Thursday, June 19, 2014

Podcast #12: Attention! Attention! Attention!

Craig missed Dr Chris Atherton‘s session at LT11, however the video recording of her session has provided him with inspiration and ideas ever since. This podcast scratches the surface of Chris’ specialism and hopefully provides you ‘Dear Listener’ with a few ideas (and maybe even a challenge) ahead of your next presentation.

Craig even starts to try and determine the origin of the word ‘logo’ and then gives up to the wisdom of Wikipedia!!!

Download podcast in mp3 format: Attention! Attention! Attention!

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Music Source.


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Coaching Tip #11, Chip McFarlane, IECL

Chip provides tips to help coaches align with the International Coach Federation (ICF) Core Competencies for coaches. Tip #11 looks at managing progress and accountability.

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It’s true, great minds must think alike…

….because earlier this week Lesley Price and I both tweeted about the same subject within an hour or so of each other. This was the thought that was running through my mind as I was driving home a few days ago, which I subsequently tweeted about…

Later on that evening Lesley tweeted this

This led to an exchange of tweets between us, which resulted in Lesley being kind enough to share an experience with me via this email.

  A couple of years ago… I fell down stairs and sprained my ankle really badly.  I had to be at a Technology Conference organised by Becta as I was facilitating a table…. Natalie, my daughter took time off work to drive me.  She sat on the table I was facilitating…. even although it was an educational technology conference and she was a primary school teacher, she had no idea of the language and jargon that was being used.  It was almost like the Emperors New Clothes and she was the child watching from the side lines.  She sat all morning and the first part of the afternoon taking it all in.  She then just said…. I have no idea what you are all talking about, what does Social Media mean?  I typed that into questions that were coming from the floor… Facilitator picked it up and came to talk to her.  She was youngest person in the room and just said… “now that I know what it means…I can tell you I use SoMe all the time…I just don’t see what all the fuss is about, that is my life!  Why all the discussion???  Why don’t you just get on with it??”I have just talked to her again about it this evening and she still remembers the occasion… and still does not understand the facination by oldies. SoMe is part of her life…. she is not into Twitter, doesn’t see value in it.  If you look at profile of average user of Twitter I can understand that.  She uses FB, FB chat, skype , skype chat and txt all the time.  Sometimes using more than one at once… makes for interesting conversations lol!!I am trying to persuade her to start blogging… she has wonderful ideas. Although she teaches reception she also runs Computer Club for Girls with Yr 6 girls.  When the Tsunami and Japanese earthquake story started breaking, she put BBC news on her interactive white board and had it running all day as her reception class were interested in the live commentry that was coming through and bombarded her with questions.  She doesn’t close down social networking when she is teaching, not that she spends any time on it, it just runs in the background, the kids are now used to ‘silly noises’ that come from her laptop and tell her she when she has a message!  So kids completely understand SoMe… just don’t call it that…. they see it as normal… why are the rest of us making such a fuss about it instead of getting on with it!!So my question to you ‘Dear Reader’ is are we right, or are we waaaay off the mark?Is the ‘social’ holding things up due to it’s ‘connotations’?Should we just be referring to media, learning, networks etc and work under the assumption (a dangerous thing I know) that the ‘social’ is inherrent.Why not let me know your thoughts in the comments box below?

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Coaching Tip #10, Chip McFarlane, IECL

Chip provides tips to help coaches align with the International Coach Federation (ICF) Core Competencies for coaches. Tip #10 looks at the planning and goal setting stage of the coaching engagement.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Twitter to G+

So it’s been a whole weekend since I decided to step away from Twitter and concentrate my energies in G+.

As with most reflective exercises, the first weekend has presented me with nothing that I didn’t already know, but it has brought them to the forefront of my mind.

Firstly, I feel that I have used Twitter for 3 purposes to date:

The posting of links to my own online contentThe discussion of professional areas of interestMindless, banal waffle (which rather interestingly was one of the contributing factors to me ‘going off’ Twitter – was I a part of the problem???)

Whereas in comparison G+ had only ever (with a handful of exceptions) been used as a place to tout links to my blog.

I hadn’t really looked at other peoples contentI hadn’t gone out of my way to seek out and follow new peopleI hadn’t engaged in any conversations.

This realisation has confirmed that my decision to engage with G+ on a deeper level has been the right one, in fact my plan (at the moment) is to completely transform my usage of the 2, so I’ll still be posting blog links etc to Twitter but expect to see less conversation and waffle (I can hear the sighs of relief from some of you now) instead if you want to engage in that, then why not head over to G+ and say Hi….

Photo source.


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At last! A fruitful meeting!

Regular readers will be aware that I recently met with RSC North West.

I’ve recently opened an ipadio account, so here is my reflection on the meeting


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Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto

A few weeks ago I was reading this excellent post from Clark Quinn, when I noticed that he referenced the book ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande.

This was a book that I purchased (in paper format) and read 2-3 years ago, but must admit to it being ‘ahead of my time’ at the time in my career I read it. I did a bit of digging around to try and find it again, but was unable to do so, so repurchased it as a Kindle version.

What was immediately of interest to me was just how differently the book resonated with me in comparison with the first time I read it (I think the lesson here is to go back and revisit ‘things’, even ‘things’ that didn’t make sense/seem relevant/etc at the time). Concepts and examples that were lost on me a couple of years ago, all of a sudden started to make sense, to take shape, to add value! The book hadn’t changed – I had!

I could offer a lengthy review of the book, however that would seem like a waste of the functionality that the Kindle platform provides, so instead, here are my Kindle Highlights from the book, along with some additional notes that mirrored my thinking at the time of reading. (it appears that Amazon won’t allow you to see ‘just’ the notes for a specific book, so here’s a screenshot showing you where to click to see ‘some’ of  my notes (not sure why you can’t see them all?))

Screenshot showing my Amazon Kindle public notes

What I will say is that of you’re in an L&D role, this is a book that you need to read.

Maybe you’re new to the world of Performance support?

Perhaps you’re familiar with, maybe even practicing the concept?

It could be that you know it’s what you should be doing, but you need something to back that up, perhaps some evidence to convince others?

Whatever you’re doing, at whatever level – this book will have something in there for you.

So stop reading this and order this

Or if like like many, cash is tight at the moment, why not try tracking it down via your local library.

If you’d like to hear from Atul Gawande himself, with particular reference to ‘checklists’, then check this video out

He’s also published some fine examples of  checklists on this site.

Image source


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Getting your foot in the door

Whenever I meet people who are still in the tentative stages of considering utilising mobile technologies I always suggest that rather than initially invest in a bespoke mobile app or a mobile authoring tool, that they instead consider promoting existing apps to their workforce from within the various app stores.

I believe that this has several benefits

a ) almost zero cost to the organisation (the only cost I can see is the time to search for, identify and promote the apps to the workforce)

b) almost zero risk. The developer has taken the risk with the development of the app itself and as long as you have identified and then tested the suitability of any app, then the risks are reduced even further. The reason I said ‘almost‘ no risk, is that there is always the potential for the app to develop bugs or for the content to go out of date, which obviously has the potential to sour the experience for the learner and in turn for your plans to develop things further.

In order to help you with identifying suitable apps, I’m planning to start a ‘foot in the door’ section of this blog which will highlight some of the apps that I have identified as having the potential to add value to many workplace learner’s workflows and allow you to get your ‘foot in the door‘ with little or no risk/cost.

Some of them will be apps that my employer has produced; some will not.

Some will be free, others will have a cost attached.

Some of them I will have demonstrable experience of using personally and/or of others using, others will rest upon a gut feeling.

I will always try and add context behind my reason for choosing that app with some of them being apps that I have actually recommended to ‘real’ clients – as I’m sure you’ll appreciate I’ll be unable to reveal who the client is, but I will indicate that is was a ‘genuine’ recommendation.

So keep your eyes peeled for the first

“foot in the door”

blog post.


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Breaking the L&D bubble at #AMC13

I’ve tweeted and blogged several times before about the ‘bubble’ and ‘echo chamber’ that many of us L&D folk live in.

Given the marketing-orientated approach that I’m taking to our mandatory training I thought I’d attend ‘Another Marketing Conference‘ in order to obtain an external perspective.

Here’s what I’m hoping to get from some of the sessions.

