Creating Amazing Technical Training

Is NPR Denser Than Chengdeite?

April 22, 2010

They say the densest material on earth is something called “Chengdeite“. But this morning I was listening to a reporter on NPR, and I’m thinking we’ve got a new competitor in the race.
The story was about how a Boston school district was wondering if they could improve teacher skills by modeling a “resident” program [...]

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Kirkpatrick’s Levels For Millennials

April 12, 2010

If you create any kind of learning, I’m sure you measure whether or not people actually really learn from what you do. (I also believe in the Easter Bunny, Deficit Reduction, and that Futurama will be renewed this fall.)
As part of your measurement of success, you very probably use Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels Of Learning Evaluation [...]

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Is Learning Going Down The Toilet?

March 16, 2010

Update: If you do not have children in a large, urban school district this post may not make a lot of sense. You are among the lucky.
As someone who has used toilets for many, many years — with little formal training — I feel quite qualified to redesign our nation’s plumbing system to improve the [...]

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So — Did You Get A Kiss Goodnight?

March 9, 2010

It’s been a while since I’ve been out on a date. I’m awfully busy, I can’t find the right person — but mostly because my wife takes a really dim view of me dating.
Back in the days when I was a young pup, I remember that the big question next morning at the water cooler [...]

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You Can Out-Teach The Competition

March 8, 2010

If you’re a small business, you can’t out-spend the competition on marketing. But you can out-teach them. Here’s a great video with David Heinemeier Hansson (a partner in 37signals and the creator of Ruby on Rails).
He’s talking about how they’ve built a great audience through blogs, lectures, seminars and other teachable moments. Great stuff!

Source: Venture [...]

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Solving E-Mail Overload, The Easy Way

March 3, 2010

Many of my little Internet friends keep whining writing eloquent blog posts about how much email they get, how difficult it is to respond to it all, and how their time could be better used spending time with their families or collecting thimbles of the world. While I don’t want to sound unsympathetic (I am [...]

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Top 10 Reasons Twitter Doesn’t Work For You

February 28, 2010

So — you’ve finally decided to try out The Twitter and gotten your own little account. You’ve posted your photo, added a nice little bio, and even followed some interesting folks. But your initial tweets have gone out into the Interwebs with absolutely no indication that anyone heard them. And you continue to tweet, as [...]

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Beyond The Lecture — Fighting The Learning Wars

February 18, 2010

If you’re involved in the process of trying to move information from your head into other heads (aka “learning” or “teaching” or “training” or “edumacating”) you probably began with the simplest form –
the lecture. Open mouth, spew words, hope recipient can hear and understand and process and retain information. You used this model because for [...]

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I Want A Content Management System!

February 15, 2010

I’ve been doing some research into a particular Content Management System (rhymes with “noodle”) that I’ve never used before, in anticipation of doing some work for a new client.
I happened to run across The CMS Review — which contains, among many other resources, a detailed list and comparison of 75 different CMS tools, from “Advantage” [...]

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