Happy Thanksgiving!

Warm wishes from me and Donald the Answer Dog for a happy Thanksgiving. Here's a little assignment for everyone, even those of you not here in the US. Get a piece of paper. Write:

1. One thing you are thankful for about your life, spouse, partner, or family.
2. One thing you are thankful for about your work.
3. One thing you are thankful for about yourself.
4. Anything items 1-3 didn't cover. I am, for instance, thankful for my iPhone. It completes me...

Now put that somewhere you can see it every now and again, like taped inside a cabinet door or in the drawer where you keep the antacids. We can all use a reminder every now and again. And while you're at it maybe draw a hand turkey, too!

Happy days--
Jane

Participation Inequality

This is a couple of years old but it's the first time I've seen it. No surprise for any of you who've ever participated in an online community, online course discussion board, looked at Wikipedia...

"In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don't participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background."

See the whole article for ideas on ways of better equalizing participation.

President-Elect Embraces "Collaboration on a Shoestring"

I had planned to comment on this tonight but my buddy Karl Kapp beat me to it. Regardless of your feelings about the outcome of last week's Presidential election, you gotta admit that Mr. Obama's team understood and embraced the possibilities of Web 2.0 technologies and social networking strategies. Here's what Karl said:

"... ask yourself, if it's good enough for a president-elect to deliver messages and information via social media and Web 2.0 tools...isn't it good enough for your learning and development department and your company to use these tools? If you want to break down the traditional and artificial boundaries of the learning function within your organization, you can use the web to help do it."

See About.com Web Trends and CNN for more -- as well as the Change.gov site itself.

I'll be doing my "Collaboration on a Shoestring" workshop live-online next month with Insync Training. Free, and open to the public, if you'd like to attend.

I think I'll be adding some new screenshots...

Control, anyone?

I'm working on a new leadership training program and this morning was looking through some books of training games. Here is something that caught me short:

"Use this activity to have a pleasant way to reprimand unpleasant behavior." And, "Don't give up when the participant hesitates to do an activity."

So much for adult learning, n'est-ce pas?

Young @ Heart

Ok here's the second non-e-learning/training post for the week, and I promise to start focusing again really soon. Meanwhile: If you have not yet seen the film "Young @ Heart" then do yourself a favor. It will make your heart glad.

So I'm Finally a Doctor! ...

... but as Randy Pausch's mother always said of him, "...but not the kind that helps people."

It took 9 years of continuing enrollment and much jumping through hoops, which could have at least also provided aerobic exercise.

My husband gave me a t-shirt that says:

"Graduation is for Quitters".

Mr. Grimes: Maintaining Classroom Discipline

A participant in the current session of my "Online Trainer" course sent this my way and thought I should share it with the world. I think I had this guy in the 8th grade, and he was still wearing that suit...

"27 Top Women Edubloggers"

So I have been saying for years that "women in technology" were getting short shrift. Thanks to Zaid for posting a list of top women edubloggers (as in, women who blog about education, not women who use Edublog). I am in very good company on a list that includes my hero Jane Hart.

Finally! Free robust tool for collaboration

Check out Wiggio, now in Beta. Shared calendar, real-time polling, mass text/chat,central-folder doc storage, conference calling... all in one, all for free.

The Reluctant Adult Learner

"Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain."



Credit to Mo Costandi, who posted this clip on his Neurophilosopy blog.

101 Free Learning Tools

From Zaidlearn: Great stuff from web hosting and LMSs (do you really need an LMS? Really? Oh don't get me started.) to hosted virtual classrooms, screencasting, mindmapping, quiz engines...oh I could go on...

Lifelong Learning

Long story, but today while researching positive deviants for an upcoming workshop I ran across an article in a back issue of Psychology Today:

"Our current education system was created in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was modeled after the new factories of the industrial revolution. Public schools, set up to supply the factories with a skilled labor force, crammed education into a relatively small number of years. We have tried to pack more and more in while extending schooling up to age 24 or 25, for some segments of the population. In general, such an approach still reflects factory thinking--get your education now and get it efficiently, in classrooms in lockstep fashion. Unfortunately, most people learn in those classrooms to hate education for the rest of their lives.

The factory system doesn't work in the modern world, because two years after graduation, whatever you learned is out of date. We need education spread over a lifetime, not jammed into the early years--except for such basics as reading, writing, and perhaps citizenship. Past puberty, education needs to be combined in interesting and creative ways with work. " (Emphasis mine--jb)

Reactions?


From Estroff, M. Trashing Teens. By: Marano, Hara Estroff, Psychology Today, Mar/Apr2007,40 (2).

Learning is not the opposite of teaching.

That's it. The whole post. Can't remember who said it and Google doesn't say, so my apologies to the originator:

"Learning is not the opposite of teaching."

