Author Archives: JDixon

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Brainstorm and Plan a Mini-Project Survey – Southwest Houston Filmmakers (Richmond, TX) – Meetup

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This was a different forum for learning—a Meetup.   A Toastmaster described Meetups at a Toastmaster meeting and I went online to investigate. I joined the local Meetup site for Houston. Over the months there have been several that appeared interesting but that I had one conflict or another preventing me from attending. This one, a group for amateur filmmakers, set a simple goal – to plan a video that could be shot in one day by the Meetup members serving as both crew and talent. As I wrote in the review for the Meetup below I think we accomplished our goals and will shoot the video in July. I think the Meetup was a good learning experience in the basic goal setting and planning of a very simple video.  I think both shooting the video and editing it will also prove to be valuable learning exercises for the members. Even if this goes no further (and I think it will) it is a good example of collaborative and experiential learning. The one step that most of the participants probably will not take is to document the experience saying what they learned and what their next steps are.

Amazingly we accomplished the goal set for the meetup–select and plan a film project. David set the goal and Mac kept bringing us back on track from the many rabbits we started to chase. Everyone had a chance to contribute and volunteer for a role.

Brainstorm and Plan a Mini-Project Survey – Southwest Houston Filmmakers (Richmond, TX) – Meetup

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More niche authors should consider digitally self publishing books

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I have mentioned before attending the free webinars offered on trainingmagnetwork.com.

I have attended, benefited and enjoyed Ray Jimenez’ free TrainingMagNetwork seminars. So, I thought about buying one of his books. These days I pretty much limit myself to digital books because my study and my garage are full and I think my family’s patience is wearing thin. Plus, I have been spoiled by prices for digital books that are frequently $20 or less. Currently, I try to go to Barnes & Noble because people give me gift cards from there.

However, when I went to look for Mr. Jimenez’ books I found that they seemed to be available only from Lulu press for $35 as paper books.

I suggested that Mr. Jimenez experiment with publishing a couple of his out-of-print books (DIYEL 101 Tips for Do-It-Yourself eLearning?) digitally and offer it on his site for maybe $15. Maybe an intern would do it cheaply for the experience.

Of course if Mr. Jimenez is doing really well he could donate any out of print books to Project Gutenberg, have them available for free, educate the rest of us and enrich his karma.

I think more niche author should consider doing this. Their most likely point of sale is at their presentations or web sites. Also, both Barnes and Noble and Amazon accept submissions.

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busuu.com– An Interesting Learning Experience

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busuu.com is a language learning site with a difference. While questions and exercises are apparently authored by site employees, grading and feedback are performed by other participants in the language learning. So, I a Spanish learner might respond to a question or invitation to introduce myself in Spanish. I type out and/or speak an answer. Then I am given an opportunity to select names of other participants whom I don’t know to grade or give feedback on my response. I assume other people are invited the same way I was by e-mail to perform the evaluation. Native Spanish speakers have the opportunity to rate my response on a five-star system and give feedback on the written and/or spoken response. They can copy my response and modify it so that it is more correct or in some cases just more idiomatic. On the spoken passages, an evaluator could say the passage over again in a way that he or she believed was more appropriate.

This frees the site staff from the time-consuming task of grading or evaluating and giving feedback. In addition it gives the language learners the opportunity for multiple feedbacks on what they did. The learners can see and hear a variety of solutions to the language challenges.

Also, there is a provision to hold conversations with native speakers over the Internet. Finally, you can “friend” and send rewards to other users.

This is not only an interesting approach for language learning but I can see it being used in many other types of learning. For example in sales or management training, instead of pretending there is one right answer, learners could receive feedback from experienced subject matter experts and also people that might correspond more closely to the sales customers or managed employees. I have heard of online writing groups that do the same type of activities in posting and commenting on each other’s stories and articles.

busuu.com takes advantage of the interactive web’s ability to bring together large number of users from different backgrounds, in this case, in languages to assist each other in learning.

