"Proven Instructional Design": Bingo!

Have you ever seen the claim: "built using proven Instructional Design."

(I just saw it. Some website. Ain't saying where. But I could equally have found it on the back of a cereal box.)

Do you ever wonder how they proved it? Did they prove it?

What are they actually talking about? It's one of those buzzword bingo terms people use.

Needs to be added to Jane Bozarth's E-Learning Buzzword Bingo Card.

Photo credit: Bingo Sign by CarbonNYC

Yet More Buzz on Buzzword

I posted about Buzzword a month or so again and since then, I've had a lot of traffic to my site. I got listed on their "press" page. Oooh.

Wired has now done a great review of the app: Buzzword: Web-Based Office Docs Never Looked So Good.

"...the web apps status quo is set to change with the arrival of Buzzword, an office-caliber document editor with a visually rich user interface. Buzzword beats current Ajax-based offerings like Google Docs and Zoho Writer in both usability and aesthetic impact. And in a few months, when a desktop version is released, Buzzword will pose a serious challenge to Microsoft Word, the current king of document editing on the desktop.

The application has what you'd expect from a word processor -- copy and paste, find and replace, text formatting -- plus a few more features that have traditionally only been associated with desktop apps. It has intelligent margin, table and image formatting options as well as a sophisticated lists manager. Documents can be shared among users, and your classmates or co-workers can leave comments, which show up as little yellow pop-up notes in the right-hand margin."

I like that it's built in Flash. I like that Virtual Ubiquity is a Massachusetts company. I like that it's a purty application....

It's still in invitation-only beta. I'm on the press page, so I think I should get at invite, don't you?

Public beta will start in the fall. For free. Will the free part stay free?

Some Buzz on Buzzword

If you haven't already heard the buzz (I clearly hadn't), be sure to check out Buzzword. It's a web-based word processing tool built in Flash 9 by a Boston-based company called Virtual Ubiquity. They call it "Rich Collaborative Authoring." All I know is that it sure is purty!

It's not out yet (due to launch this spring, which is now officially over today). Some fabulous built-in collaboration tools, including real-time commenting by multiple contributors.

In a blog post, they talk about design:

It’s not just an obsession with making things look good, but it’s the belief that good design enriches life, that design matters. It matters that the look and feel of an application support the work. It matters that the person at the keyboard enjoys the experience, that they have fun using the tool. We’re providing the writer with a work environment, and we want it to be a compelling, enjoyable place to be.

This looks much nicer than Google Docs.

You can find more More Buzz on Buzzword here.