There was a discussion on social media this week around the necessity of fun in training. I stared at the post for a long time and trying to decide if, in fact, fun is something that should be included in all training. I spent a lot of time thinking about this over the last 24 hours, and think this is an interesting conversation we should be having in L&D. Continue reading
20 Ways for L&D Professionals to Spend Use-or-Lose Budget Before December 31
The holidays are fast approaching, which means the Train Like A Champion 1-word resolution post will soon be here. Before we get to resolutions, however, we have some ideas for you in the event you find yourself with some extra funds that need to be spent before your finance team can close out the books for 2019.
Books for Your Professional Library
While you can always browse our list of must-read books for any L&D professional, a few more have come to my attention in the past year, including:
- Microlearning: Short and Sweet (Karl Kapp and Robyn Defelice)
- Interact and Engage: 50+ Activities for Virtual Training, Meetings and Webinars (Kassy Laborie and Thomas Stone)
- Dare to Inspire: Sustain the Fire of Inspiration in Work and Life (Allison Holzer, Sandra Spataro and Jen Grace Baron)
- The eLearning Designer’s Handbook: A Practical Guide to the eLearning Development Process for New eLearning Designers (Tim Slade)
- Digital Kindness: Being Human in a Hyper-connected World (Lauren Hug)
Handy Gadgets
There are a few little gadgets that can make any trainer’s life a little more fun, including:
- A basic PowerPoint remote to advance your slides without standing behind the podium
- A fancy PowerPoint remote that does some cool tricks
- A Bluetooth/wireless speaker for playing video or music during a session
- A really good power bank to re-charge your devices when you can’t find an outlet
- A good travel backpack for your computer
- Mr. Sketch Markers (I know they’re not really an electronic gadget, but I had to sneak them into this list somehow!)
Cool Online Tools
- Snagit for screen capturing and more
- Camtasia for video editing
- Soapbox for creating your in-person training sessions in about 5 minutes
- Storyline for rapid authoring of elearning
Professional Development Opportunities
- Take an employee out for a cup of coffee and some informal coaching (formal training isn’t always the answer!)
- Join your local ATD chapter
- ATD TechKnowledge (February 5-7, 2020)
- Learning Solutions 2020 (March 31, 2020 – April 2, 2020)
- ATD 2020 International Conference and Expo (May 17-20, 2020)
What did I miss? If you have extra use-or-lose money budgeted for this year, how would you spend it?
The Pushy Duolingo Bird
I enjoy learning new languages. When I travel, I try to learn the native language to truly enjoy the local experience. As technology has changed my approach to this has evolved from books, audiobooks, web sites, to apps. I finally landed on Duolingo because I like the learning model.
Spaced, repetitive practice.
Every day, a green bird reminds me that I need to practice my latest language, or I am going to fall behind. I’ll be honest, this bird is a little pushy, which is exactly what I need to remember to finish my Spanish lesson when I don’t feel like it. Continue reading
Conference Take-Aways
Following the 2019 Dev Learn conference, Bianca Woods put together a list of questions to put your conference learning into practice. This week, our own Brian Washburn attended the ATD Core 4 Conference in Miami as a presenter and a participant. We decided to put Bianca’s recommendations into practice and see what they look like from the eyes of a participant. I virtually sat down with Brian and asked him a few questions inspired by Bianca’s recommendations. Here is what I learned. Continue reading
Training Outline, Activities & Slides in Less than 5 Minutes!
Have you ever wished you could reduce the number of hours (or days) it takes to come up with engaging ideas for your training sessions?This morning my company, Endurance Learning, launched an online tool that can help you generate a facilitator guide, a complete set of activities and a PowerPoint deck – all in under five minutes. The tool is called Soapbox. Here is how it works:
Continue readingScary moments in Presentations
Happy Halloween. Fun scary days call for spooky stories…
In a dark room, a visage is backlit by a square projected light. Ghost-like and monochromatic the visage speaks, is he speaking directly you? Should you answer his indirect questions? No, the words are abstract and generic, almost as though he is reciting an old childhood adage he has recited over and over before he has brought them before you today. Continue reading
Great Presentations Start Here
A great presentation involves planning, evidence-based instructional design, engaging delivery, compelling visuals and some way for people to do something new or differently or better as a result. Easy, right?
Maybe not so much. I’ve never met a single person who could do every one of those things well. So how can someone cobble together a great presentation with all of those elements? Continue reading
Winging Your Next Presentation
When you are asked to give a presentation or a workshop, it is likely because you are a decent presenter, a content expert, or both. As a person with this skill set, it is likely your only job is not giving presentations on this subject and presentations take time and money to develop. Maybe you should just wing it. Continue reading
292 Training Activity Ideas For Your Next Workshop
“I just wish I could have access to your training activity library.”
We spent the summer beta testing a tool that can help anyone design a training session in under five minutes. Soapbox is the name of the tool and it will hit the market in about two weeks (if you’d like to sign up to be notified when it’s available, click here).
One of the most common pieces of feedback we received from our beta group was that they’d simply like access to our library of training activities. We listened to that feedback and in this post, I’ve included links to almost 300 different training activities.
Happy training! Continue reading
Why Are We Still Talking About Microlearning?
Years ago, I had a director who had perfected the art of what our team called the “drive-by”. A drive-by from this director involved him asking you for a “really quick favor” in which you would be asked to work on a pet-project of some sort that often involved a new technology or new industry trend he wanted to try out. These projects ranged from the latest video technologies, new StoryLine features, Moocs, gamification, leaderboards, performance support, etc… If ATD or other industry leaders had it on their radar, he had a pet-project targeted. Being asked to be involved was a compliment, even if other work had to be balanced when asked. Continue reading