What about you?

Do you have any plans to reach outside our ‘bubble’ and see how others professions / industries can add value to what you’re doing?

Are you already doing this? If so, tell us about it below…..\

Image source


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Get your foot in the door – Shift Workers

Having worked in a couple of organisations which operated a shift roster I know how important it is for shift workers to be able to accurately record and verify the shift pattern that they are operating on.

If this is applicable to your organisation then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your shift workers towards them.

iOS app (iPhone) – £1.49p

Android app – £0.64p

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

Good luck and let me know how you get on

The blog post that started it all

Image source


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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Now I wasn't expecting that!!

Many of you will know that I didn’t really take my first formal foray into Learning Technologies until 10 months ago at the Learning Technologies conference. Since then I have taken what I consider to be an active role in pursuing current and emerging technologies and using them as part of my own Personal Learning Network to (if I may say so myself) some success.

Over the past 10 months I have become an active Twitter user which has led me to connect with some wonderful people, allowed me to attend some great workshops and has allowed me to work with some great organisations. I have created my own Blog and am truly benefiting from the reflection that this provides me, I have set up my own Delicious, Flickr, Slideshare and YouTube accounts. I have also started to introduce the concept of Social Media and Learning Technologies to my organisation. But I had never for a moment, not one moment expected that my lowly activities would warrant anybodys attention.

How wrong I was…

.. During the summer I was speaking with the wonderful @juliewedgwood who suggested that the story of my ‘first 12 months with Learning Technologies’ might be a story that others would be interested in, that might convince others that you don’t have to have lengthy experience in this field to implement these tools and start to benefit from them and suggested that I speak to @DonaldHTaylor on the subject.

And so it came to pass that 2 emails, 1 face-to-face meeting and a phone call later and I am really chuffed (and proud) to announce that I have been asked to speak at the Learning Technologies Conference 2011 on the subject of ‘Getting started with learning technologies‘

If you’d like to find out how a real novice has gone about using these technologies then why  not register to attend the Learning Technologies Conference 2011?

book now


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Will an ‘in-house’ un-conference work?… it appears it might!

A few days ago I posted my initial thoughts on facilitating an un-conference based around the theme of using technology to enhance learning. I was at that time a little dubious over the uptake of this, but the pieces seem to be falling into place…

… I’m really pleased to say that the support and interest over the last week has very encouraging, here’s how I did it.

Emailed all internal facilitators to invite them to the un-workshop, including details of the venue and the offer of a Flip Ultra camera being presented to a randomly selected participant on completion of the day (always helps!)Those facilitators that responded positively were sent a link to a Poll Daddy survey asking for them to contribute their ideas and suggestion for the days content. I opted for Poll Daddy over the Survey Monkey licence that we possess, as I will ultimately want to ‘poll’ the attendees and I am unsure if Survey Monkey has that functionality (note to self; look into this functionality). Google Moderator required everybody to have a GMail account, so it was a non-starter.

I have also invited out IT team along, to allow them to see the direction that we are trying to take in terms of Learning Technologies. I am hoping that this will grease the wheels of progress in the future and may allow IT the opportunity to interact more closely with their customers.

Anyway, 6 days after sending out the initial email I have 9 confirmed attendances and 1 tentative, with a week still to go it is shaping up to be a great event.

Picture: Source


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Great feedback – Great progress!

Several weeks ago I had the good fortune of being invited by Nick Lee to facilitate a couple of CPD sessions for members of University Hospital Southampton’s L&D team and a number of ‘leads’ and SMEs from around the organisation.

We agreed upon a session that would challenge the attendees perception as to what ‘elearning’ was, with a focus on achieving the realisation that it could be (and is) so much more than ‘self paced, click next’ modules.

The session involved a number of activities including conversation, debate, self-directed research and modelling of good practice with me using a range of technologies within the physical classroom environment.

As always with these sorts of sessions, they concluded with a general sense of positivity and implied ‘actions’ that people would take away, however as an external facilitator it’s often difficult to ever get a sense of whether your session had any real impact on people or whether they were just being polite.

That uncertainty is why I was incredibly chuffed to see this series of tweets from Nick Lee appear just a few days after the sessions took place.


Result!!

If you’d like to keep tabs with how Nick is getting on with this you can always follow him on Twitter and/or his blog.

If you’re interested in me helping you to also trigger a change of thinking within your organisation then why not get in touch.


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Coaching Tip #1, Chip McFarlane, IECL

Chip provides tips to help coaches align with the International Coach Federation (ICF) Core Competencies for coaches. Tip #1 explores Setting the Foundation.

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Podcast #14: Get your sleeves rolled up and get stuck in”

Lisa Johnson shares her teams success of delivering training to over 7000 people who are scattred throughout the length and breadth of the UK, with a team of only 5 people. Here’s how they’ve done it….

(listening time 22mins)

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

Shownotes

WebEx

The Charity Learning Consortium

BT Dare2Share project

Lisa had asked me to consider the duration of my podcasts as she had found anything 30mins+ to be too long. This married up with additional feedback I had received so we decided to ‘rattle through’ with a 20 minute(ish) podcast, which I think works quite well – but what do you think?

Would you have rather Lisa and I discussed things in a greater details but with a longer duration?

Or does the short ‘n’ sharp podcast work for you?

Why not let us know, via the comments box below?


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What Learners Want – Part 4 – The ‘momentum’

If you haven’t read this series to date, it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set some context.

Having decided upon a pre-survey marketing campaign, we accepted that despite our best efforts to promote the survey that it would inevitably be ‘lost‘, ‘missed‘ or just ‘forgotten about‘ by many people, so we needed a plan to maintain the momentum of the marketing campaign…

During our planning stages of this survey the team that worked with me on it decided that it was critical for us to communicate the results (I used the word ‘results‘ lightly as the in-depth analysis would not take place until after the survey had closed) throughout the survey as well as some immediate stats upon completion. We were also resolute that we would not gloss over any critical or developmental feedback and would ensure that it was shown within any results/stats and not ‘buried’ beneath any overtly positive feedback.

Here’s what we did:

At the end of each week, I created a simple animation. The animation ran for a calendar week on our internal TV screens and was communicated via our internal emagazine, intranet, collaborative platform groups, blogs etc as well as being played at the start of as many meetings as possible in order to stir up discussion and debate around the survey.

The purpose of the animations  was twofold:

To act as a method of being able to communicate some basic stats/comments that people had made. It was incredibly important to us that people could see that somebody was reading the survey submissions and wasn’t afraid to show comments/feedback that others may have felt were risque.To act as a reminder/prompt for those who hadn’t undertaken the survey. The last frame contains a link to the survey itself.

Week 1

Upon completion of Week 2

Upon completion of Week 3

Upon completion of Week 4

Upon completion of Week 5 (the survey closed at this point)

In my next blog post, I’ll go into the data/findings that the survey provided us and how we plan to use it.

Image source


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Coaching Tip #6, Chip McFarlane, IECL

Chip provides tips to help coaches align with the International Coach Federation (ICF) Core Competencies for coaches. In Tip #6 looks at the key tool a coach employs to enable their counterpart to grow, asking questions.

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Monday, June 16, 2014

Thinglink

Regular readers will know that I’m an advocate of maximising the technologies that we already have at our disposal, I’ve even facilitated some online and f2f sessions around this subject in which I encouraged people to look under the bonnet of the tools and platforms that they already had.

One of the tools whose ‘hidden functionality‘ I’ve discussed in the past is Flickr’s ability for people to be able to add ‘hotspots’ to images and then add text to those hotspots, here’s an example. Whilst this is a great idea, the fact that you have to be logged in to the Flickr account where the image is hosted in order to be able to add the annotations is something of a drawback, add to this the fact that when you then embed the ‘tagged’ image away from Flickr, the hotspots disappear and you have a limiting platform….

Enter ThingLink…

ThingLink allows you to tag images that:

you have uploadedare within Facebookare within Flickrhave a url associated with themare within your blog or websiteOnce you have tagged these images, you can them embed them within a blog, site, intranet, LMS, VLE etc aaaaaand allow others to add tags too (if you so wish) – no more having to share Flickr account login details with others. Here’s one I prepared earlier. I’ve made it editable so please feel free to add some annotations, links, videos etc of your own.

