strategic resource for competing and winning. He gives a practical definition and discusses some ways to apply it.
Balance sheets unfortunately do not account for Intellectual Capital. This Fortune article offers an excellent primer on the topic.
The Learning Organization Dialogue often covers topics related to Intellectual Capital. It’s a great place to chat with experts on this subject.
What Is Knowledge Management?–Brint provides an excellent overview of Knowledge Management and contains an enormous repository of articles on the topic. Though slightly technical, it’s a good introduction. Plus, it lists some excellent resources at the end.
Add a Comment No CommentsThe 5th Discipline
OVERVIEW
In his book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge details his model of a “learning organization,” which he defines as “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.” A learning organization excels at both adaptive learning–also known as survival learning–and generative learning.
THE TOOL
Senge’s learning organization model consists of the following five disciplines:
- Systems thinking–Senge attests that we must look at the patterns that connect the larger system. Systems thinkers cure headaches by removing the cause, rather than simply ingesting aspirin. They pay careful attention to how different tasks and functions interact. Systems thinkers believe that by examining these patterns of interplay, we can better pinpoint the important issues.
- Personal mastery–Senge stresses the significance of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, focusing our energies, developing patience, and seeing reality objectively.
- Shared vision–Senge defines this discipline as the “picture of the future.” A shared vision is intuitive and instinctive; it’s not something that’s learned by rote. A shared vision is also a collective experience–it’s the cumulative total of each participant’s personal vision.
- Team learning–Senge’s fourth discipline states that any group’s collective IQ will always be much higher than an individual’s IQ. The only way to begin building group IQ is to open the channels of communication within the group and start talking to one another.
- Mental models–Senge defines mental models as the deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, and even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world. Since how we act is based on our impressions of our surrounding environment, it’s imperative that we recognize and re-evaluate our mental models and preconceived assumptions.
Senge’s five components of a learning organization are all interrelated. Personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, and mental models make up the foundation of the organization. And systems thinking is the cement that holds it all together. In order for the learning organization to work, each of the five disciplines must be developed simultaneously and integrated with one another.
Applying Senge’s model to the typical corporate mission of “increasing shareholder value” is insightful. The Fifth Discipline calls this vision shortsighted, since it does not consider what leads up to the increase in shareholder value. The typical corporate mission limits the organization’s thinking to only one aspect of a problem. As an example, Senge states that a more “enlightened” corporate mission would include customer service and treatment of employees in its focus.
Senge further delineates his model of a learning organization through his 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline:
- Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions.
- The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
- Behavior grows better before it grows worse.
- The easy way out usually leads back in.
- The cure can be worse than the disease.
- Faster is slower.
- Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
- Small changes can produce big results–but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
- You can have your cake and eat it too–but not all at once.
- Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
- There is no blame.
SUMMARY
The Fifth Discipline is a tough book to get through–many people start it, but few finish. If you manage to make it to the end, you will gain ideas you can apply over and over again. It will probably take at least two readings for all the material covered to sink in. While the Senge doesn’t present any quick fixes, he provides new language and tools that can help turn your organization into a learning organization.
Resources – Lakota
Rather than using technology as a tool to instruct directly, teachers can use it as a tool to facilitate conversation. This conversation should allow for more personal student experiences that allow them to draw upon a wider base of experiences. This works particularly well when exploring multiple interpretations of a historical event. The Lakota Teaching Project contains a representative curriculum. This curriculum can easily be adapted to teaching other lessons of history, particularly those involving culture. The structure of a simple curriculum for this might be:
- Provide students an overview of a simple web authoring tool such as Microsoft’s FrontPage
- Segment the history topic into modules. (The modules on the Lakota site are indicated at the bottom of their homepage).
- For each module, create activities for students that allow them to explore their understanding of your topic area. For example, students might explore the impact that war has had on their family to understand the impact of war on a community.
- Students should contribute to a web page that reflects their view of the specific activity. This can be thought of the equivalent of an enhanced ‘electronic journal.’
- Once several sites have begun, teachers should encourage students to review the work of others, within their class and outside of it, and discuss the differences in the various projects.
- In-class projects should focus on exploring the differences between the students. Students should be encouraged to publish paper and interpretations to their sites.
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