20 Ways for L&D Professionals to Spend Use-or-Lose Budget Before December 31

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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:

Handy Gadgets

There are a few little gadgets that can make any trainer’s life a little more fun, including:

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

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

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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

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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 →

Scary moments in Presentations

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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

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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 →

292 Training Activity Ideas For Your Next Workshop

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“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?

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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 →