How might you be able to use this platform within your own organisation?

What advantages and disadvantages can you see?

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below


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Saturday, June 7, 2014

Research? Science? or something more wooly?

Although I’ve been publishing video for some time now, both for myself personally and for Orgs I’ve been working in, it’s always been somewhat ‘quick and dirty’ using phones, flip cams, webcams etc.

My current employer however, is looking into the possibility of purchasing some higher end equipment, so I’ve been doing my research not only into the equipment itself but also the underpinning knowledge and skillset required.

That’s why I was quite excited to see this tweet appear in my timeline.

The link took me through to this blog post on the Video Arts site, with the title

The science behind the effectiveness of video in learning

I attempted to leave a comment against the post but kept getting an error message whenever I submitted it. Not one to be put off I called Video Arts to let them know their site was playing up (‘cos that’s the kinda guy I am) and was told that they would fix it.

Imagine my surprise to find that ‘fixing it’ appears to mean ‘removing the comments functionality against all posts’!

I don’t normally ‘scrape’ content from web pages, but here’s the article in full (don’t forget you can access the original here) with my original comment below.

It often feels like a no-brainer that video is a more effective way to share learning; everyone loves watching telly right? The billions of daily hits on YouTube certainly suggest that people enjoy watching videos, but there’s also plenty of science behind our assertion that video creates longer lasting learning.

So for all our clients who ask us “what’s the research that says video is the most effective tool for learning”, here’s a list of useful references….(be warned; our list gets more sciencey towards the end)

 50% of Smartphone users watch video on their mobile device – the Educational Marketing Group 59% of senior executives said they prefer watching video to reading text – ForbesYou are four times more likely to look at video on a website than text and images – Cisco90% of learning comes from informal training activities like apps, social networks and video – Nick van Dam, Chief L&D officer, DeloitteLearners remember 10% of what they read (text), 20% of what they hear (lectures), 30% of what they see (images), 50% of what they see and hear (demonstrations, video), 70% of what they say themselves (speaking, giving lectures) and 90% of what they do (practice) – Edgar Dale’s Cone of Learning85% of L&D professionals use video for learning – Video Arts client surveyVideo improves attention, motivation and the overall learning experience – Herefordshire and Worcestershire Lifelong Learning NetworkA comScore press release states that when professionally-produced video and user-generated video were used in conjunction for a comScore study, lift in share of choice was 35.3% for the featured product and 28% for the brand’s total line. Alone, professionally-produced video resulted in 24.7% and 16% respectively, and user-generated video returned 18.7% and 10% – comScoreDr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research says a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words – invodoVideo appears in 70% of the top 100 search listings – KISSmetricsVideos are 53 times more likely than text pages to show up on the first page of search results – GIGAmonEconsultancy estimates videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click-through rate than plain-text results – EconsultancyIn a Forbes study, it was found that three-quarters (75%) of executives surveyed said they watch work-related videos on business-related websites at least weekly; more than half (52%) watch work-related videos on YouTube at least weekly – ForbesMore than half of senior executives share videos with colleagues at least weekly, and receive work-related videos as often – Forbes.Regularly posting videos helped the company’s website receive 200% to 300% more monthly unique visitors and a 100% longer average time-on-site spent per visitor. The average time spent on pages with videos was 3 minutes compared to 1 minute and 30 seconds averaged on pages without video – marketing sherpa29.9% of people say they would watch more online video content if the quality of content were higher and 26.4% would watch more if their access were more flexible (i.e., the ability to watch anywhere, anytime, from any device) – eConsultancyStudents asked about video-instruction universally express that video reinforces their learning, makes them feel visually stimulated, and holds their attention better than text – Cofield, J. L. (2002) An Assessment of Streaming Video in Web-based InstructionThe use of video has been deemed more effective for student retention than the use of text in problem-based instruction – Choi and JohnsonThe multiple symbol system of video enhances understanding of complex concepts and supports the acquisition of new concepts among learners with limited prior knowledge – Salomon, G. (1994). Interaction of media, cognition, and learning. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Information obtained visually is more memorable, and the simultaneous processing of both auditory and visual information increases learner comprehension and retention – Baggett, P. (1984). Role of temporal overlap of visual and auditory material in forming dual media associations. Journal of Educational PsychologyInstructors observe that students ask questions that are more specific and engaged in classroom discussion – Franciszkowicz, M. (2008). Video-Based Additional Instruction. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology

My response(which I’m still very happy to post against the original site, just as soon as Video Arts enable comments)

Hmmmm,

The *initially* impressive list of 21 items seems to largely fall down once you start to read it!

Very, very few of the 21 bullet points actually provide any evidence that video is the most ‘effective’ tool for learning.

Admittedly, there are some references to what appears to be research towards the end of the list, but the author hasn’t actually bothered to extrapolate the actual evidence from the data.

Let me clear here. I am not at all ‘anti video’, but when a blog posts tells me it’s going to provide me with some ‘research’, I expect it to do that – not just cite a long list of examples that ‘video is popular’ – so is nicotine but it doesn’t mean that it’s effective for learning!!!

Image source


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I’m speaking at #DevLearn 12…

It appears that US conferences have a slightly different view of accepting vendors as speakers compared with the UK conference circuit, which meant that following my submission of a proposal to speak at DevLearn 2012 I was pleasantly surprised to be accepted as a speaker at this years conference. (note: I am no longer working within a vendor environment, but fortunately my new employer is supporting me in meeting my commitment and of course to attend the wider conference activities).

Of course I’m excited to speaking at such a renowned conference but I have to admit that I’m more than a little intrigued by Neil Lasher’s blog post comparing the US to the UK conference circuit – I guess I’ll be able to take a look for myself soon!

In preparation for my session, I’ve put together a short video that I’m hoping attendees will watch prior to attending the session (previous experience at an eLN event demonstrated that the take-up of this approach was woefully low!) therefore maximising the precious face-to-face that we will have during the session. In the meantime, why not take look at the video yourself (it’s the first movie I’ve created on my Macbook using iMovie) and leave your responses in the comments section below.


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The story of how I got to speak at #LT11UK….

….. begins in the Summer of 2010.

I was speaking on the telephone with the fantastic @juliewedgwood on the subject of my progress with using learning technologies since attending LT10, when she suggested that @DonaldHTaylor may be interested in the story as a potential session for LT11… I joked about this…. mulled it over…. dropped Don an email….

… and so it came to pass that at 1400hrs on Day 2 of Learning Technologies 2011 I found myself co-facilitating a session entitled ‘Taking the next steps‘ with @simbeckhampson

I remembered the presentations at LT10 being broadly broken down into 2 types:

The sage on the stage with a pocket full of Bullet Points.And the ‘guide by your side’ with a pocketful of interaction and activities.

It will probably come as no surprise to you to hear that the content of the latter still resonates with me today and indeed Julie Wedgwood (who has become a friend and has delivered that same session back into my organisation for me) falls into that category.

It was that same impact that I wanted to have on those delegates who were kind enough to attend my session at LT11. Here are the simple steps that I took in planning and preparing my session.

Given that my session was about my ‘journey’ over the past 12 months I thought it would fit quite nicely into a calendar format.I identified 12 tools that I had used over the preceding 12 months and slotted 1 of these into each month, which then formed the basis of a PowerPoint deck.I asked my friend Sam, to create a desktop calendar from my PPT slides and then ordered 100 of them

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

I added some autotweets to each of the slides order to feed the #LT11UK Twitter backchannel.Given the target audience for my session I anticipated that many of them might not have a Twitter account (not yet anyway!), so I set up a Text Wall (courtesy of @xlearn) to allow non-Tweeters to experience participating in a back-channel.I realised that as I had only 25 minutes to cover a 12 month period that I would not be able to cover each of the 12 months, so I created a slidecast using Slideshare which allowed me to cover each of the 12 months in greater detail due to the lack of time pressure. Here it is:

At that point it was time to put everything in the laps of the Gods and as Nike would say

The footage can be viewed here (please not that is appears that this site is still being edited (at least I hope it is) but you’ll get the idea)

The actual presentation went as I had anticipated, however the feedback I received be it  face-to-face, via the backchannel or peoples blogs was phenomenal and quite humbling. I had never thought for a second that such a ‘simple introduction’ to Learning Technologies would have pushed so many peoples buttons. Some people have commented upon the unusual, non-linear, delegate-driven presentation style that I used, others have mentioned how passionate I was…

… whatever the reason, the key factor for me was that people enjoyed it and gained some small measure of motivation of it. I wish you all the very best for your future implementation of Learning Technologie and if I can be of any help or assistance then please don’t hesitate to contact me.

