Tech in Training

If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you'll know that my favorite adjective is "free." Well, here's some more of the good stuff.

 

Online training is an excellent way to reach your learners 24/7. It can be very time-consuming to set up and expensive to create. If you are looking for a free option that is pretty well setup for you, take a look at edcanvas.com.  edcanvas is designed more for the K-12 group, but if you ignore that, you can easily create lessons for your organization training.

 

First of all, edcanvas provides an easy layout for uploading your resources for learning. Resources can be YouTube videos or files found on you Dropbox, Google Drive or from your computer. Give descriptions for each and then arrange the resources in the correct order.

 

Next, click to unlock the class to share a code that allows learners to take the class. For all the options that ask about the education level or grade, just select "Other" for the options. Now you can share your class via email.

 

If you need an assessment, you can now create quizzes for your class. The feedback provides statistics such as average score, highest and lowest score and the number of submissions. You can click on individual questions to learn how each was answered and by whom.

 

To learn more, view my canvas on using edcanvas. I put this together in less than five minutes, it's that easy.

When creating training, I do not always have the time to create videos from scratch. Often, I'll find something similar to what I want on YouTube.com or Vimeo.com. Only problem, is I wish I could edit them.

 

The other day, I found a great video explaining the VLOOKUP function in Excel. The first part was great, but didn't need the end about relative referencing. Plus, there were some parts I felt the author skimmed over in explaining and my users really needed the extra info. To get what I wanted, I created a mashup using Mozilla Popcorn Maker.

 

Popcorn Maker allows you to bring in an online video (this works as long as the video remains posted as it is linked, not embedded) and add text, pop-ups, twitter feeds and more. Once posted, someone else can use your mashup as a basis for their own and add to it. To learn more, view and participate in the tutorial online or go to https://webmaker.org/en-US/tools/#popcorn-maker.

 

If you want to see my project, go to http://popcorn.webmadecontent.org/tjr.

Seriously?! It's the end of February and nobody noticed I haven't made a post yet all year? Thank goodness I was demonstrating how to use Microsoft OneNote to get and stay organized. I love the features of connecting to my Outlook calendar meetings and tasks. As I was showing how to make subpages, I used the section in my notebook where I keep all my ASTD-Lincoln Technology in Training blog posts as an example and BAM! No entries for 2013. Well, here's another lesson for you. When the new year begins, don't forget to update all your reminders.

 

Focus, Ranelle. Get back on track.

 

Do you have a notebook to keep things in? Instructions on how to do something, handouts from the last ASTD meeting, your own notes from the last ASTD meeting? I used to keep a file in my drawer for one thing, another file for other things and a notebook for even more things. If you could keep it in a notebook or file, you can keep it in OneNote. I can then store it on a network drive or on the web (like SkyDrive) to share with others.

 

OneNote comes with the Microsoft Office Suite, so you may have it installed but didn't know what to do with it. My favorite feature is the organization. Yes, I'm an organization freak. I keep one notebook for all my training services. That is where I keep the PDF of our service agreement, the email with the confirmation code and password, and the entire Word file that is the getting started guide. I can then share this with anyone on my team that needs this information.

 

Next, I love that I have OneNote on my laptop, iPad and Android phone. When at a conference, we toured a multimedia training room. I took notes on the features and attached the PowerPoint presentation they used. Then, I opened OneNote on my phone and took pictures that were added to the page. I was also able to use my phone to make a video of the tour and embed that as well.

 

So, it's great for organizing training program stuff, but can it help in training? Yes. It can not only be the training manual, but if you give each person a copy, they can add their own notes, too. You can create sections with different topics or levels and include videos which is sometimes much more helpful than words and pictures alone. If you need an example, check out the Microsoft Office training notebook (all in OneNote). It's the perfect 21st century training manual.

With the end of the world (according to the Mayan calendar) quickly approaching, I find myself reflecting on the posts I have done for the ASTD-Lincoln Tech in Training. I wanted more of a visual timeline instead of the list I keep, so I found this super-easy, online and FREE option called, timetoast.com. Here's my posts on the timeline. I put this together in about 15 minutes, without reading a manual or watching a lengthy tutorial. Now that it's done, I see gaps where I forgot/neglected to post. Oops. I'll make it my New Year's resolution to do better.

