Well, today started out pretty good. In the mail, I received my learning battle cards. I am pretty excited about the product. The cards are well designed and well thought out. Let me tell you a little bit more about them.
Learning battle cards are a deck of 108 different cards relating to training and development tools, concepts, and ideas you can use in your instruction. Each card is unique with information on the front and back of the card.
Card Front
Learning Battle Card – Front
On the front of the card, they have the name, an identification code, and a picture. For example, I’m looking at the Story (St) card. Additionally, the card has a tag cloud that provides you with ideas about the topic. Words on this tag cloud include book, kindergarten, acting, imagination, news, fairy tale, plot, metaphor, case study, narration, emotions, etc.
Card Back
Learning Battle Card – Back
On the other side of the card, the code and name are included. The card also includes information about usefulness, profile, and power bars.
Usefulness
There is a section called usefulness where the designers focused on qualities like analysis, awareness, knowledge, skills, attitudes, implementation, and measurement. Next to each of those items, there is a dot indicating whether that would be one of the qualities applicable to the card activity. It is possible for me to could go through the deck and identify all the knowledge cards. That would give me a series of activities I could use to present knowledge.
Profile
In the next section, you are presented with the profile that includes pairs of words: self-learning vs with peers, synchronization vs a synchronization, and formal vs informal.
Power Bars
The final section shows how successful the activity is in relationship to the educator, the process, and the trainee. Under educator, production effort and production time are examined. Under the process, learning power is noted in terms of how successful this would be in a learning environment. Finally, the trainee’s perspective is explored for the amount of engagement and the difficulty for use.
I look at these cards as an opportunity to work with faculty to look for ideas they can put into their curriculum. I also look at it as an opportunity to work with my team. These cards have quickly broadened our toolbox to activities we may not normally consider. 108 options are a lot of options. I am very excited about getting my hands on these cards.
If you near my office, I plan to have him there; feel free to come by and check them out.
