October 31st, 2008 by Learning Systems
It’s best, generally, to keep your courseware system logo simple. You want something bold, memorable, describable, and easy on the eye. If scalability is an issue, keeping the logo simple will also help with that.
Consider your course content and target audience. It might be educational content, business content, or a training course. Who will be using your courseware? If the answer is children, you can make your logo more colorful and playful. If the course is meant for medical students, take that into consideration.
Designing a courseware system logo involves balancing two disparate concepts. The logo should reflect not only innovation but also tradition and constancy–a fine line to walk. Your logo should represent a system that potential students can place their trust in.
October 31st, 2008 by Learning Systems
You might need your courseware system logo to be able to hold up well at tiny sizes. You can test its scalability by creating a 16×16 pixel “favicon” of the logo and seeing how it looks–this is probably the smallest it will ever need to be in. Also, try printing it at different sizes. Scalability may or may not be an important issue for your courseware system logo, depending on its use and location.
Once you have a simple, strong design, the key is just to try different things with your logo. Test different colors, add and subtract images, shades and tones. The logo will probably be surrounded by taglines and text. Put the logo in different situations, testing taglines and texts just to see where they look best–left, right, center, etc. Test different fonts, sizes and combinations.
October 31st, 2008 by Learning Systems
Branding your courseware system with a logo will give your course its own flare and personality. But how do you go about designing a logo that is as unique as your courseware system?
The first thing you’ll need to do is just start brainstorming like crazy. Use lots of paper, sketching and writing everything out by hand. Large design companies use this strategy, sketching pages and pages of logo ideas before even going near a computer. Sketching is the best way to quickly create and visualize your courseware system’s logo. Using the computer right away will waste time and slow you down.
Brainstorm concepts, using all means possible–research images on Google, write down keywords and ideas, do mind mapping, take a look at competitors’ logos. Don’t scratch any concept or idea until at least the next day, and be sure to run them by people whose opinions you trust.
October 31st, 2008 by Learning Systems
When designing a logo for your courseware system, you’ll want to first understand the history, nature, definition and function of logos. Your logo is the image embodying your courseware system, representing its content and fostering immediate customer recognition. Logos can be a name (logotype), an icon, sign or emblem (ideograms). Most logos are a combination of the two. Ideograms are sometimes recognizable without a name, like the McDonald’s arc, or the Red Cross. Ideograms are especially useful for logos of organizations that are being marketed in different alphabets, but logotypes can also be designed in a way that is instantly recognizable in different languages.
Though some companies and organizations hire a graphic designer to design their logo for them, it’s not necessary to do so. Since you’ve already designed an entire courseware system, why not add your personal touch by designing your own logo?
October 31st, 2008 by Learning Systems
Designing a courseware system to upload to Coggno’s syndicator? Or maybe you’ve already developed the course, but have yet to perfect the simplest part: the logo.
Let’s face it, a logo is kind of like a book cover; in the long run, it doesn’t really signify much. Your courseware system itself has to be strong, well-developed and effective in order to succeed in the marketplace. But the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” doesn’t exist for nothing. The fact is, we do make quick, visual judgments when selecting everything from courseware systems to shampoo to restaurants to, well, books. Like a good book cover, a logo piques interest, appeals to some aesthetic sensibility, and quickly distinguishes your course from the rest.
Already have your logo and courseware ready to go? Take advantage of Coggno’s exciting promotion. From now until November 15, we’ll migrate your content for you, free.
October 30th, 2008 by Learning Systems
Cloud computing is a revolutionary paradigm shift for learning systems. In a recent BBC article Bill Thompson writes that when giving a talk about technology, he likes to pull out his iPod Touch, wave it at a crowd and point out that “in the future” it will be a supercomputer with parallel processors and terabytes of storage. He goes on to admit that this “future” is actually now, as new services offer vast storage for his smartphone. If you have a wireless connection, you can play music, see photos and read documents as if they were local.
The implication of the cloud for school learning systems is gigantic. It means that schools will only need an internet connection to make their computers fully functional. Downloading programs and storing data will no longer be burdens of individual computers, freeing up learning system funds for other purposes.
October 30th, 2008 by Learning Systems
Marc Andreessen, co-author of Mosaic and founder of Netscape, speculates: “I think that kids coming out of college over the next several years are going to wonder why anyone ever built apps for anything other than ‘the cloud’…just like they already wonder why anyone runs any software that you can’t get to through a browser.”
Given the cloud’s significant place in our near future, organizations have begun using courseware systems to teach students and professionals how to build applications using cloud based platforms. Operation Badar is a nonprofit educational organization whose goal is to spread knowledge about cloud computing, and in the future, to create cloud based courseware systems to communicate cheaply with large numbers of students. The movement is working to address the third-world digital divide by providing cloud computing courseware systems and resources for a low cost.
October 30th, 2008 by Learning Systems
In the future–perhaps sooner than you think–you’ll probably be able to satisfy every computing need without a single application on your own hard drive. All of your data, from LMS and CMS data to family records–will be stored online in enormous data centers.
Cloud computing, which includes technology trends like Web 2.0 and SaaS, is drawing in more and more companies, including its pioneers like Amazon, Google, Yahoo! and Salesforce but also now Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM. Being able to access your LMS or online courseware on an application-free smartphone is a cloud concept. So is the idea that you don’t need any particular program or application to use your LMS or access your online courseware. But is the cloud a safe place for your data? Time will tell.