On a final note a BIG “Thank You” to Julie Wedgwood for being the catalyst to me speaking at LT11 and to Don Taylor for taking a ‘punt’ on me.

Did you attend my session?

What (if anything) did you take away to action?

How is the action progressing?

Why not provide your responses in the comments box below?


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Podcast #26: One month on…

Devlearn 12

Craig chats with Bianca Woods about what they took away from Devlearn 12, but more importantly what they’ve been able to implement back in their organisations in the 6 weeks since Devlearn concluded.

Bianca also shares her tips on how to maximise your engagement with your ‘non conference attending’ colleagues prior to, during and after any conference attendance.

Listening time: 25 mins

Download the podcast in m3 format: Podcast #26 One month on..

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Bianca’s blog

Music Source

Image Source


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Why You Need a PLN, and How to Develop One: Resources Shared at #LSCon

Speaker-Badge-LS14aAt the 2014 Learning Solutions Conference and Expo, I led a discussion titled Why You Need a PLN, and How to Develop One. Here’s a description of the session:

People are not learning exclusively from conventional sources like courses and classrooms anymore. In truth, we never did, but there’s a growing awareness of the small percentage of learning that comes from formal means as compared to informal means. More and more, people are realizing they are networked learners, with a large percentage of their learning coming via a dedicated group of chosen and trusted resources. This network of resources is commonly referred to as a personal learning network (or PLN), and it is one of the most powerful learning tools in a networked world. But how does one form a PLN, and what are the implications of PLNs to workplace learning?

In this session, you will learn about PLNs, including what they are, where they exist, and how to build one. You will also explore how an organization can leverage PLNs across their enterprise. You will leave this session with an understanding of the value of personal learning networks, as well as with the steps and tips needed to build a strong PLN.

In this session, you will learn:

The value of personal learning networksThe many ways individuals can build and strengthen a personal learning networkHow to use social media to strategically target, connect, and engage with individuals and resources that can enhance professional developmentHow personal learning networks can be leveraged and scaled across a workforce

This blog post is being set up primarily as a follow-up resource for those that attended the session, and it may also serve as a resource for anyone that wants to learn more about PLNs.

Session Slides

What is a PLN (Personal Learning Network)?
Personal Learning Network Wikipedia entry
What is a PLN and why do I need one? by Colette Cassinelli
What is a PLN? (and why would I want to know?) via Digital Learning Team

Why Do Learning Professionals Need a PLN?
Personal Learning Networks (PLN) = An Attitude of Gratitude by Dawn Mahoney
Your Most Powerful Search Engine is Your Personal Learning Network (PLN) by David Kelly

How Can I Build and Nurture a PLN?
Nuts and Bolts: Building a Personal Learning Network (PLN) by Jane Bozarth
Using Twitter as a Professional Development Tool by David Kelly
5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network by Lisa Nielsen
Tools for Building your Personal Learning Network LiveBinder by Tim WIlhelmus
Building a PLN Pinterest board by Brian Frimel
The Social Media Guide to Growing Your Personal Learning Network by OLE
Establishing Your Professional Learning Network (PLN) by Andrea Vernola

Additional Related Resources
My Learning Styles Awakening by David Kelly
Sometimes You Just Need to Meet Your PLN Face-to-Face by Helen Blunden
Reflections on #lrnchat: Using a Conference Backchannel for Attendees and Non-Attendees by David Kelly
Eli Pariser: Beware Online Filter Bubbles TED Talk
What’s your Personal Social Media Strategy? by David Kelly


View the original article here

Overthinking Slideshare

It seems to be that time of the year when every platform provider under the Sun is emailing me to tell me about my 2013 statistics

How many views my slides have had

How long people watched my videos for

How many bowel movements I’ve made

How many tweets I’ve sent etc

I was reading my Slideshare stats earlier today when I noticed that my number of slides per upload was much higher than the average Slideshare upload!

GASP!

I then noticed that my average number of words per slide was significantly lower than the average \

PHEW!

Screen Shot 2014-01-15 at 20.14.17

I guess the Lessig method I use for most of my presentations means that I’m using more slides to tell my story, but with fewer words. Perhaps I’m also overthinking this and need to get out more…

Do you use Slideshare?

What did your annual stats look like?

If you’d like to discuss how I can help you enhance your and your teams slide-based presentations, please get in touch.


View the original article here

Friday, June 6, 2014

Homework time… Rapid eLearning Design Text Assignments

Regular readers will be aware that I am currently undertaking an online Rapid eLearning Development programme which is being facilitated by @robhubbard. One of the assignments this week relates to the use of text within elearning and requires a number of assignment to be undertaken and then posted to the blog section of the Ning site that acts as the portal to all the other brilliant content. However, as I have my own blog I prefer to post my assignments here as it:

a) provides more opportunities for wider feedback

b) helps to promote what is a fantastic online learning programme.

There were 3 assignments this week, the first being:

Find some text that is difficult to understand and that contains jargon and or acronyms. Ideally this should be some of the source written content for your final assignment. Alternatively Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page is a great source of content written by experts for experts. Click on the ‘Random article’ link on the left-hand side until you find some content that would benefit from rewriting.Follow the Plain English guidelines to rewrite about 200 words of it in Plain English.

Here is my submission for assignment 1:

The original article is below:

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”.[1]

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.

Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.

Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.[2]

My reworked article:

Social bookmarking is a method for you to store, manage and search for bookmarks of online resources. Unlike file sharing, it isn’t the resources themselves that are shared, just the bookmarks that reference them.

You can add descriptions to these bookmarks so that other users can understand the content of the resource without having to download it for themselves. These descriptions could be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags which are words or phrases that generally describe the resource.

i.e. a bookmarked website on ‘implemeting social media policies within Blue-Chip organisations’ would probably be tagged with the following

By adding tags both you and other users can search for different websites, all on the same subject just by selecting a tag of interest.

In a social bookmarking system, you would save links to web pages that you want to remember and/or share with others. You could make these bookmarks open to the public, save them privately, share them with specific people, shared them only inside certain networks, or a combination of public and private areas.

Many social bookmarking sites have added extra features such as being able to import and export bookmarks from directly from a web browsers and the emailing of bookmarks to other.

The 2nd assignment asked us to:

write two SMART learning outcomes for your final assignment.

One of the many elements of the ReD programme that I have found to be quite innovative is the way in which Rob has used the Mindmeister mind-mapping tool to visually portray the learning outcomes, but to also use the linking features of it to link to the various resources that are in place to help achieve that outcome.

So here is my attempt at writing the learning objectives. (quite blatantly borrowing Rob’s idea!)

The 3rd and final assignment required us to:

write two multiple-choice assessment questions based on your learning outcomes

I’m still not sure whether these questions will be pitched as a stand-alone multiple choice assessment (not my preferred option) or as part of a scenario (my preference), but either way they will look a little something like this:

1. Which of the following is the correct web address for the Diigo homepage?

a)     www.diigo.co.uk

b)    www.diigo.net

c)     www.diigo.com

d)    www.diigo.gov.uk

2. What is the user name which you will need to log into the Diigo account?

a)     Tayloring.it

b)    Tailoringit

c)     Tayloringit

d)    Tayloring it

So over to you Dear Reader, what are your thoughts?

Was the reworking on the Wikipedia article clear enough?

Were the objectives SMART enough?

Were the multiple choice questions relevant and challenging?

As always, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated…


View the original article here

Getting Beyond Bullet Points (visuals only)

Once again, I consider myself extremely lucky and privileged to have been asked to speak at the Learning and Skills Group Annual Conference earlier this month at London Olympia.

I always try to facilitate a session that (I hope) has  immediate take-aways for anybody that has attended. I believe that there are enough people speaking at a strategic and theoretical level about L&D and it’s associated disciplines without me throwing my hand in too, so I always try to ensure that I do what I can to offer what I call a ‘Monday morning quick win‘ i.e. something that can be implemented immediately (or at worst very quickly back in the workplace) following the attendees return to the ‘real world‘!