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Well Done Free Webinars

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Today I attended a Training Magazine Network webinar “The Truth about Social Learning” presented by Jane Bozarth. The seminar was both informative and interesting but I believe the approach is even more so. Training Magazine Network offers a number of webinars presented by a number of different people. There are several things that are remarkable about the network’s approach to me:

First, the seminars are free but don’t seem to be designed to market a particular product or service. (The host will mention that Training Magazine has an upcoming convention but the presenter really doesn’t push it.) The material in the webinars is valuable, current and can be charged for in other venues.

The second item of interest to me is the three ring circus nature of the presentation. In the “center ring” is the presentation consisting of slides, verbal presentation and polling/questions. In another ring, is the running commentary/information exchange/networking occurring in the messaging window. In the two or three webinars I have attended by Bozarth, this is like watching a classroom run wild. But it doesn’t seem to faze Bozarth at all; she will let the irrelevant and a irreverent flow by without comment. But every once in a while, she will pick out a little gem to either comment on or, if it is a question, answer. One of the nice things about the software that is used to present the webinar, Blackboard Collaborate, is that you can print the entire dialogue. There are comments, URLs and references that add to the value of webinar.

During this webinar, Bozarth also provided a twitter feed with a hash code so that incline participants could also tweet about the presentation.

Third, I was also able to create a “ring” on my side. Since no one was “watching” me I was not only able to have a Word document open for notes, Twitter to follow the tweets but also a browser to check the author of a book or to go to URL that was published.

Finally, the Training Magazine Network promised to publish the recorded webinar for follow-up and provided a discussion area where people could ask questions and post comments on the webinar.

The entire experience was so rich that it made learning almost inevitable and also countered complaints that I have heard about webinars in the past. For example, when I was on a SAP project, one of the people who took some of the training through webinars complained about the lack of ability to network, build relationships, and ask for lessons learned from other people. If the SAP training program had taken an approach that more closely resembled Training Magazine Network’s, I think my coworker would’ve gotten more of what he wanted.

I would recommend the Training Magazine Network and its webinars to anyone interested in training or information development and delivery.

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Trials and Tribulations of Reading On-Line

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If a company delivers a lengthy article on-line, why don’t they anticipate that it is going to be read, at least initially, on a computer screen? I have just endured the frustration of trying to read another document formatted in a magazine layout and delivered as an Acrobat document. It is formatted in two columns on a page that when printed out would be on a an 8.5×11 page.

This means that you have to move down the page continuously until you reach the bottom of the column and then scroll back up to the top to the second column before continuing to the next page. There’s no way that you are going to speed read your way through this article. All because you MIGHT print this out. What a waste of time!

The page size should be half size so that you can view its entirety in one screen and you can go page by page with the page down key.

The distributor of the document (in this case ZDNet) could provide value to their customers by surveying the readers as to whether they plan to print the document out or read it on line.

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Development-Training Cycle

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The information surrounding a new software or equipment design follows a predictable cycle. First there is the information gathering cycle, when the developer seeks, collects and organizes the information. During this time, equipment or software designers are preoccupied, information is changing and device or software use is more or less theoretical. Everyone is supposed to be doing thorough task and user analysis but the map always ends up not being the territory.

In the second phase, the information is delivered, hopefully, in some type of interactive environment–for example a classroom. Questions and feedback will send the instructor/developer back for more information and cause on-the-fly revisions. (This is where the instructor learns the meaning of iterative.) If the Gods are smiling, the bulk of the people come to the training or read the manuals as expected and make-up classes catch more.

In the next phase, the forgotten one, the training avoiders/absentees and new hires have to use the device/software along with everyone else. Typically training is not offered or is only offered infrequently. Also, training material is not revised to match revisions in the device/software. Manuals are lost or become victims of the copies of copies phenomenon. Learning becomes more informal and peer-to-peer.

Also, during this phase, especially with software, people develop new and novel practices. Because of this, some are more productive than others and some develop rogue behavior.

Wikis and other web tools could greatly improve the efficiency of the first phase, shore up the informal learning that will inevitably occur in the third and promote the spread of productive techniques that super users will develop.