No Help at All, or I don't know who do you think he's talking to?

I'm doing some more instructional design for one of my favourite clients. My client is developing a training package for an internal SharePoint-like application used b a large technology company. The app lets users create networks of other users, write blogs, post their status, etc. It's exactly the kind of application that supports knowledge management and I wish that I'd been aware of it when I was working on Learning Tree's knowledge management course.

The application lets users customize their home page by adding/removing gizmos (and, optionally, configuring those gizmos). One of the objectives for the module that I'm writing is to enable users to "describe gizmos". Two things you should know:

• We're supposed to draw our material for this course from an existing course
• The audience for this course material is white-collar knowledge workers

The existing definition for these gizmos, which I was supposed to incorporate into the new course, was "Gizmos are prepackaged HTML that encapsulate software functionality." I can just imagine the audience for this course hearing that and nodding their heads, saying "Oh! Right! Whew--I'm glad that's taken care of."

I'm replacing that definition with a "Hole is to dig" kind of definition: "A gizmo is a tool you can use on your home page to see more information. You can add a gizmo to your page just by dragging it from the gallery of gizmos. To get to the gallery..."

Reading or read

• The Wind from the East: A Novel by Almudena Grandes