This time around I wanted to offer people the next step in improving their presentations. I get the feeling that there are more and more people who understand the need to move away from bullet-point riddled slides but are not sure exactly ‘what’ should replace them.

It was this uncertainty that I hoped to address during my session by showing some examples. It is these examples that will form the basis of my next few blog posts:

Part 1 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visuals only

Part 2 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visual and audio

Part 3 – Bringing in the backchannel

Part 4 – The Learners Voice

Part 5 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points live recorded podcast

Part 6 – Tools and resources

But let’s get things started, by having a look at the Slideshare presentation below. At first glance it ticks all the boxes in terms of reducing the bullet points and using images to illustrate my story, but there’s something missing. It would be great if you could take a few minutes to progress through the slides and leave your thoughts in the comments box below……


View the original article here

Virtual Learning Show Day 2

Don’t try and include the same number of people in an online session as you would in face to face (f2f)  session. Keep the numbers low and

Cindy swapped the layout of the session screen a few times. This was useful to see the flexibility of Adobe Connect, however it took a few moments to get used to the changing layout. I’m not saying that I would never change the layout during the session, but I would be very mindful as to the knock-on effect on the learner.

 Presented by Julie Wedgwood
12.30 – 13.30 GMT (UK time)

Julie Wedgwood has been facilitating live online sessions for many years and is a favourite webinar presenter on the LPI Webinar Programme over the years. She is also one of the most highly rated commentators and conference presenters on the subject of interactivity in sessions – both face to face and in the online environment. Her more recent session on the availability and use of digital learning tools for use in live online sessions.

Join Julie Wedgwood to explore simple yet innovative ways to enhance online session engagement and keep your delegates active.

IN this highly interactive session, explore and experiment with Julie as she shares:

 Julie’s “Tell me that’s You”  approach to delegate pollsMosher’s GridGraffiti feedbackTools to aid learner concentrationWebcam anticsAdd-ons and other freebie tools

My key content take-away

Adobe Connect provides a large (and growing) number of extensions to further enhance the ‘out of the box’ functionality.

My key facilitation take-away

Julie used her webcam throughout the session with no discernible loss of quality. In the past the webinars I’ve facilitated for various 3rd parties have all insisted that I do not use the webcam. When I’m in a position to facilitate sessions within my own Org I’ll be making sure that I maximise the webcam where it adds value.

 Presented by James McLuckie
14.00 – 15.00 GMT (UK time)

Have you ever been at work and needed immediate help with a specific task or activity? Dr Jane Bozarth (author of Social Media for Trainers) calls it the “Hey Joe!” moment. “Hey Joe, can you help me to process this order.” “Hey Joe, how do I overcome this customer’s objection?”

Chances are most of your learning needs fall into this category. So why, then, is it often so difficult to find decent support to help us with the activities that are key to us being successful in our jobs? Many organisations are still locked in a cycle of providing push-down formal learning interventions, rather than making point-of-need learning materials available to help staff at the exact moment it is called for.

As learning and development professionals, we can anticipate the needs of staff and design performance aids that give staff the support they want, when they need it. Why send someone on a two-day workshop when a helpful template, reflective questionnaire, video tutorial or short how-to guide would be far more useful and effective?

James McLuckie, Learning Engagement Manager of Eden Tree, has been creating just-in-time support resources for the past ten years. In this webinar, he discusses what to consider when putting together performance aids that really help learners get to grips with a task, or how to overcome a problem.

My key facilitation take-away

There was in parts some lengthy ‘telling‘ going on. Whilst this probably didn’t come across to the facilitator, it certainly felt it to me. I’ll be mindful of this when prepping my future sessions.

Keep any tasks /questions simple. Some of the tasks seemed quite complicated and questions quite long.

My key content take-away

The chat panel indicated that there are still people out there chomping about learning styles! Quite sad that we are participating in what many would consider a modern approach to facilitation and there are still some ‘old school’ ideas floating around.

 Presented by Roger Courville
15.30 – 16.30 GMT (UK time)

In a recent 1080 Group poll, presenters noted their top two challenges with presentations “too little time to put together presentations”, and “don’t know as much about design as I’d like”. The good news is that moving beyond “death by bullet point” doesn’t have to be hard or take over your life.

Join Roger Courville, of TheVirtualPresenter.com, for a practical 45 minutes of strategies and tips to accelerate your training presentations for better attention, cognition, and retention in your live, online training sessions.

Attend this live, interactive webinar to learn:

Evidence-based principles for designing presentations in a short-attention span cultureEssential elements of getting – and keeping – attentionHow to rapidly improve data-heavy slidesHow to turn bullet points into visuals

My key content take-away

Pick up this book 

My key facilitation take-away

Once again, as in a previous session there was a lot of ‘being talked at’. There were also a number of questions that Roger asked that seemed to exist for no other reason to show us that he knew something that we didn’t?

Perhaps I’m just a bit thick, but I have no idea what the findings were of a report that I’ve never read on a subject that I’m not familiar with.

I’ll make sure that I bear this in mind when I’m asking questions in my online sessions.

Overall experience

Today was a great experience, I acquired some info in every single session, particularly in terms of varying facilitation methods. There were a number of people who attended every session so to a degree my concern over ‘overload’ may be mute… however, I’m not sure that the audience is typical of the majority of learners – after all, it’s our field!

I’m still doubtful that a days worth of online activities could work in the ‘real world’….

What do you think?


View the original article here

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Learning Beyond the Course (eLN event)

Once again I have been lucky enough to attend a fantastic CPD event in the shape of todays eLN event – Learning Beyond the Course.

@RobHubbard was our compère for the day, decked out as usual in a gloriously flowery shirt

IMAG0018

(where do you get them from Rob?)

In line with my previous Blog post ‘Small Chunks‘ I was committed to taking away 1 Action Planning point per session that I could actually do something with back in my organisation.

Here we go…

Ben Betts – And Now For Something Completely Different…

If you’ve ever wondered what you can do with a paper clip, a stick, some constraint and a carrot then you’ll be gutted that you missed Ben’s session. But ‘cos he’s a good bloke he’s blogged about it in some detail here.

Which leads me to my action planning point(s)

Try and sweet-talk Ben into sending me the game that he kicked his session off with (very clever and innovative)Read Daniel Pink’s Drive (Ben referenced this several times and as we have it sat in our library it makes sense to have a look)

Graeme Duncan – Breaking Down Barriers: The Ubiquitous Delivery of Thin Client Immersive Simulations

I’ll be the first to admit that the title of this session was more than a little off-putting when I read about this event on the eLN website, but once I realised that we were going to be ‘virtually’ running around a Type 22 RN frigate, putting out fires and catching saboteurs I was hooked! It was certainly enlightening  to hear that Caspian Learning have been creating some realistic virtual environments for some VERY security-conscious clients…. interesting…

Log into Thinking Worlds and request a demoInvite Graeme into my organisation to demo Thinking Worlds.

Ed Stonestreet – Not eLearning

Ed reminded us that the elearning industry is worth $10bn and is almost without exception dull, dry and academic. As I work within a highly-regulated Industry I could certainly relate to Ed’s point that it is focussed on those who have a mandate to learn, those who need to tick a box. Apparently only 20% of any audience is motivated and inspired to act, the other 80% may have a latent interest but they need to be engaged, entertained and wowed in order to get them to participate. How can this be done….? Well Ed went on to explain in not so many words the Affective Context model, which I aren’t going to attempt to explain here, instead I’ll direct you towards Nick Shackleton-Jones blog.

Ed made such a good job of raising the issue of ‘engagement’ and ‘interest raising’ that I am going to direct our internal Learning Facilitators towards the Affective Context model video.Review the YooDoo tool that Ed is involved in.

Rob had promised us an excellent lunch and Holborn Bars certainly didn’t disappoint!!!

Following lunch we had 3 great Pecha Kucha presentations, I’ve come to realise that these appear to be a staple element of an eLN event and I look forward to seeing them; who knows I may even present one at the November event (if anybody from the eLN board is reading this, that wasn’t a formal commitment!)

