Where the Heck Have You Been?!
I know, right?! I didn’t blog at all in August. So some of you might be thinking, “where has Ashley been?” At least I hope you’ve been thinking that, because I’ve really missed connecting as frequently, and I’m about to get back to it!
In July 2018, I tore my medial meniscus and damaged a bunch of cartilage in my knee playing softball. If you remember my jaw saga, you might be thinking “choose a different sport, please”, but no. No. I. Will. Not! ANYHOW. I had been waiting since then to have knee surgery, and on July 31st 2019 the wait was over!
I participated in a really neat research study that had two options: Option 1 – I get the surgery they’ve been doing successfully for years, which would only require one surgery, or Option 2 – I get a fancy 2-surgery deal that would first extract cartilage, mail it to a lab, grow new cartilage, and then 3 weeks later I would have a second surgery to implant the newly grown cartilage – cool, right?! I wouldn’t know which I had been selected for until I woke up from the anesthesia of surgery 1.
I really wanted the cool surgery so I could tell everyone I was bionic or part cattle (because the grown cartilage matrix was made with bovine matter), but my maiden name is Murphy and I abide by Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong), so I was randomly selected for the old surgery, which is referred to as ‘microfracture‘ plus a meniscus repair. Now that I’ve had this surgery, I am extremely glad to be nearly 6 weeks post-op, and not having to restart the post-op countdown with the second surgery, but it’s not nearly as neat sounding.
Long story short: I’ve been caged up on crutches and in a bulky range of motion brace for the past 4.5 weeks, and I have 1.5 more to go before I get the fancy custom brace and get cleared to resume normal life tasks like driving. I’ve had 2-4 appointments every single week, and it’s been incredibly exhausting. But, I’ll spend another 12-18 months in the new brace, and then my knee should be almost good as new. Which means: more softball and more travel.
So, that’s where I’ve been, and like I said earlier, I’m very excited about getting back into the swing of things with the blog…and with speaking opportunities!
Where Am I Speaking?
If you’re in the market for some Miami travel this November, I’ll be delivering two sessions for ATD Core4 Miami:
Session 1: Instructional Design for E-Learning
Oftentimes, eLearning programs don’t fully consider instructional design principles and best practices. Without considering these principles, though, how can you ensure that the eLearning is effectively addressing the issue for which it was developed?
In this session, you will learn about several key instructional design tips to consider when developing your eLearning. These tips stand to help you create a more targeted, consistent, and accessible eLearning program.
Key Takeaways:
- Why it is so important to know your audience
- Methods for ensuring consistency
- Strategies for designing more universally
- Ways of building in feedback opportunities
Session 2: Top 10 Tips: Articulate Storyline
So you’re developing some pretty awesome e-learning in Articulate Storyline, but you’d like to streamline your development…this is where all of those software secrets can come in handy! If you’ve ever felt like you could use a clone, this session aims to make you twice as productive doing what you do.
In this session, you will learn 10 top tips for working in Articulate Storyline, and how these tips can help you become more productive in your Articulate Storyline development.
Key Takeaways:
- Methods for streamlining your development process
- Strategies for making the tool work for you
- How to speed up your development, without sacrificing quality
- Articulate Storyline tricks of the trade
And, then I’ll be delivering a 2-day workshop in Washington, DC, so if you have any recommendations for things to do and/or people to see, definitely let me know!
This is one of the first years in a long time that I won’t be participating at DevLearn because I won’t be cleared to fly until early November, so I’m having some serious FOMO…but 2020 will be a good one!
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