Last week, my daughter came home from the school library with her first graphic novel. She excitedly showed me how the story moved through the speech balloons and panels. Her excitement came from the novel approach (pardon the pun) to telling a story. She recently graduated to chapter books, and I think she was missing the imagery she had grown accustomed to in her beginner books. Continue reading
When a training program is as stuffed as a guest at grandma’s house on Thanksgiving
Many of us in the United States celebrated Thanksgiving last Thursday. A time for family to gather, give thanks, and eat. A lot.
The American Council on Fitness estimates that the average American takes in 3,000 calories on Thanksgiving… and 229 grams of fat!
Is it possible that there’s a training program or two that we’ve developed that can be equally bloated and gluttonous? Sitting on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday, I started wondering this very thought (because I’m apparently always thinking of training). Continue reading
13 (+1) reasons why this L&D professional is thankful this year
The holiday season for those of us in the United States is upon us. On Thursday we shall celebrate Thanksgiving, soon many of us will celebrate Christmas and then make a resolution as we head into the new year.
Last year, each member of the Endurance Learning team made a one-word resolution – a commitment to one word that would serve as a guiding principle throughout the year. My word was “joy”. Part of joy is having the opportunity to look around and be thankful.
Here are some things that I’m thankful for over the past year: Continue reading
No Stupid Questions
Training is expected to yield change. How does change make people feel? I don’t know that we can expect everyone to react consistently when they react to change, but there is a tendency for most of us to ask how changes affect our own lives when we are faced with them. Continue reading
Want audience interaction? This is a powerful, flexible (and sometimes free) tool.
I’ve written about PollEverywhere in the past, but after using it during a keynote presentation last Wednesday, I wanted to draw your attention back to this easy-to-use, powerful audience interaction tool.
Here are three different ways that I set up polls for three different purposes during the course of my presentation: Continue reading
The Role of a Co-facilitator
I like to start my day with positive visualization. In this form of meditation, I enjoy picturing what success looks like. That success may be how my day will go, how a client meeting will go, reactions to my work, or any other permutation of a successful day. When I am facilitating a session, I like to visualize and think through the ways I can support my participants, to help them be successful. Recently, I started thinking about how this may change when I am co-facilitating. Continue reading
When PowerPoint and Adult Learning Collide
Recently I’ve facilitated several sessions on more effective ways to use PowerPoint in a training setting. The simple truth is that your PowerPoint slides, like any other element of your presentation design, should align with the fundamental principles of adult learning theory.
Adult learners like to have some sort of control over what they’re being asked to learn. So how can PowerPoint possibly support this principle? Continue reading
13 Scary Moments in L&D
Happy Halloween everyone! Learning and development can throw some scary things your way. I recruited the help of a few L&D professionals to come up with a list of 13 scary things you can face as a trainer. Continue reading
C4LPT’s Top 200 Tools for Learning (2018 Edition)
I don’t know where my mind has been recently, but I seem to have missed two very important release dates: Daredevil Season 3 was apparently released by Netflix a week or two ago. Perhaps more relevant to this blog, Jane Hart’s annual list of the Top 200 Tools for Learning was released in late September. You can find the list with brief descriptions of each tool here.
I get excited to review this list each year for two reasons: 1) I’m curious how the tools I use rank in popularity across the L&D community (the list was compiled after 2,951 votes were cast from 52 different countries), and 2) I love scanning the list to see if there might be some digital tools I could add to my craft in the coming year.
This year, one thing that jumped out at me was the number of “Audience Response Tools” that are available. Continue reading
Style Guide Template
Last week, I briefly touched on style guides. As a followup to that post, I put together an EasyStyleGuide template as an example for those of your unfamiliar with style guides. As you review this document it is important to keep a few things in mind. Continue reading