Trainers Talk Tech

This past week I finished up my last ASTD Essentials Webinar Series and again had a "virtual" room full of highly engaged, highly interested learners. It was interesting hearing from this group: they are all going to be the eLearning Obmudsmen I commented on in an earlier post. As I was going through the software examples and demos, I started getting some really good questions about process. I have a standard routine that I use when building my eLearning project from scratch, and I thought that it might be of benefit to my reading audience.

After meeting with a client and getting my first installment check (!), we start the following process:

1) Instructional Design Phase

Some of my clients have at least an outline of the content to the site, some have complete storyboards, but most are somewhere in between. Its my team's responsibility to take what they have and build out a storyboard for their review. We use a PPT based storyboard to document screens, activities and simulations in a way that makes it easy for the client to see how their program will function and flow.

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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.