Learn and Lead

I would like to thank Cathy Moore for making Dump the Drone available on Slideshare. Many of the concepts are drilled into training programs at our organization but I just love the way she presents these ideas. Absolutetly great!!!

Communications coach Carmine Gallo breaks down the ace presenter's latest Macworld keynote. The result? A 10-part framework you can use to wow your own audience. Many of these principles could actually apply in creating an elearning course :-).

Carmine Gallo, a business communications coach and Emmy-Award winning former TV journalist, is the author of Fire Them Up! and 10 Simple Secrets of the World's Greatest Business Communicators. He writes his communications column every week.

My article Death of the Instructional Designer sparked off some interesting debate and provided some good points. In case you missed it, do view the comments posted for the article. The poll also showed that most readers believe that instructional designers do add value to content development projects.

Tom Crawford makes some interesting points in Is Instructional Design Dead. He also lists some competencies he believes an instructional designer should have.

Vaughan Waller argues that good instructional design is a crucial component of a successful learning program and always will be. I really liked this article.

Learning Circuits big question of Nov 2006 asks if ISD / ADDIE / HPT are relevant in a world of rapid elearning, faster time-to-performance, and informal learning?

Tom Werner calls for better design of the use of emerging technologies for learning.

Brett Bixler provides a long list of instructional designer required competencies and prerequisite skills.

I believe the traditional instructional designer needs to evolve. They need to have the following skills / knowledge:

• Ability to learn and understand content. While instructional design is content agnostic, it is imperative that the instructional designer understands enough content to have meaningful discussion with subject matter experts and other stakeholders.
• Interviewing skills and note taking skills.
• Ability to assimilate and chunk information.
• Writing correctly, clearly and concisely.
• Ability to collaborate with specialists in different areas (graphics, media, software engineering).
• Ability to write stories, dialogues, scenarios, narration scripts.
• Articulate proposed approach to stakeholders.
• Being creative, thinking out of the box.
• Of course, they must understand basic instructional design principles (this is the foundation), write correct objectives, structure the content etc. etc.
• Understand technology and tools used in creating a course. While there are specialists in various functions, it is imperative that the instructional designer also understands these tools, their basic features, limitations and what it takes to build the designs they are proposing.

Viewing different courses, sites helps you stay up to date. It is also a good idea to attend a few eLearning courses to get the audience experience.

Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies’s site is a good repository of various learning tools. Jane Hart invites contributions to identify top 10 learning tools that the learning professionals use. These are not elearning development tools but tools that allow us to learn ourselves. Jane’s summary of top 100 tools for learning from her 2007 survey makes an interesting reading.

Here are my top 10 tools for learning. Actually some of these might just be techniques. While I have listed some specific tools, in many cases, it is the technique that I found important. I have found very little difference in many of these tools and usually my favorites are the ones that I starting using first.

1. Google – an astonishingly simple interface, this search engine is the place where I go first when I am trying to know more about something.
2. Blogging – not a particular blogging tool, but just the fact of blogging has helped me know more and forced me to learn. It is a bit like teaching is the best method of learning. I use Blogger for my blog.
3. Blogs – I find that I am reading and learning more from blogs than from other sources like magazines (online or paper), social networking sites, or company/product websites.
4. Google Reader – RSS actually. I use Google Reader manage my feeds. RSS has really helped me stay up to date with new articles of various blogs and sites that I track. I really like this tool.
5. del.icio.us – I work on three computers (if I include my mobile phone) and del.icio.us really makes it easy for me to track my bookmarks. But more importantly, I learn from the community to see what others are reading.
6. Right click-Open in New Window/Tab – Okay, so you may argue this is not exactly a learning tool, but I find hyperlinks very distracting and if I click on a hyperlink I lose the flow of what I am reading. So I always right click and open the hyperlink in a new tab or window. This enables me to continue reading and if I do view a hyperlink, this allows me to return to my original document easily.
7. Web-enabled mobile phone – I resisted getting a GPRS phone for a very long time for the fear of being chased by emails all the time (is there a phobia name for that, I wonder). But ever since I got my iPhone I have been absolutely hooked to its full browser Safari. This allows me to learn when I am not the move anywhere. Given our travel times now a days, I would recommend people getting a GPRS enabled phone with a browser. And the company deal from my service provider at Rs. 99 ($2.50) per month for unlimited usage is an absolute steal.
8. Online conferencing (WebEx, Adobe Acrobat Connect) – I don’t have any particular software that is my favorite. WebEx was the most used online conferencing but I am seeing the usage of Adobe Connect increasing. Online conferencing for meetings and training is a great tool for learning and collaboration.
9. Slideshare – In my view, the YouTube of presentations. This is a great social networking site for sharing presentations. You can access some really interesting presentations here.
10. Wikipedia – Great place to find almost anything here.