Blog: e-Learning help

E-learning is one of the bigger topics in Training and Development circles at the moment. Some are claiming it is sounding the death knell for traditional classroom training, others are of the opinion that it's a flash in the pan that wont last the course. It can get a bit heated as this TrainingZone article demonstrates.

I"m of the opinion that e-learning is a an exciting new frontier for trainers and instructional designers. I'm only playing on the fringes at the moment (my budget wont stretch to a proper implementation) and I'm about to start some limited application with a Senior Management Development Programme that I'll be rolling out in my organisation shortly. It will increasingly play a more and more important part in blended learning programmes.

I've found the WWW incredibly useful as a starting point for researching and trialling some of the applications that are out there, and two blogs in particular are worth recommending for anyone who is dipping their toes in the e-learning river.

e4innovation is by Grainne Cronel who is Professor of e-learning at the Open University.

Jane's e-learning Tip of the Day comes from Jane Hart, a social media and learning consultant.

Both have been incredibly useful to me as I've tried to get my head around the thousands of e-learning possibilities.

100 Inspiring Videos for Leaders

Thomas Edison once said, "Genius is one-percent inspiration, ninety-nince percent perspiration", so what do you do when you're putting all the hard work in but that final 1% is eluding you? The Online College have put links to 100 inspiring videos for you to turn to when you need that final spark to bring something to fruition.

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The videos are divided in to ten categories covering areas such as, "Changing the World", "Inspirational People" and "Staying Strong". The videos include talks, movies clips, short films, performance pieces, conversation and interviews.

Althogh nominally put together for leaders, there's enough here to inspire anyone.

100 Inspiring Videos for Leaders

Disclaimer: May not result in actual genius.
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Podcast: Coaching

Interested in coaching or engaged as a coach in your organisation? Do you want to keep your skills and knowledge refreshed?

Here is a useful series of Podcasts from Results Coaching Systems that could come in handy. Some of the Podcasts are a bit on the long side so make sure you set some time aside to listen.

Results Coaching Podcasts
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View from the Middle

Articles on leadership are ten a penny on the internet, so it's refreshing to find a regular columnist that looks at management from the perspective of middle managers, and Wayne Turmel's articles come with a healthy does of irreverant humour to boot.

Wayne Turmel's View from the Middle

Wayne also produces a regular podcast that takes a similar perspective which is available via iTunes or The Podcast Network.

The Cranky Middle Manager
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Learning and listening

A couple of useful podcast for you.

The Project Management Podcast by Cornelius Fichtner. An informative resource for anyone who is interested in developing their project management skills.

And

Managers Tools by Mike Auzenne and Mark Horstman, a weekly business podcast focused on helping business professionals become more effective managers and leaders.

Both handy additions to your iTunes library.

How We Learn from TED 2009

TED is an annual conference, first held in 1984, which started with aim of bringing together people from the worlds of Technology, Entertainment and Design (hence TED) to share ideas. It challenges some of the finest minds in these fields to stand up and “give the talk of their lives” in just 18 minutes. Perfect for the diminishing attention spans in our ADD world.

The TED’s website, whose tagline is “ideas worth spreading”, provides access to many of these talks at no cost. At the moment there is something like 400 talks archived and accessible. You can download them and use them providing you keep within the boundaries of the Creative Commons Licence (as I have with the Seth Godin video below), and you can subscribe and get the latest videos sent straight to your inbox.

One of the categories that you can currently access is titled How We Learn and includes 42 video from speakers like Steven Pinker, Bill Strickland, Dave Eggers and Michael Merzenich.

Incidentally, and related to yesterdays post, I found this talk from this year's TED by Seth Godin about "Tribes".

Seth Godin on "Tribes" at TED 2009

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Academic Earth

This is an interesting idea. Six of the top US colleges (Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, MIT, Princeton & Stanford) are making videos of their lectures available on the Academic Earth website. Now under normal circumstances getting access to learning material of this quality would require you to be a student at one of the colleges and all that entails, but Academic Earth have the goal to give “…everyone on Earth access to a world-class eduction.”

They state:

"We are building a user-friendly educational eco-system that will give internet users the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.”

If you search under the “Entrepreneurship” section you’ll find all sorts of lectures on subjects that are really relevant to business today. I found material on leadership, coaching, finance, marketing, negotiation…. and loads more, all delivered by some of the top business names. People like Guy Kawasaki, Jerry Kaplan, Carly Fiorina, Trip Hawkins, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page will always have something interesting to say.

Naturally they also deliver more traditional academic subjects like biology, chemistry, English, physics, mathematics, etc.

Academic Earth has an ambitious goal, but I’ve always believed that this is exactly the sort of thing the internet ought to be utilised for. The capacity to deliver the very best learning materials to anyone in the world, for free and at their convenience is well within the capability of the system. All that’s needed is the content and the will of the content owners to allow that material to be distributed. Unfortunately at the moment there are some licencing issues which can affect a particular lecture if you don’t reside in a country that has permission to view it, but as far as I can tell that is the exception rather than the rule (and you could always use an anonymizer or proxy to hide your country of origin anyway).

There’s so much potential here. I really hope it achieves its ambition.

Getting Things Done (GTD) (2)

More on the Getting Things Done philosophy.

The iTunes store has a link to a useful podcast by Steve Robbins which covers a whole host of personal productivity topics. Most of the podcasts are only 5-6 minutes in length which makes them ideal for listening to during the journey to work or if you just want a quick learning hit.

Get-It-Done Guy on iTunes

Getting Things Done (GTD)

For the uninitiated, Getting Things Done (GTD) is a productivity/ time and task management methodology developed by David Allen. Advocates describe it as "a relatively simple methodology for getting stuff done in your life".

The good folk over at 43 Folders have put together a useful wiki to introduce the main concepts and provide links to some great resources.

43 Folders GTD wiki

If, like me, you find yourself constantly struggling to fit in everything that you need to do then GTD might be the answer you've been looking for. It's particularly "geek" friendly and there are loads of online tools available to support it.