Kevin Brown, with the Office of the Worker Adviser, Central Client Services Unit, sat in on my "E-Learning on a Shoestring" session at last week's E-Learning Guild forum. We fell into conversation about our mutual interests in ergonomics (his) and accessibility (mine), which led to questions about keyboard shortcuts for those using PowerPoint-based elearning. As he puts it, "Providing multiple
methods of input is not only necessary to accommodate people who are
injured or disabled, but it is a great way to help prevent injuries." Converting your PPT-based programs to Flash should (depending on your converter) solve the problem and provide keyboard accessibility.

For those delivering the PPT files intact, Kevin also offered these tips:

"There are keyboard shortcuts to access hyperlinks that continue to
work in kiosk mode. The help file describes them as follows:

- Go to the first or next hyperlink on a slide --> TAB

- Go to the last or previous hyperlink on a slide --> SHIFT+TAB
- Perform the "mouse click" behavior of the selected hyperlink -->
ENTER while a hyperlink is selected

- Perform the "mouse over" behavior of the selected hyperlink -->
SHIFT+ENTER while a hyperlink is selected

Using the TAB, ENTER and SHIFT keys, users can cycle through the
available hyperlinks on a slide and "click" on their choice. I don't
know how well this would work with something complex with a lot of
links, but for most purposes it seems like a pretty good workaround.

I think I would still prefer the ability to assign keys to specific
buttons (e.g., right arrow for next or "M" for menu)-- mostly because
that would allow me to label each button with a keyboard shortcut.
But, as you rightly point out, sometimes a pretty good solution based
on what you have available and know how to use is better that a
perfect one based on something you don't." --Kevin Brown

Denver

Am here for the Leadership Challenge forum (to reseach the new training package I'm writing as part of the LC series)and went out for a walk this morning awaiting the opening of the Bump & Grind Cafe (destination spot for any delicate flower of Southern womanhood). I'm staying near the Capitol so there are lots of historic spots nearby, highlighted by these great posters. You can walk along, call in, get a "story". I am thinking there are great implications here for training but am interested in hearing your thoughts?

Also, if you're ever in Denver, check out the Chicken Lips Theatre improv group. Great fun, especially for fans of Whose Line is it Anyway?

Way more than one born every minute

This just in from a training colleague with a municipal government in a Midwestern state, and no I am not making this up, because, well, I don't have to:

"Jane,
I thought the City was going to buy the PresentationPro PowerConverter ($199) , but now I understand they'd rather buy something that costs $7800. of course, I have no idea what the $7800 software does; I can't find their web site!

I thought this would be a good entry for your blog! Still crazy, huh! I had referred our IT people to your website for free and lowcost LMS info, but...there's this stuff the police department bought - $7800 for 80 users!

i'm thinking I'll just buy the software myself, install it at home, get my ppt. converted to flash, and post it."

Yet another high performer forced to go out of pocket to achieve the most basic of results...while spending precious energy to circumvent the paradigm, the bureaucratic class, and the Vermicious Knids determined to prevent anything that might resemble a real outcome.

I am so amused by this that I am not going to moderate comments about it. Y'all go to town.

PowerPoint to Flash converter

...so while I am a long-term user and big fan of PresentationPro's PowerConverter product, in the interest of democracy and all things fair I feel I should share the good feedback I've been getting on Wondershare . Remember that any ppt-to-flash converter tool will have its pluses and minuses, and choose the product that fit your needs. (Hint: knowing what your needs are before you buy any product will help the purchase be more successful. I know it sounds obvious, but I hear near-daily horror stories about an organization purchasing a product, then subsequently forcing every need to fit it.)

...And the Learners Start to Drive...

With many innovations, the end users ultimately take the wheel. One of my pet interests is classroom trainer fears of e-learning, and I've been saying forever, or at least since 2001 (which is almost forever in e-learning years), that eventually the learners would start to drive. This week's Time magazine has a piece on "Daddy Boot Camp" for new fathers that includes this:

"...enrollment in childbirth classes has fallen from 70% of first-timers in 2002 to 56% in 2006--with the drop-off due in part to expectant couples' assuming they can learn just as much from books or online."

Several things here: Learners are recognizing that they can be self-directed and self-taught. The learner assumption that this can be learned via books or online won't change--we're there. So we'd better be sure the e-learning is good.

When to Use Video

Karl Kapp, Susan Boyd and I are in Philadelphia this week providing the ID Institute for the Society for Technical Communication Summit. I'm in the back of the room now while Karl's presenting his session on choosing instructional strategies. He just said something great about when and how to use video, and I think it's worth sharing:

"If the only thing moving is somebody's lips, then you don't need video."

"Heat"

Greetings from Sint Maarten, where I've spent the past couple of days in the sun reading (appropriately, as this is the island of high temps and fine dining) Bill Buford's Heat. Like Atul Gawande's wonderful Complications, Heat is an interesting first-person account of how an adult learns. Those interested in adult learning, reflective practice, self-directed learning, the transfer of tacit knowledge, or communities of practice will likely find this a worthwhile read.