Trainers Talk Tech

I spoke to a group recently about multimedia development for eLearning, and the importance of story-boarding your eLearning project came up. We moved from storyboarding multimedia and animation elements to the entire project. Do I think it is important to storyboard your eLearning? Yes. Do I think you have to grind out every detail in a storyboard? I think it depends on two things:

1. The relationship between the storyboarder/designer, the deveopler and the sponsor
2. The experience level of the developer

Read more »

The next edition of the Trainers Talk Tech podcast is here! The topic of this podcast is synchronous learning. You can call it synchronous learning, web seminars, webinars or even edu-marketing, but I was fortunate enough to interview an expert in this area: Roger Courville.

Roger is a trainer, blogger at TheVirtualPresenter.com, and principal of 1080 Group, an independent training firm that helps companies learn and optimize online presentations and webinars. Together with his co-founder, they have created one of the industry's first independent curricula to teach trainers how to organize and accelerate their synchronous training and edu-marketing efforts.

Listen to it here:

Subscribe to the Trainers Talk Tech podcast here:
http://dwebstudios.hipcast.com/rss/trainerstalktech.xml

During the podcast, Roger and I talked about various books, websites and vendors. Below are the links:

Roger's Resources

• Roger's Blog: www.thevirtualpresenter.com
• Roger's Company: The 1080 Group
• Roger's Toolkit: www.webseminartoolkit.com
• Roger's Tips: www.webseminartips.com
• Follow Roger on Twitter: 1080group

Synchronous Learning (Web Seminar) Software

• Microsoft LiveMeeting
• WebEx
• Acrobat Connect Pro
• Acrobat.com
• Dimdim
• Yugma
• Elluminate
• Saba Centra
• Citrix GoToWebinar

Books

• Work Naked: Eight Essential Principles for Peak Performance in the Virtual Workplace by Cynthia Froggatt
• Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer

PowerPoint Tips

• Guy Kawasaki's 10-20-30 rule
• 5X5 rule of PowerPoint - no more than 5 words across, and five lines down

Please enjoy the podcast and subscribe if you like it! I'm going to be accelerating the frequency of the casts to one every two-three weeks instead of monthly. I have my next interview lined up for the first week in March!

Thank you for reading and listening...I hope you enjoy the podcast. Also, a sincere thank you to Roger for sharing your expertise and experience.

I wanted to give a heads up that I am interviewing another amazing expert for the Trainers Talk Tech podcast tomorrow morning. If you've ever wondered about the secrets of good synchronous learning, this is the podcast for you! Tips, tricks and secrets to maximizing your synchronous learning experience as an instructional designer and facilitator will all be discussed. It's going to be great!

If you want to subscribe to the podcast feed, use this link:
http://dwebstudios.hipcast.com/rss/trainerstalktech.xml .

I'm conducting the interview in the morning and after production, it should be up before noon MST. Be sure to subscribe or come back to this site to hear the podcast.

If you missed the first edition covering online social networking with Jenna Papakalos, you can read about it and listen to it here.

During my ASTD Essentials webinar series this past week, several people asked about the fundamentals of good eLearning design and where they could go to learn the basics of good eLearning design. I joked that I can teach you to mash buttons in Flash, Dreamweaver and Photoshop, but I can't teach you to have that "eye". However, there are some resources that can give you a jump start.

Technology for Trainers
by Thomas Toth (Me)
Yeah, I have to start with my book. Sorry about the shameless plug. It's really a great foundational book that's easy to read. It's only 182 pages and I have a whole chapter dedicated to the elements of a good interface. However, if you want to dive into a monster of a book, then:

Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime
by William Horton
This is a monster book - 640 pages - but its really good stuff. This book has been called a good reference book, I find it chock full of ideas on developing good eLearning.

Multimedia Based Instructional Design
by William Lee and Diana Owens
While a bit dated (original printing was 2000, this is the 2004 update), this book provides you with the templates, storyboards and other paper-based tools to help you organize your multimedia and online learning elements. I used this quite a bit during my early years.

Anything by Michael Allen
Michael Allen is widely considered to be an eLearning guru. I find his books excite me and challenge the way I think. Although I challenge some of the things he says, suggests and does, I find that anyone who can make me think is someone I enjoy associating with.

There are also some very good books on web design in general, but from an eLearning perspective, these are good places to start!

Would anyone be interested in videos, tutorials or seminars on the elements of good eLearning design? I hope to put some of this stuff on myelearningguru.com (the stinky Joomla project...still in development...grr...), but what about synchronous sessions? Maybe an online class or two? Let me know if you would be interested in something like this. Post a comment or contact me directly!

Now, go build something cool!

This is a web log dedicated to the training and development professional who is looking to get into the world of online learning. It's a completely new skill set, and many people I talk with are scared, nervous and, quite frankly, don't know where to begin. That's where this site comes in!

As this site grows and develops, I hope to pride you with ways to think about your eLearning, tools for helping you develop your eLearning and ways to take new, emerging and existing technology and put it into your eLearning. After all, with very few exceptions,no one is creating technology exclusively for learning.

Think about it...did people invent the telephone for learning purposes? The web? The iPhone? WebEx? What about RSS feeds, blogs, podcasting, second life, HTML, Joomla, Flash, etc. All of these are amazing technologies, and I hope to help you think about them and how to incorporate them into your online learning.

I'm very opinionated. I'm very open to good discussion. I'm very passionate about online learning. Thank you for stopping by. I hope that I can give you something to think about!