Some years ago, my husband and I visited the theme parks on the Gold Coast in Queensland to get some thrills on some of the scary rides. One particular ride at Dreamworld consists of a track that seems to extend high up in the air. You sit in the open air carriage and are jettisoned […]
Personal Learning Environment (PLE) Conference 2012
On Thursday 12 July and Friday 13 July I attended the PLE Conference held at the Deakin Business Centre in Melbourne. It was a collaboration between Deakin University and University of Aveiro in Portugal. I had stumbled upon PLEs through a Twitter stream that piqued my curiosity and after a bit of research realised that […]
A Community Service Club Uses Social Media to Connect with Others and Do Good in the World
I’m not going to beat around the bush, I’m a Rotarian and proud of it. Rotary is a community service club that is made up of business professionals from all vocations who put their knowledge and skills towars national and international projects related to water, health, hunger, literacy, education and polio eradication. Like many other […]
Is There any Agility in ADDIE?
I’m currently working as a member of the Learning and Development team in a transformational project in a major corporate in Australia. It is the first time that I have been involved to deliver learning solutions for a business project as my main experience has been with rolling out enterprise wide learning solutions without the […]
Book Review: The Online Learning Idea Book by Patti Shank
For my May review, I thought I would look through my bookshelf and decide on a book that was relevant to the work that I am doing today. As my project work ramps up with the company I am contracted to, delivering training to employees in two countries is going to be challenging so it […]
Personal Development in a Technology Restricted Workplace
Over the last couple of years, one of my own personal development goals was to explore and use a blend of technologies that could be implemented into learning programs that I design and develop for my corporate clients. I’ve been lucky to be one of these people who have been in the learning and development field […]
Book Review: Preparing Instructional Objectives: A Critical Tool in the Development of Effective Instruction by Robert Mager
Obviously I am taking my new year resolution to read all my reference books in my well-stocked library at home and write a review on each of them seriously. One of the most critical skills for an instructional developer to have is to write effective instructional objectives. I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost count […]
Book Review: Analyzing Performance Problems or You Really Oughta Wanna, How to Figure Out Why People Aren’t Doing What They Should Be, and What To Do About It by Robert F. Mager and Peter Pipe
Long title I know but if the authors haven’t given you an idea that this book MUST be in your Instructional Design reference library than I don’t know what else I can do to alert you to this fact. Many years ago when I was a young Instructional Designer in the Royal Australian Navy, we […]
Book Review: The New Social Learning by Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham
Training often gives people solutions to problems already solved. Collaboration addresses challenges no one has overcome before. Last week, I overheard a colleague say that she saw a post on Yammer regarding a customer service situation that occured in the company. She communicated this to the Change and Communications team sitting near her and queried […]
Book Review: Link Training to Your Bottom Line was written by Dean Spitzer and Malcolm Conway
The first line of this book announces an impending crisis in the training world that threatens it very survival. It says, “simply stated the crisis is the failure to show that investing in training produces demonstrateable business results. Link Training to Your Bottom Line was written by Dean Spitzer and Malcolm Conway in 2006 […]
Book Review: Social Media for Trainers: Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning by Jane Bozarth
Are you a learning and development professional who is hearing more about social media lately and quietly wondering how it will affect your role? Are you an instructional designer who believes that social media is a passing fad and one that cannot be incorporated into training programs for learners? Think again. Jane Bozarth’s new book […]
Book Review: Beyond e-Learning: Approaches and Technologies to Enhance Organizational Knowledge, Learning and Performance
Marc Rosenberg has written yet another book that takes e-Learning to the next level. When I initially bought the book, the concepts and models were slightly too futuristic for a majority of organisations and my clients. However, it is only recently that the questions are being asked as to what happens with e-learning from now […]
Book Review: The Blended Learning Book by Josh Bersin
Josh Bersin’s book on Blended Learning: Best Practices, Proven Methodologies and Lessons Learned is one that must be in any learning and development professional library or reading list. His approach to blended learning is simplified as he provides practical examples of how to structure and create a blended program. In particularly, he first outlines the […]