Jane Hart – Transforming Workplace Learning with Social Media

Jane Hart – Transforming Workplace Learning with Social Media

It was great to see Jane Hart again after lunch as the last time we met was at a Twitter workshop that she ran back in the Spring at the Informatology conference. Jane (as always) did a great job of proving the power of Twitter as a crowd-sourcing tool by calling upon her Twitter followers to respond to various questions that she was ‘auto-tweeting’ during her presentation. I was quite surprised to discover how few people in the immediate audience were Twitter users, although this is a pattern that I have noticed emerging at the IITT conference and the eLN showcase…. I wonder why….?

Patrick Fitzpatrick – Living in a World Without ‘Click Next to Continue’

Patrick addressed an issue that I have been working on for sometime in my organisation which is “how can my learners progress through a piece of elearning’ without a next button on the screen. He had some great examples of using visuals to act as menu screens, which mirrors an approach I have taken with a Display Screen Equipment awareness package.  This visual approach seemed to split the audience into 2 groups; those that ‘got it’ and those that thought that introducing a ‘fun’, visual component was a distraction and on some occasions set a false impression of how dull, boring and repetitive working life can be :-(

Patrick made a great reference to the level of elearning interaction over the years:

Yesterdays elearning = dictationTodays elearning = investigationTomorrows elearning = exploration (hopefully!)

So what were my action planning points?

Continue the work I am doing on removing the next button from my elearning module and then…publicise this to the remaining elearning authors to show them that it ‘is’ possible.

Throughout the day the entire conference had taken the form of a crossword/wordsearch/game of battleships which I thought was really innovative and brought an interesting element to the event, my only concern with taking this approach was that I (and perhaps my learners) would be so distracted by the gaming element that the learning could suffer… not something I’m instantly dismissing though, and as with the rest of the day has provided food for thought….


View the original article here

Online overload?

Panic

Tomorrow I’ll be participating in Day 1 of a 2-day online activity entitled the Virtual Learning Show.

Here’s why I’m getting involved:

The titles and content of the sessions interest me (although I’ve been let down in the past in the gap between what was promised in a synopsis and what was delivered in the event itself)I’m interested to see ‘how’ some of the ‘big names‘ facilitate their sessions as I’m always up for stealing a few ideas!If I’m brutally honest though, what I’m really interested in is whether it’s feasible to run a days worth of online sessions. Admittedly they’re not back-to-back sessions, but my experience in the past has always been that of my ‘attention wandering’ towards the end of an hours session…..

How will I cope with multiple sessions over a day?

Am I the only one who finds even the *best* online sessions difficult to engage with beyond 45 mins?

I guess I’ll find out tomorrow…..


View the original article here

Thinglink

Regular readers will know that I’m an advocate of maximising the technologies that we already have at our disposal, I’ve even facilitated some online and f2f sessions around this subject in which I encouraged people to look under the bonnet of the tools and platforms that they already had.

One of the tools whose ‘hidden functionality‘ I’ve discussed in the past is Flickr’s ability for people to be able to add ‘hotspots’ to images and then add text to those hotspots, here’s an example. Whilst this is a great idea, the fact that you have to be logged in to the Flickr account where the image is hosted in order to be able to add the annotations is something of a drawback, add to this the fact that when you then embed the ‘tagged’ image away from Flickr, the hotspots disappear and you have a limiting platform….

Enter ThingLink…

ThingLink allows you to tag images that:

you have uploadedare within Facebookare within Flickrhave a url associated with themare within your blog or websiteOnce you have tagged these images, you can them embed them within a blog, site, intranet, LMS, VLE etc aaaaaand allow others to add tags too (if you so wish) – no more having to share Flickr account login details with others. Here’s one I prepared earlier. I’ve made it editable so please feel free to add some annotations, links, videos etc of your own.

How might you be able to use this platform within your own organisation?

What advantages and disadvantages can you see?

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below


View the original article here

WANTED: Blogging Discipline

image

I get the benefits of blogging…

I get that it enhances the learning experience by providing an environment in which to reflect…

I get that it provides others with an opportunity to learn from me, as I do on many occasions from them…

I get that it is a wonderful networking opportunity…

I get all of this and yet, despite the promises I made myself to blog on a fortnightly basis (as a minimum) I have failed to do this!

Is it down to a lack of time?

No! I spend a significant amount of time online, idly browsing my life away so I can’t use ‘lack of time’ as an excuse.

Is it down to being paranoid over my digital footprint?

No! I regularly Tweet, post vids to YouTube, send photos to Picassa & Flikr so I can’t huddle under that paranoid blanket.

Is it down to a lack of content?

Hmmm, probably not. I’m heavily involved in L&D on a daily basis, I work in a challenging environment, I’m starting to get more and more involved in Learning Technologies so I feel I’ve got a lot to Blog about (whether anybody wants to read it, is another matter!)

Is it down to a lack of personal discipline?

Probably! I just can’t get myself into a routine to push this content out. I’ve got the time, I’ve got the content, I’ve got the skillset so I’m turning to you

Dear Reader… if you are a regular blogger, how do you manage it, how do you discipline yourself to put fingers to keyboard and push your valuable content out?

Please leave any and all suggestions below and I hope you’ll shortly see an improvement in my Blogging activity.


View the original article here

Informal Learning

Let me start off by saying that I do not consider myself an ‘academic’, I’m more than happy to dive into a book (fiction or non), but tend to stay away from L&D related books due to the authors assuming that everyone wants to wade through case-study after case-study (I don’t!).

My interest however, has been re-ignited after reading ‘Informal Learning’ by Jay Cross. This book succinctly put into context the spending/outcomes paradox that many organisations face (mine included) by presenting a simple 4-column bar graph showing that most organisations spend the majority of their money exactly where it is least effective. The use of simple analogies and wonderful diagrams really brought the subject of Informal Learning alive and has given me plenty of food for thought.


View the original article here

All change

Little did I suspect that my attendance at the Learning Technologies 2010 (LT10) conference would lead to such a welcome career change…

…over the last 12 months or so I have become to realise that my L&D career to date has been very ‘traditional’; by traditional I mean that I hadn’t fully recognised the breadth of technology that was available to enhance learning activities. Sure I had seen, participated in, and even designed a number of traditional ‘click next’ e-learning modules, I had downloaded and listened to podcasts (mainly from the Ricky Gervais camp!) and had even dabbled in Facebook (but gave up on it after getting one too many ‘nudges’). However I had never fully recognised how these and other tools (or having attended LT10, I now term ‘Web 2.0 technologies’) could be used to such great effect for learning purposes.

I returned to my organisation on a ‘high’, not only from having been surrounded by like-minded L&D professionals for 2 days, but also from the thirst for knowledge that had been created for all things ‘technological’.

It appears that this personal ‘high’ was not lost on my organisation who have offered me a change of role from L&D Adviser to Learning and Communications Technologist. Whilst the role profile has not yet been written it will involve looking at how as an organisation we can better harness technology to enhance both formal and informal learning activities.

If you have any advice that you would like to offer as I take this new role forward, I shall look forward to hearing from you.


View the original article here

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Virtual Learning Show 2013 – Day 2

As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m participating in the 2013 2-day Virtual Learning Show. Whilst I was directly involved as a panel chair on Day 2, I also attended as a participant .

Here are my reflections on Day 2 and in particular each session, with a particular focus on:

A key ‘take-away’ from the sessions content itselfThe way in which it was facilitated (in part or in whole) with a view to what can I re-use/build upon for myself.

 Presented by Matt Turner
 11.00 – 12.00 UK BST

In many organisations, Virtual Classrooms are accepted as an efficient, powerful and flexible way to deliver learning. However, the tipping point has not yet been reached and some decision-makers still appear fearful, confused, or even downright scared of adopting VC, leaving L&D practitioners puzzled at the challenge of the internal sell-in.

“Fear and Loathing in Las Virtual” will be an enjoyable and frank look at why some are slow to move into the Virtual Classroom and what others have done to introduce it successfully.  The session will use a variety of examples, scenarios and tips on what works well, touching on content, communication, attitudes, terminology, sell-in and more in the process. As part of a collective responsibility to ensure VCs reach their potential in the UK, your experiences and contributions in this session will help its success!

My key content take-away

There was a great deal of discussion around what we ‘call’ this approach to delivery. There seemed to be a split between those who thought we shouldn’t worry about the language we use to describe it and those (myself included) who thought that it was worth the effort to get the ‘language/terminology’ correct.

