Helping people think for themselves

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who was staying at a hotel for a wedding.  The after wedding party was taking place at one of the hotels and as a crowd gathered in the hotel, the after party group began to get larger and louder.  Not wanting to disturb the other guests in the hotel, the party asked if they could use one of the meeting rooms.  Now keep in mind this was on a weekend late at night ---- no one is using these rooms. 

The hotel desk clerk's response was "I'm sorry but you have to reserve these room 24 hours in advance" -- the wedding party offered to pay for the room -- but again the response was "sorry we can't accomodate you." 

So rather than allowing the party to continue in a more discreet area and creating a revenue source for the hotel, the clerk stuck to the rules and forced the party to be held in the lobby.

Now what does this have to do with training -- everything!  Back in the days of video training I used to sell the ever so popular "In Search of Excellence" program where Tom Peters sought out companies that demonstrated excellence, empowered employees and beat the odds in performance. 

I see a lot of companies so focused on strictly functional training that I'm fearful some of the non-functional training is getting put on the shelf in an effort to try to save $. I know that we all struggeled financially in the last 12-18 months but now more than ever, we need to provide training and support on the skills that encourage initiative, customer service and risk taking ---.

Defining Video PodCasting

We teach a class on how to podcast and how to creat video podcasts.  I quickly realized in the video class that not everyone has the same definition of video podcasting or vodcasting as I did. 

True video podcasting makes the assumption that you will be producing and MP4 or MV4 file that is to be displayed on a mini video player like an ipod or other mobile device.  But what I discoverd is that many people are categorizing video podcasting as short videos played on the computer like YouTube.  The process to develop the content for both is for the most part, the same but with a couple of differences.

1- When producing content for a smaller screen like an ipod, you have to be more sensitive to any text on the screen or how detailed the picture has to be in reference to what you are communicating.  For example a screen shot of a web page on a mobile device such as our home page, is hard to make out what you're looking at vs. the same screen used in producing video displayed on a computer. 

You can still use this content but use something like Camtasia's video editor to use the zoom and pan effect to zoom in on the area of the screen that is important at that time for what you are communicating. 

2- Another difference is the publishing options.  You can produce web video content as Flash, Windows Media, AVI, MOV, MP4, etc.  but for mobile devices you should be publishing as MP4 MV4, H.264, MOV or 3GP.  So make sure the tool you are using allows for that or get your hands on some low-cost conversion tools like Danuisoft or AVS4You.

As more and more people are pushing for video content there are some great options out there but be sure to confirm what they expect to play the video back on and then decide how to produce the content.

If you have any questions on how to create video podcasts give us a shout!

Augmented Reality is Real

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting on mobile technologies in Chicago and the presenter demonstrated an open source app to build augmented reality applications.  For those of you that have not read or seen any examples of mobile augmented reality here's one that was presented in this meeting. 

Let's say you wanted to buy some new furniture from IKEA but wasn't sure how to fit it into your living room.  Using an augmented reality application, you can use the camera on your mobile phone to view your living room through.  Then by using an augmented reality browser and tools from IKEA, you can place the furniture in your living room to see how it would fit.  Pretty cool!

I also found an article from a mlearning blog that points out the same type of applications.  Imagine using this tool  to learn about art in a museum, architecture, retail stores and potential coupons.  You start connecting the dots pretty quick to see how this could be used for learning and education as well.

http://mlearning.edublogs.org/?s=augmented+reality&searchbutton=go%21

I should have been a DJ!

We recently stumbled upon a new service that we are using to deliver informaiton and education on various learning technologies.  Blog Talk Radio allows individuals to create their own online radio show.  We decided to produce a show titled "Training Tech Talk".  The service is free or you can set up a premium channel. 

This is such a great way to create audio content in a live setting but all of the live shows are recorded and can be shared via Twitter, Facebook and iTunes.  I also discovered you can add sound effects during the show so beware that we're going to get a little silly with this but why not!  It's amazing how many different shows are on this site and the variety of topics.  I would recommend that you all go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ and see who is on the air at that time to experience what this is like. 

When you are delivering your own show, the administrator is given a control panel so they can see who is calling in or sending questions in via a chat window.  This would be a great way for companies to host an internal show on various topics or invite their customers to talk about how they are using their products.  In essence it can act as a live Blog or Podcast show.  If you'd like to be a guest on our show send me an email and we will give you a list of upcoming programs.

nancy@knowledgeshift.net

Integrate to Speed up Performance

As my last post emphasized --- thinking about how to take advantage of mobile devices will greatly enhance employee productivity.  I'm seeing an increase in integration of existing legacy database business processes such as back end inventory management and customer information.  Kevin Benedict, a mobile strategist has a great blog post about how the blending of old and new technologies creates an amazing work flow process to shorten work flow times and increases communications between service providers and customers. 

This type of blended integration of mobile and enterprise systems is on the rise.  I have no doubt that in less than 5 years we're going to see a dramatic shift in the way in which learning is incorporated into this type of integration as well.  Take a minute to think about what business process in your organization would benefit from this type of blend.

Jave isn't Coffee and Alien isn't an Android

We recently published a white paper to help educate organization on how to think differently when using mobile devices vs. computers for performance support and employee development. Mobile devices will continue to change the way in which we work, play and communicate. Click on this link to see the article which was featured in Business Management magazine

CLO Mag support our IMPROV model

For those of you that don't know this, we teach a class titled "From ADDIE to IMPROV" on a regular basis. This class introduces a new approach to designing training that forces the company to use the business performance as a metric for the success of the training rather than level one evaluations or post test scores.

Yes we know this might seem radical to some of you but recently CLO Magazine posted an article that stated comments found in an article published by ROI Institute "Measuring for Success: What CEOs Really Think About Learning Investments," that states

"96 percent of executives want to see the business impact of learning; yet only 8 percent receive it now. Similarly, 74 percent of executives want to see ROI data, but only 4 percent have it now.”

This is exactly what we try to communicate in this class, figure out how someone will actually perform this task on the job, or how can you really measure that they have made a business impact and then design the training from this point backwards. We also demonstrate ways to accelerate the design process which in turn adds the "stickiness" factor in training and really makes it stick.

So if you're interested in seeing this in action be sure to acces our online catalog to see our upcoming class times.