Ted Curran.net

In my role as an instructional designer/ Learning Content Developer, a big part of the job is taking instructional materials that my subject matter experts (SMEs) have already created and transforming them into something that’s more attractive, instructionally effective, and optimized for online lea...

I’ve been developing a lot of elearning design in HTML5 recently, and I’ve been rediscovering how much I love working with Emmet.io (formerly known as Zen Coding). It’s a simple syntax that lets you string together shortcuts for HTML elements, and then POOF! expand them into a complete website....

Up until now I’ve used dedicated Markdown editors like Haroopad and MacDown as a tool where I can focus on writing, while reserving more sophisticated code editors like Coda and Atom for web design projects.

My favorite Markdown editors are all young tools in active development, and none o...

A response to PowerPoint Remix Rant by Mike Caulfield.

Mike laments how the long list of specialized graphical tools in PowerPoint is a recipe for making Open Ed Resources that are next to impossible to reuse, remix, and repurpose to other contexts.

Most things work like this, unfortunat...

This video shows you how you can quickly convert a Markdown formatted presentation outline into an HTML5 presentation using Reveal.js. I think this method is a great way to familiarize yourself with web technologies while producing attractive and powerful presentations that work gr...

One challenge about creating reusable eLearning content is that designers often fall back into the banking model of education, creating a passive and dependent learning experience for students. This often looks like packaged PowerPoints or blocks of text readings that students are expected to cl...

Even though the Internet is often credited for bringing about a “New Economy”, in fact many longstanding economic trends continue to play themselves out between the “haves” and the “have nots” when it comes to internet technology and media control. The cloud has made it possible for people to outsou...

I have been exploring what it would look like to write for the web instead of the desktop, by creating documents in Markdown and HTML rather than Word and Powerpoint. Instead of emailing files to people, I publish them online and then send someone a link. As I do this, I’m finding that I can u...

Since coming to the realization that we should all be writing for the web and not for paper, I've been trying to figure out a new way of working in Markdown that totally circumvents desktop authoring programs like Microsoft Office altogether and lets you produce web-native content. This helps me...

I’ve been blabbering on recently about #Markdown here on TedCurran.net, and I just managed to interest a roomful of seemingly sane people why putting weird characters all over your writing is a good idea. I’m taking this as a sign that people get it– we need to write for the web, not the deskt...