Jennifer Valley: My eLearning Toy Box

At the end of 2013 I came across a series of pictures taken where the artist (Andrew Whyte) took breathtaking photos using lego people on Pinterest (follow me!) (I went back and found a couple and made sure to pin them this time.) I was so inspired that I grabbed my son's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures and my phone and decided to take pictures of them brushing their teeth. I posted the pictures on my personal Facebook page and got a laugh. But this week, I actually got to use them in a fun and creative way. Here's my entry for Articulate eLearning Heroes Challenge #74 - Using Toys for Storytelling in E-Learning.

Challenge

"This week your challenge is to design a short interaction using toys as your primary characters. You can combine toys with photographs, illustrations, or hand-crafted scenes and backgrounds.

The objective this week is to replace your usual e-learning graphics and characters with toys."

Work

I took the pictures and turn them into black and white since the quality was so low. I wasn't that good about taking pictures using proper back lighting and using editing techniques to fighting the yellow tint in 2013. Thank goodness for my introduction to image editing software and Instagram lol I knew that I would need a background for my cover page, a bar code and a picture of all of them together so I went on the hunt for items I could use (see my resource links). I also wanted some custom fonts since the logo is very distinct. I found the perfect pair in Turtles and Cowabunga on DaFont. Using the pictures I previously shot I arranged them into my logical order to try and make a story. From then on it was just adding colors and text onto the screen that fit their character personas.

Result

I created a short storyboarding using PowerPoint that's the start to a children's lesson on brushing your teeth. If I were to turn this into a full blown learning course then I think outlining the steps or having the learner put the pictures in order would be pretty fun.