If you want to make a short audio file easily available to lots of learners, a great way (easily enough) is to create a VIDEO file that you post directly to YouTube.com. Not very intuitive, but it’s one of the best ways to be sure that nearly anyone can manage to download and consume your content.

I’ve found a quick way to do this is using PowerPoint. Also pretty non-intuitive. I was presenting to a great bunch of trainers the other day, and mentioned the idea — so now I have to actually tell people how to make it work.

A COMPLETELY FREE METHOD

Step One: Create A One-Slide PowerPoint Deck
Make a single slide deck, and use SlideShow/RecordNarration to record your audio. (Or record it with another tool, if you know how to manage that.)

Step Two: Save Slide As JPG
Do a “save as” using the .jpg option, which will create a .jpg image of your single slide.

Step Three: Save PPT As Web Page
Do a “save as web page” and you’ll find the audio file as a little .wav file

Step Four: Open Windows Movie Maker (it’s on your machine already)
Import the single .jpg image and the audio file to timeline

Step Five: Finish the movie as a .wmv file
Finish the movie to your computer, then upload to YouTube.

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The first time you do this, it may take an hour and you may tear your hair out. By the fifth time, it will be less than five minutes.

If you have more money than time, there are a whole bunch of little apps online that will take the PPT deck with the audio and do it for you.

(There are, of course, many other ways to do this — using recording software like Audacity or Audition, using video software like Final Cut or Premiere, or hiring George Lucas and a bunch of offshore animators. I was just talking about something very quick and dirty that would get the job done.)

If you give it a try, leave a note in the comments and let me know where I went wrong.

Sometimes, it’s a little hard to get your head around how you could implement new media channels into your existing education efforts. So this is Part I of a 435-part series entitled “What Could You Learn About Learning?” (My apologies to Stephen Colbert.)

I’ve picked five random things that are trademarks of the folks with the little green mermaid, and I think each can be used to remember a simple truth about pushing knowledge into little lizard brains. Let me know what you think.

First, Do One Thing Well

The online world is full of people who do everything — and nothing. It’s hard to define what they’re offering, hard to remember who they are, and hard to focus. Does your knowledge transfer experience map to that? Do you offer classes, online, offline, synchronous, asynchronous, job aids, reference materials and fireside chats?

Quantity isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s devilishly hard to create multiple learning models that actually complement and support each other. Start your move to new media by just producing a podcast. One podcast, about one course. When you’ve got that down solid, apply what you’ve learned and do another. Don’t rush off to video, or blogging, or thought-transfer pills.

If you’re in that much of a hurry, hire somebody who’s done this a lot to guide you — and even then, keep an eye on him.

Give Them A Consistent Experience

There’s a reason that the “next” button is in the lower right-hand corner on lots of e-learning products. (No, there isn’t really any data that suggests that’s the “best” place for it.) The reason is that most designers put it there, so we’ve come to expect it. That’s why toast comes out of the top of the toaster, shoes lace up in the front, and cats always have their butt facing you.

So each video you create should have a common intro and outro, a similar introduction, even a similar look and feel surrounding the content. Think “60 Minutes” or “Publisher’s Clearinghouse” or “How My Toilet Works.” Sometimes knowing exactly what to expect is very comforting. Having to figure out a new system often just breaks your focus and becomes annoying.

Every Starbucks I’m in, there’s one stop to order and one stop to pickup. The products have the same names, sizes, and ingredients. And there’s always somebody sitting in the comfy chairs.

Allow Me To Add The Spice To My Experience

When I’m in Starbucks, I know there’s no chance that I can add fries. But I do know that I can have extra flavors, less milk, cinnamon, room for cream, or even soy milk. So I can really make “my drink” within the bounds of what’s available. Can your learners customize their experience, while still sticking to the “be consistent” rule? Can they add something, remove something, or customize the size?

Adults want to control their learning experience, and push back pretty hard if you present it as one-size-fits-all. That’s why the web has had such an impact on how people take in knowledge. We expect that it’s ok to start with Chapter 5. We want to look at the finished bookshelf before we start assembling. Going to a hotel without seeing the room in a preview is no longer ok with me.

Let Me Know What’s New, While I’m Waiting In Line

Every Starbucks has a little chalkboard sign, where the barristas put up a little note about what’s new. It might be a Pumpkin Spice Latte, Christmas Mint Cookies, or Filet of Mermaid. (Ok — I made that one up.)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t often take them up on it. But I like to know that there are choices available — in some ways, it makes mine feel a little more valid. It lets me know that it really is ok if I want to have the hazelnut syrup today. And I have confidence that each time I visit, there will be freedom to select just what I want.

I Don’t Want To Feel Your Pain

Whether I’m in the drive-up window or at the counter, I rarely have any idea of what’s going on behind the curtain. I’m sure that some days the steam is too hot, the milk is running out, or the microphone for the drive-up is not very easy to hear.

But I don’t ever hear that. Everyone I deal with is positive, smiling, polite and focused. Compare that experience to most other food experiences (heck — compare it to quick lube shops and Home Depot) and tell me what you see. When I’m in the middle of learning, I don’t want to hear that your server is unavailable. I don’t want to create a blog post and lose it in editing. I just don’t care that you’re upgrading the site and I can’t find the podcast anymore.

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What could you learn from Starbucks? Who else do you learn from?

Want to see what your site looks like on the iPhone? Use the iPhone Tester web site and you can see exactly what your web site will look like when viewed on the iPhone platform.

Why do you care?  Well, pretty soon millions of people will be going to your site and looking at it on this tiny little screen — and if they can’t see what they want, they’ll go here or here or here.

Great!  More stuff to worry about.

I’m presenting three sessions at the e-Learning Developer’s Conference in Salt Lake City June 14-16.

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Manage Your Learning Organization Like e-Bay

I wrote a blog post last year that asked training managers to fantasize about what their organizations would look like if they ran their orgs around eBay’s three principles:

1. They don’t buy stuff
2. They don’t own stuff
3. They don’t sell stuff

It created quite a stir with some friends in the training community, and eventually became a session at a regional ASTD event. We had a great time talking about how letting go of some of our preconceptions might change the way we thought about how we managed learning.

(For example: If you didn’t “OWN” whether the content was successful, but the stakeholder did. If you didn’t “BUY” content with your resources of development, but the end users did. If you didn’t “SELL” content by trying to get people to attend classes, but let users vote with their feet.)

It became a great experience in thinking about some of the core beliefs that we all share about the training function. I’d like to talk a little bit about the idea, and then we’ll collaborate on a discussion of what you might do differently if we did it like eBay!

Tags: development, learning, management, organization, organizational, training

I’m presenting three sessions at the e-Learning Developer’s Conference in Salt Lake City June 14-16.

Link to the deck.

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Ring! Ring! Ring! Your Learners Are On The Phone

I’ve been experimenting with getting learning content out to people via smart phones for several years now, and it’s not easy. Unlike the desktop, there are a bewildering number of screen sizes, formats, browsers, operating systems and keypads.

I even went so far as to create a fictional company and build a sample of what an internal learning system might look like, just to show my clients and get some feedback. It was a real eye-opener.

In this session I’ll show you a little of what I built, how it worked (and what went wrong), and then give you some of the painful lessons I’ve learned. We’ll also do a little experimenting with “re-inventing” an existing site to make it a little more mobile-friendly.

Tags: blackberry, cell, iphone, learning, mlearning, mobile, phone, smartphone