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Posts Tagged: Future

Session Notes & Links from ASTD (American Society for Training & Development)

Thank you to all the FABULOUS learners at ASTD’s international convention in Chicago. Here is a recap of my session with links and a few of my slides and side rants (thrown in for your entertainment value!).

The title of my session was, “Using Today’s Technology for the Game of Learning!”

If our goal is to engage learners and make learning fun again, it may be time to look for ways to take learning OUT of the classroom and put it into the hands (and devices) of the learners. Let’s get them involved in the process, from telling us what they need, to co-creating content for BIG FUN learning. In order to involve our learners, we have to be willing to step off of our thrown …or podium and remember that WE are smarter than ME!

These are the folks “FORMERLY KNOWN AS YOUR AUDIENCE”

Repeat after me, “I will not stand in front and read BORING powerpoint slides to my audience as if they were mindless idiots!” That mantra, repeated daily, will help you shift from standing up and dumping information to truly engaging the brains of the people in your audience. There are technology tools that can help engage, teach and even thrill your teams as they are learning …even outside the classroom walls BEFORE and AFTER a learning event!

WHY should you worry about changing the way training is delivered in your organization? Well part of it has to do with the fact that our learners have changed! We have 1-yr olds trading stock on e*trade for goodness sake. They are tech-savvy, impatient, have ADHD, and they have a lot to contribute! Here are some statistics:

We need to use some of the tools that are already in the pockets, purses and backpacks of our learners (and I’m not talking about bandaids, chewing gum or tweezers here!).

One of my favorite tools is the fabulous FLIP camera. Get creative and get others in the driver’s seat creating content! Involve customers, vendors, and of course employees! Some of the ideas shared included giving sales teams cameras and having them create a 5 minute learning video to teach the other teams about a new product roll-out. Have a few of your best customers create a short video showing a “Day in the life” of that customer to show your customer service teams what it is like in your customer’s world. Have executive teams or senior members of the organization share 3 things they know now that they wish they would have known when they first started in the industry or at your company. These learning videos can be loaded on your own website or on sites such as YouTube (set to private) or Blip, which allows you to load videos longer than 10 minutes.

Create podcasts within your organization (simple audio recordings saved as MP3 files). Interview team members and capture their knowledge to share with others. Download audio books and have them available on MP3 player for people to check out. And for those of you concerned about the risks and hazards of having these tech tools available to employees, LET IT GO! Reading your training manuals can give people paper cuts and looking at boring Powerpoint can cause brain damage so this is much safer and less expensive than those worker’s comp claims.

Here is a fun video that can provide SOME protection for Tech-Hazards (I showed an edited version of this in my program–this version is RATED PG-13) )

Remember, these are just a few ideas of how to get your learners involved using video and audio files, so be sure to post any of your great ideas in the comment section here so we can continue to share knowledge.

We discussed ways to take geo-tagging apps used for marketing or games such as FourSquare or GoWalla and create learning treasure hunt games. You could leave envelopes at different locations with blog posts or articles in them for learners to find using a geo-location list you give and their mobile devices. By adding the element of competition you will turn learning into a fun and fast-paced race to learn! This is very much like the popular geocaching game for treasure hunters, only the real treasure in your hunt is big nuggets of learning!

For another dimension of fun, you can use augmented reality tools such as LAYER or TAGWHAT to embed pieces of information or content from your learning programs into specific locations. By tagging the content to the location, you can send participants out on a hunt for information using mobile devices.

With barcode scanner apps on many of today’s mobile devices, look for ways to add 2-dimentional bar codes on objects that will provide more information to learners. You can place barcodes on walls within a building that bring the company’s story to life, or provide safety tips to learners. This picture shows a barcode placed on a tombstone that brings up information on the deceased. You can create your own content-loaded QR tag at http://QRtag.net – go ahead and try it–it’s FREE! I think I will be making a t-shirt with a tag on it that takes people to my website ) How can you use this?

With iPads, ipods, smart phones, Kindle readers, and more gadgets popping up daily, make a commitment to learn more about these new mobile learning tools, and do share your ideas here for the rest of us because WE are smarter than ME!

Be sure and check out the Gettin’ Geeky page on Facebook where I always share tech tips for BIG learning and building BIG biz. I encourage folks to post questions there or their own GREAT tech tips!

It was great meeting so many wonderful people this week at ASTD and I look forward to more BIG learning and BIG success stories!