I’m always conscious over the language that I use when talking within my organisation, but I’m going to check with the rest of my team to gain their perspective.

My key facilitation take-away

Matt asked us to post any links we had to the host ‘privately’ so that she could put them up at the end of the session. I’m not sure that I’d ever ask this…. surely if a person posts a relevant, contextual link into the slide panel there and then it provides an opportunity for people to immediately take a look ‘outside’ of the session and potentially bring a different perspective into session?

There’s also the distinct possibility that some people may leave the session early, so any links that are dropped into chat at the end of the session will be missed.

 Presented by Claire Line
12.30 – 13.30 UK BST

Claire_Line_125Claire Line is Learning Technologies Manager at global law firm Hogan Lovells. As part of that role, she has carried out extensive research into virtual classroom and online learning technologies.  Since 2004, she has introduced a number of learning technologies for IT training and legal learning, including virtual classroom, web conferencing and video production.

In this discussion-based session, Claire will take you through her journey of how virtual learning was implemented at Hogan Lovells and will discuss the successes, the barriers she encountered, and some of the key points she has learned that will help you in your project to implement virtual learning in your organisation. Be sure to bring your questions to ask!

My key facilitation take-away

No matter how much you are rushing for the start of the session ALWAYS undertake any audio setup process. Claire was very muffled at the start of the session which led to me stepping away for some time and by the time I got back the microphone issue had been resolved and I’m missed a good chunk at the beginning.

 Presented by Julie Dirksen
 14.00 – 15.00 UK BST

Julie Dirksen

Game designers have been using concepts like a structured flow of goals, levels, and accomplishments to create a sense of engagement and efficacy in players. One of the key elements in creating fully engaging game experiences is the psychological concept of flow-creating game environments that keep players in tenuous balance between their level of ability and level of challenge. Learners should have the same sense from learning experiences. The speaker will take a look at the way games and other forms of entertainment media create flow states, how to create that in learning environments, and why the act of learning is crucial to this type of engagement.

In this session, you will learn:

What we know about attracting and maintaining learner attentionHow game designers create sticky and compelling experiencesHow to structure learning experiences that will engage learners

My key content take-away

People’s personal challenges will ALWAYS be better than anything I can come up for them. I need to make sure that this is carefully woven in to the upcoming ‘campaign’ that I am working on.

My key facilitation take-away

Julie invited us to tell her what the ‘most boring subjects’ were that we had been asked to create training on. She then (bravely) used those topics to craft a significant chunk of her session around. This is something that I’d be keen to explore.

I found that there was a lot of talking at the beginning of Julie’s session and limited interaction, coupled with the somewhat scientific content and it being immediately after lunch led to a reduced level of concentration on my part. I need to think about the scheduling of any online sessions in the future taking part immediately after lunch (just as I should in a f2f environment)

Chair: Craig Taylor
Panellists: Bianca Woods (Canada), Koreen Olbrish (US), Barbara Thompson (UK), Ryan Tracey (Australia)
15.30 – 16.30 UK BST

Craig TaylorYou’ve probably seen, attended or perhaps even participated in ‘panel discussions’ before, but how many of them have been online? That’s why we thought it was time to extend people’s perceptions as to how online classroom tools can be used. In this session you’ll have the opportunity to participate in a live online panel discussion which will include workplace L&D practitioners from 4 countries and 4 time zones!

This is your opportunity to hear the thoughts and opinions on how emerging tech can be used to enhance and enrich our offerings and ultimately add value to our businesses? Perhaps you’d just like a second (or third!) opinion on a plan you have. Maybe you’re struggling with a particular aspect of a solution and would like to hear how others have approached it or would approach it.

My key content take-away

Here’s a blog post from Jo Cook who’s done a great job of capturing the essence of my session.

My key facilitation take-away

Don’t be put off by what other people tell you can/can’t be done. The use of 5 webcams simultaneously, across 5 countries and 5 time zones is something that many people will tell you is a foolhardy exercise within an online classroom. Well we did it today and it worked! Admittedly there were 2 occasions where there was a short ‘freeze’, however I’ve been in sessions that are faaaaaaar less webcam dependant and the same thing/worse has happened, so it’s not going to put me off in the future.

Did you participate?

What did you take away from the day / each session?


View the original article here

Training 2014 Conference Backchannel: Curated Resources #trg14

Capture1This post collects the resources shared via the backchannel of the Training 2014 Conference and Exposition, being held February 3-5 in San Diego, California.

I am a huge proponent of backchannel learning. There are many conferences I would love to be able to attend, but most people can only accommodate one or two each year. The backchannel is an excellent resource for learning from a conference or event, even if you are unable to attend in-person.

I find curating and reviewing backchannel resources to be a valuable learning experience for me, even when I am attending a conference in person. Sharing these collections on this blog has shown that others find value in the collections as well.

Special thanks to Intrepid Learning for sponsoring this post. Special thanks to Intrepid Learning for sponsoring this post.

Official Training 2014 Conference Resources
Conference Website
Schedule and Session Details
Keynotes
Sunrise Sessions
Master Sessions
Foundations Track
Breakout Sessions
Hands-On Clinics
Post-Conference Tours
Making Connections Mobile Game

Conference Summaries and Recaps
Training 2014 Photo Booth facebook page

Shawn Achor Keynote
Shawn Achor Training 14 #Trg14 Keynote Mindmap by Clark Quinn
Is your happiness dependent on your genes? video interview with Shawn Achor
Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work TED Talk
5 Ways to Turn Happiness Into An Advantage by Shawn Achor
Shawn Achor: What You Need To Do Before Experiencing Happiness by Dan Schawbel
The Happiness Advantage: An Interview with Shawn Achor by Daniel Tomasulo and Daniel Lerner
Positive Intelligence by Shawn Achor
What is the Happiness Advantage? YouTube video by Shawn Achor

BJ Fogg Keynote
BJ Fogg Training 14 #trg14 Keynote Mindmap by Clark Quinn

Jill Bolte Taylor Keynote
Jill Bolte Taylor Training 14 #trg14 Keynote Mindmap by Clark Quinn
Jill Bolte Taylor on Oprah’s Soul Series Video
Does Our Planet Need a Stroke of Insight? by Jill Bolte Taylor
Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight TED Talk

Session Specific Resources
Better than Bullet Points resources shared by Jane Bozarth
Slidejar presentations

Miscellaneous
The Big Lie of Strategic Planning by Roger Martin
Why Failure Drives Innovation by Baba Shiv
3 Easy Tips to Ward Off Learning Zombies by Todd Hudson
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Breaking Up with SCORM by Steven Boller
Visual, Intuitive and Obvious by Todd Hudson
How to Fire a Friend by Suzanne Lucas
Map: The Sad State of Global Workplace Engagement by Gretchen Gavett and Scott Berinato
Busting Learning Myths by Michael Echols
What Data Can’t Do by David Brooks
Blended Learning: Not a Passing Fad by Jennifer Hofmann
Game On! How Learning Wins With Gamification by Mohana Radhakrishnan
Engagement is Everything
5 Secrets for Rewarding Employees by Peter Economy
Power or Panic: Making the Most of the Unknown by Eric Kaufmann
How to Connect Games to a Corporate Learning Curriculum by Sharon Boller
Spending on Corporate Training Soars: Employee Capabilities Now A Priority by Josh Bersin
Avoiding the Flavor-of-the-Month Problem by John Ager
On the Job: 4 Insights for Engaging the Millennial Generation by Hannah von Bank
eLearning Trends That Will Fizzle, Sizzle, or Simmer in 2014 by Sharon Boller

Dedicated Backchannel Queries [Tool and search terms shown in brackets]
Access the up-to-date Training 2014 backchannel [Twitter: #trg14]
Photos from the Backchannel [TwiPho: trg14]

I will be adding to this list as I continue to review the backchannel transcripts and find resources. I will tweet updates occasionally as additional links are added. If you know of a valued resource I should add to the list – or if something is inaccurate – please add it to the comments or tweet me a link to @LnDDave.

If you find these collections of value, I have posts that consolidate the backchannel resources from other conferences. An archive of all of these posts can be accessed by clicking the link below:

Click here to access the archive of backchannel resource posts.

