Jay Cross, in Bus Routes & Bike Paths likens formal learning to riding the bus with it’s unvarying routes and schedule and compares informal learning to people on bikes who can go where ever they want, whenever they want. Does your training “city” have any bike paths built in?
I think Tony has nailed this one right on the button. I very much agree that a large part of maximizing learning is to get tacit knowledge to become explicit knowledge. As he points out another advantage to capturing that tacit knowledge is the opportunity for discovering the potential for corrections/improvements.
eLearning Technology: Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge – Decisions Learning Professionals Make Everyday
From the Ageless Learner blog comes this great list of learning-related resources. The list includes books, magazines & web resources. I’ve found some great stuff in there. The Ageless Learner site itself is a wealth of information that could keep you occupied for days all by itself.
Convert Between All Videos or Audio Formats Online » Digital Inspiration
“From Amit Agarwal’s great blog comes another nice online tool. Media Convert is a free online converter service that can convert any audio or video file format into almost any other format such as AVI, MOV, SWF, MPEG, FLV, Real, DivX and several more.
Handles files up to 50MB without any downloads or plug-ins. You can even grab screenshots of any url and more with this tool. Nice page to keep in your list of bookmarks.
UPDATE: Zamzar may be a bit better. Better interface 100MB limit. Check it out.
I’ve played with this a little bit but not for a “real” conference. It looks really nice. Especially considering the price tag.
Has anyone had any exeperiencs with this tool? I’d love to hear how it worked for you.
Vyew.com – Free Web-Based Collaboration – Vyew.com – Free Web-Based Collaboration
This is a great idea. It only takes a minute or two and can give you some VERY valuable feedback on what part of your training may need improvement. Check it out. There is also some PowerPoint resources here that you might also find useful.
Using PowerPoint to facilitate classroom assessment
Like the two minute paper, the muddiest point technique is best used at the end of a topic–before moving to new material–or at the end of a class session. The exercise asks students to write down one thing about the day’s material that they simply don’t understand. By collecting these, instructors are able to gauge how successfully they taught the material as well as what they may have to revisit before moving on to new territory.
This classroom assessment technique is easy to use and yields powerful results, making it a favorite of instructors in large and small classes. It can be completed in as little as one or two minutes, and it lends itself to every discipline.
To administer the assessment, create a PowerPoint slide at the end of your presentation that asks, “What is the muddiest point in today’s material?” Ask students to respond on paper or note cards. Some instructors ask students for their responses verbally before the end of class, spending the remaining time in the period to answer the questions. Others collect the papers and address the questions via email or at the beginning of the next session.
The Inevitable Personal Learning Environment
Nice article about creating a PLE by mashing up some existing tools.
Here’s a great tip for anyone who is doing stand-up training From Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie:
Wait Nine Seconds for Learners:
This is a simple and very powerful tip for trainers. After asking for questions from the class, silently count to nine. Only nine seconds of silence will increase the number of questions dramatically. It takes at least 2 seconds for the learners to recognize that you actually asked a question. And, a few seconds to rehearse their question and check the room for other hands. Most trainers only wait about three seconds and then announce, “Great!” That’s not great. If you taught really new and good stuff, there WILL be questions. Wait nine seconds. It may seem long to you, but it is a real gift to the learners.
Here are some good places to start looking if you need some images for your project.
These are usually the first places I look:
Not a ton of images but the ones they have are pretty good.
More complete list of other sites:
The Encyclopedia of Educational Technology (EET) is a collection of short multimedia articles on a variety of topics related to the fields of instructional design and education and training. The primary audiences for the EET are students and novice to intermediate practitioners in these fields, who need a brief overview as a starting point to further research on specific topics. Authors are graduate students, professors, and others who contribute voluntarily. Articles are short and use multimedia to enrich learning rather than merely decorate the pages.
Mike Taylor's Learning Resources 