@GinaSchreck
President & Digital Immigration Officer
Synapse 3Di

May 19, 2010 | Filed Under Education, Future, Geolocation, Social Learning, Technology | 8 Comments

Daily Time-Travel in Today’s School

Most kids put away their futuristic tools each morning and enter a time machine to go back to a past that is more and more unfamiliar and irrelevant to them. We call it school. They enter a classroom that looks much like the classrooms of yesteryear, to learn from teachers who are unfamiliar with the future tools or how they are used in the new digital landscape. Many parents of these same children avoid teaching them how to use the new tools out of fear, frustration and intimidation. Where will they go to prepare for their future? Who will lead them?

Wikis, blogs, Google docs, geo-tagging, social and mobile applications, are just a few of the tools that today’s kids use… outside the classroom. They find it odd that they’re told to look through old books for answers when Google has the latest information. They can’t talk with others in class about the answers to a test but as soon as they leave school they collaborate with a global team to solve more complex problems in a 3D immersive gaming environment.

Just do a Google search for “Layoffs in schools” to see that hundreds of thousands of teachers will lose their jobs this year and next. Sadly, many of the younger, tech-savvy teachers are first to go and many of the tenured teachers feel as is the digital divide has turned into a digital canyon that has them on the wrong side. These difficult times call for creative and radical solutions.

As Dorothy said, “We are not in Kansas anymore!” We have entered a new digital landscape that requires innovative thinking. We need to turn everything on its head to find creative solutions, such as reverse-mentoring, where students become the teacher, where teachers become coaches, applying tried wisdom to new problems. We need tools that blow the walls off of classrooms and take the students into environments that look more like the collaborative settings they enjoy when they leave school.

It’s time to ignite the desire for everyone to take action; to change what we know today as “school” and to become more innovative than ever before! We must seek new and creative ways to use more technology tools in our classrooms to prepare students for their future. We must all realize that he tools that built our past will not work to build our future. As learners, we must enter that time machine and go back to the future, where collaboration and teaming skills are critical.

If you had to start from scratch, what would you do different?

It’s about BIG learning! It’s about change. It’s about time!

@GinaSchreck

May 11, 2010 | Filed Under Education, Future, Social Learning, Technology | Leave a Comment

Watch Out for Kooks Talking About Technology & Change

There used to be a UFO club that had an office right in the strip mall near our house. It was the joke of the neighborhood. Who were these kooks that met in the small little office? Did you have to be a little crazy to even belong to this group?

We would tease the kids and warn them not to get too close as they looked in the windows, or they would be teleported to the mother ship. This UFO club was obviously never feared by locals, because after all, what could possibly happen in a strip mall? One day the office was just empty and had the FOR LEASE sign on the window again. Did they finally catch a ride back to their planet?

What if we could travel back 100 years and tell people living in 1910 that we have seen a man go to the moon, that we make video phone calls to people living on the other side of the world, and that every day we pay $4.50 for a cup of coffee that comes in a paper cup to our automobile window as we drive by? Surely they would call us kooks and even pull their children a bit closer warning them not to get near us!

Some of us feel the pain of the time traveler within our own organizations. When you have seen the future alive in other organizations, where they are using new tools and technologies to solve problems and connect people, you are sure that others will want to learn these new ways. But this is not always the case.

Organizations are very eager to talk about change and how they are focused on moving into the future but when you start trying to implement new tools and techniques, many times the old skeptics and critics come out of the rocks telling you why it’s safer to keep things as they were, at least for now. When trying to convince these curmudgeons, I suggest you start small.

Maybe for your next conference or all hands meeting you Skype in an expert from another company to share 3 top tips for your group. Get your sales and marketing team to shift just 15 minutes a day to connecting strategically on social media sites to begin building those networks. Use handheld video cameras to get your managers and executive team members to share 5 things they know now that they wish they knew when they first started and use that in new hire training. These are a few ideas to begin expanding the thinking of a crusty-thinking organization.

Don’t scare them by trying to do too many new things at once. Instead of trying to get your team to board the mother ship, perhaps you just invite them to meeting in strip mall–after all what could happen in a strip mall?

@GinaSchreck

April 15, 2010 | Filed Under Future, Marketing, Technology, Virtual Worlds | Leave a Comment

Adventures in Technology with Explorers, Skeptics and Cowards

There have always been explorers, from Magellan, Columbus, and Amelia Earhart to modern day adventurers like Robert Young Pelton, John Goddard and Jeff Corwin. And for every explorer there is a crowd of people shouting, “You are wasting your time! You are chasing a delusion! You are following a path to destruction…” (Okay, never mind, that was what my friends and colleagues have said to me!) Skeptics abound where explorers dare to dream, and the other crowd that gathers is the cowards. Those are the ones who say they will go AFTER the path is laid, After the path has been proven safe and AFTER there is a safe number of other cowards to walk with.