**Like this post? Email me to learn more about sponsoring one like it.**


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Jumping on the bandwagon. My predictions for 2013…

broken-crystal-ball

As the end of a year approaches it’s time for the blogging fraternity to turn to the tried and tested ‘Top ‘this that and the other’ of 2012? and ‘My predictions for 2013? blog posts.

Far from me to turn down the opportunity to poke a little fun, here are my 2013 predictions / absolute cast iron guarantees…

My Twitter stream will continue to be bombarded with Instagrammed photos of hot beverages and food. Fortunately I use Tweetbot which allows me to permanently block hashtags. Unfortunately hardly anybody tags their #instagram photos.We will see a new word being made up within the L&D fraternity.Certain bloggers will still rant on about ‘killer apps / platform / piece of hardware. Why can’t things just be ‘good’, ‘effective’, ‘worth having’?Any podcast with ‘week’ or ‘weekly’ in the title is unlikely to ever be that, beyond its 5th episode.I will unsuccessfully use facts, data and research against gut feelings and anecdotes.2013 will be the year of mobile. Again.Apple will release an ever-so-slight modification of a product. Tech bloggers will work themselves up into a crotch-twitching, salivating frenzy reporting….. erm…. on the ever-so-slight modification.We’ll continue to have a L&D wide survey released approximately every 4 daysMany vendors will continue to ignore the native functionality of mobile devices whilst blowing their trumpets about how they are ‘leading’ in the mlearning world.A ‘free to use’ service will change its Terms and Conditions. Users will form baying mobs and burning torches will be seen.Certain ‘thought leaders’ in our field will use ever more bizarre diagrams to explore their concepts. It’s cos they’re clever see….

I’ll see you in 2013…

… no doubt saying ‘I told you so‘

;-)


View the original article here

Virtual Learning Show Day 1

Ask an open question early, VERY EARLY, possibly even on the second slide. It sets the scene and expectations for your learners.

Don’t be afraid of silence. When asking a question SHUT UP and give people the time to think and respond.

Regularly acknowledge comments in the chat panel.

 Presented by Roger Courville
12.30 – 13.30 GMT (UK time)

Brain research confirms what storytellers know from experience: we learn through storytelling. What’s more, we’re wired for it… we learn the pattern, rhythm and structure of storytelling before we learn the rhythms and patterns of written stories. Our job in learning and development is to impart knowledge and skills to create change, and while we don’t abandon facts, data, and processes, adding storytelling to the mix in the virtual classroom will add a powerful dimension to your success.

Join Roger Courville, of TheVirtualPresenter.com, and get ready to take some notes as you learn practical tips for how to construct story and take full advantage of delivering them in the virtual classroom.

Join us for this interactive live webinar to learn:

What story is (hint: it’s not “once upon a time”)How to choose the story or illustration right for youThree steps to transforming story for virtual classroomsFour tips for uniquely combining voice and visuals for improved impact

My key content take-away

If I’m honest, this session flew along so quickly due to the late start that I really can’t recall any of it, so I can’t say what parts of the content I can ‘take away’.

My key facilitation take-away

Roger was approximately 30 minutes late due to t’internet outage in Oregon, however the other facilitators stepped up to the mark and very quickly facilitated and promoted a number of quick fire Q&As via the chat panel. Because the questions were relevant, there was still a level of ‘conversation’ taking place, handy to have this in the back of my mind should things ever go belly up in one of my sessions.

 Presented by Karen Hyder
14.00 – 15.00 GMT (UK time)

Karen Hyder

While the benefits of virtual classroom training using tools such as WebEx, Adobe Connect and GoTo Training may be obvious to you  and your learners, your managers aren’t sold.  They feel face-to-face training is the only way to control the learning experience and that the transition to online learning will be too difficult.  They’ve seen too many boring webinars where participants multi-task throughout and they believe that an attempt to move training online will be a waste of time and resources.

In 2010, 88% of eLearning Guild’s survey respondents agreed that” when setup and use properly, online training was as effective as good face-to-face training.” Attend this session to experience what it takes to set up and use virtual classroom tools properly.

Discuss ways to maximize the advantages and overcome the objections of virtual classroom deliveryIdentify key considerations for managers and plan what you’ll do and say to make your case for moving your training online.

My key content take-away

Comparison of webinar / virtual classroom tools is difficult due to keeping up with the rapid development of these tools. This Wiki page is a well maintained comparison of web conferencing software.

My key facilitation take-away

Karen used the chat ‘pod’ feature within Adobe Connect which allowed her to separate specific conversations from the backchannel ‘waffle’.  I like the idea of this and would be keen to see if there is a way ‘post session’ to match the questions up with the relevant ‘chat pod’.

 Presented by Bob Mosher
15.30 – 16.30 GMT (UK time)

Bob Mosher

The virtual classroom is becoming commonplace. It offers many wonderful enhancements to the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom. The elimination of travel, the integration into the workflow, and its ability to take advantage of space learning are three wonderful advantages of this emerging medium. The danger lies in the content and context lost over time. Performance support can be the tie that binds bringing everything together and enabling knowledge transfer at a level rarely seen before.

This session will explore a new distance-learning model which encompasses performance support as a critical part of the journey.

In this session we will explore:

The GEAR four step approach to distance learningHow to design performance support to optimize space learningWhat instructors need to do to guarantee engagement

My key content take-away

Introduce Performance Support tools EARLY, don’t introduce it ‘afterwards’. Make them a part of our formal programmes, upfront of when people are having to use them for real

My key facilitation take-away

Bob used quick and dirty techniques for marking up or annotating his slides during the session. This was in stark contrast to the clinical design of the slides. This worked really well and helped the annotations to stand out.

Overall experience

Today was a great experience, I acquired some info in every single session. There were a number of people who attended every session so to a degree my concern over ‘overload’ may be mute… however, I’m not sure that the audience is typical of the majority of learners – after all, it’s our field!

I’m still doubtful that a days worth of online activities could work in the ‘real world’….

What do you think?


View the original article here

‘Fixing’ compliance training at #LearningLive

I must applaud the Learning and Performance Institute and in particular those involved in planning this years Learning Live. For the first time that I have personally seen in the UK, an L&D conference (outside of the academic world) has asked people to submit proposal for available speaking slots, I believe this is a fantastic way of surfacing those ‘hidden’ stories and allowing ‘new’ people to gain exposure, let’s hope that other conferences follow suit in the future.

I submitted a number of proposal and have been fortunate in gaining a speaking slot, here’s the official blurb

Session: ‘Compliance Training – From Course to Campaign!’

Compliance training is often seen by many L&D practitioners as a ‘thorn in their side’; a necessary evil that despite their best efforts, remains low-down on most learners list of things to concern themselves about.
If this applies to you and/or your organisation and you’d like to ?nd out how to take a signi?cant step change in the delivery of your compliance training, then this session is for you!
Craig Taylor will guide you through his journey in turning compliance training from a selection of stand-alone courses to a series of ongoing campaigns.
He’ll share his background thinking, hints and tips to obtain that critical ‘buy in’ from stakeholders and the research to back up his campaign approach along with those all important ‘lessons learnt’; AKA the bits that Craig got wrong!

Session Objective 1: Why the move from course to campaign?
Session Objective 2: How to obtain that all important ‘buy in’ from stakeholders
Session Objective 3: How to ask for what you want from external agencies.
Session Objective 4: Why you might consider a campaign for a campaign.
Session Objective 5: Share Craig’s lessons learnt

The LPI have also been asking speakers to promote/give an insight/’flip’ their session by using Social Media, multimedia etc in advance of the event. I think this is, in principle, a fantastic idea, but one that is not without it’s problems, which I have blogged about previously.

I’ve used a few approaches to promote / prepare people for my session.

I used Vine for the first time, to ask some ‘leading’ questions to hopefully encourage people to attend my session (I can definitely see Vine vids being a part of a wider campaign)

I used Powtoon to create an animation, again offering a WIIFM for anybody still undecided as to which session to attend.

I also experimented with SMS text messaging ahead of the session, why not get involved with my experiment? (details in tweet below)

I’m not planning on creating any ‘new’ marketing material, but there’s still the best part of 3 weeks to the event…. so who knows?

So now it’s over to you…

If you’re coming to my session…


View the original article here