Exploring new business models or learning methods is no different. It takes an explorer to go first, to try new technologies, to dare to fail…or succeed! How many times have we heard, “Twitter is dead!” “No one will ever attend a serious business meeting or class in a virtual 3D environment!” “Facebook is on its way out and it is not a business tool!”? More times that we can count. The future depends upon those who will venture out into unchartered waters. Those who embrace the unknown or unproven to try something so radically different that others whisper as they walk by, “She’s the crazy one who has students using their cell phones in class!” “He’s the one who gives his product away for free and thinks he will make money…and what’s up with a name like Google?”

Last week I spoke at an event on a technology panel and a woman approached me after and said, “Isn’t all of this just hype? I mean Facebook is for teens to play games and talk about hating their parents. Businesses shouldn’t be wasting their time with these when there is real work to be done.” After I suggested anger management classes to her, I started to explain that we can no longer do business the way we used to do, and the new world of business requires new tools and then I stopped. I realized she would not be persuaded by such a lunatic as I. She would need to wait safely on that other side of the digital CANYON for the next covered wagon to come and get her. Ironically, that same day we read that Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week. Yep, sounds like a waste of time for sure.

What waters must you cross to reach the new world in your business? Who is telling you it can’t be done? Who is saying they won’t follow you? Remember, the future is already here, but only the explorers are bold enough to enjoy it! There are oceans of opportunities waiting…are you an explorer, skeptic or coward?

Share your thoughts on exploring new worlds in your business or industry. Where is going? What are you doing to prepare?

Twitter: @GinaSchreck
Facebook: Gina Schreck
Second Life: GinaSchreck Denver

March 25, 2010 | Filed Under Facebook, Future, Marketing, Second Life, Social Learning, Technology, Twitter, Virtual Worlds | 2 Comments

How will Technology Affect Your Biz this Decade?

When the video store down the street closed I was actually celebrating. My $18 late fees were erased forever. Our family was banned from most video stores years ago. Thanks to Netflix and on-demand video viewing, people just couldn’t see the value in stopping in and reading the backs of empty boxes only to find the good movies were all taken and the second choice videos came home and got lost in the couch cushions for 8 months.

Last month a large yellow dinosaur was dropped on my front porch which made me stand in wonder. Who is still using the yellow pages? Do we need them delivered for that occasional short guest that comes for dinner and needs a booster seat? Do we still feel that they make an attractive door stop? Who is not Googling everything? I hope those who work for the phone book companies have updated their resumes. What about the people who design resumes for those job seekers? Many of the resume companies didn’t anticipate LinkedIn lasting very long. Did the employees that made Poloroid cameras and film not see that picture of themselves in the unemployment office in their future? The digital readers, like Kindle and the Nook, are here to change the publishing and library industries forever. Some already wake to download their custom KINDLE PRESS News Paper instead of going out into the snow to fetch that old tattered newspaper.

Technology…progress… it does change things, but how can we be ready? How do we learn to read the trends and prepare for our future? I have been in the learning and professional speaking business for over 15 years (which is a strange business in itself) but that is another industry being rocked by change and technology. In the past, most companies flew employees in from all over the country or the world to attend large (and expensive) conferences or learning events. The speakers or trainers would fly in and hopefully wax eloquently, and deliver pearls of wisdom that would change lives forever (or inspire folks for a few hours at least) before flying home. Now I know I will get slammed with letters from speakers and trainers–so of course I am NOT talking about YOU! It’s those OTHER speakers and trainers that I reference.

Companies today are still bringing folks together for learning events or sales events, but not as often. Is it technology that has changed this? NO. The global nature of business and the watchful eyes on those corporate budgets have changed how often and how extravagant these events are, BUT technology has come along providing some new tools to deliver learning nuggets, inspiration and even team building events.

From webinars and company pod and vodcasts, to virtual team building events like mountain expeditions and team competitions all within a virtual environment. Times they are a changing. Here are a few steps to get you moving in the right direction:

1. Let your mind imagine the future. What does your industry look like in your mind 10 or 20 years from now (Okay with lots of facial creams and futuristic vitamins you will still be there in the picture!) ?

2. What skills might be needed to be successful in the future? Even if you are not using them today.

3. Where can you begin to learn these skills? Can you take a community college class or perhaps one offered through your local rec center?

Regardless of your age or industry, take steps to make sure the KINDLE PRESS posts a blog entry about you celebrating your 100-years in business! You’d better start those vitamins now.