 

With it being so easy, I thought I could use timetoast.com to track training initiatives and programs. You can add events (with pictures, descriptions and links) and time spans. I could then share the timeline with stakeholders, my supervisor, etc. So many ideas for me. I'm going to have to create a timeline just for creating different timelines.

 

There are many more options for creating timelines. I found on EdTechTeacher.org a great table of options. Their webpage is geared toward the K-12 technology teachers, but a great list and I've shared it with you below.

 

For the last upgrade, you may have noticed I was absolutely giddy with excitement of the changes to PowerPoint. This time around, I'm not as giddy, but there are a lot of things I like about the new version. Here are a few of the improvements to PowerPoint.

Getting Started and Backstage view have changed. There are more options available for you. It does take some time to get used to the new look, but you will soon find that the same old stuff is still there with a few improvements.

Insert online pictures and video

1. On the Insert tab, Illustrations group, click Online PicturesOR Insert tab, Media group, click Online Video.
2. In one of the search boxes, type a word or phrase that describes the clip art or video you want, and press ENTER.
3. In the list of results, click an item, and then click Insert.

Properties in the Task Pane instead of dialog box

When formatting an object, whether it be a shape, picture or chart, you now have the properties on the right side in the task pane instead of floating on top of your object in a dialog box.  Double-click an element (or right-click and select Format [element]).

Sometimes after training, questions arise. They may be simple, but others can get pretty deep and complex. Perhaps this is an indicator that a more advanced training class is needed. Or maybe reference materials are needed or are not easily accessible. I also love the idea of asking people what they need to learn and then developing training around their needs.

Introducing Google Moderator. It allows you to create a “series” about whatever. People can submit questions, ideas or suggestions. They can also vote on what is already posted. Moderator will rank the questions based on a simple statistical algorithm of the ratio of positive votes against the total votes for a posted question. The end result is that you’ll learn what people want to know more about.

Create a Series

1. Go to http://google.com/moderator and click the Create Series button (bottom right corner of the screen). You must have a Google account to create a series.
2. Name your series. You’ll also need to provide a description or instructions. There are a number of other settings you can allow or not allow, including if you will allow a person to post anonymously. You can add administrators to allow others to help moderate and edit the series. All selections can be changed at a later time.
3. When all information is complete, click Create Series.

Using Google Moderator

You can practice by using my series, ASTD-Lincoln Tech in Training. In order to submit questions or vote, you must have a Google account.p>

• To submit a question, click the Suggest a question button at the bottom of the topic page.
• To vote on an existing question, just click the checkmark next to a question to agree or vote for it. Click the x button to vote against or disagree with it.
• To view the votes already submitted, hover your mouse over the bars.
• You can share a question or idea with others by using the Share button to copy a direct URL for the post. You can share a post through Gmail, Facebook or Twitter (you must be signed in to your account on these services to do so).
• If you are the owner/administrator of a series, you can respond to or comment on questions. Just click Post a response to share your thoughts.

And there you have it; easy-peasy. (I'm laughing on the inside that I actually got to use the phrase "easy-peasy.")

When you find a neat tool, and someone else has already reviewed it, why redo what's already done. Learn about Haiku Deck for iPad here. It leaves out bullet points and transitions. Enter a few keywords of text onto a slide, and the app searches a database of over 35 million Creative Commons images that suit your subject. After you pick your image, your text is automatically formatted nice and big to fill the screen.

As a trainer, there are two parts of my job I hate the most. First is scheduling, second is reporting. One report is on the training evaluations, or “smile sheets.” Most the questions are easy data to extract and report on. The Likert questions are simple math and easy to understand, making the reporting of those questions easy. The open-ended questions are more challenging and take the most time. You have to read each one and extract the key words or topics to determine what is important and then you have to decide how to report these findings. Many times I’ve had a long list of things mentioned, and I really hate lists. Other times I’ve tried to find key items and tally how many times they are used to create a chart of sorts. I’ve never really been satisfied with my reporting results until I met Wordle.

Wordle.net is a tool for generating visual “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Common words, such as “the,” “a,” “is,” etc. are removed from the result. You may have seen word clouds that are similar on blogs and other web pages. You get the option to change the color scheme, fonts and layout to suit your needs. The site does use Java, so be sure it is installed on your computer.

ASTD National has used Wordles for their newsletter headers, using words describing workplace learning and performance. I’ve used them in training for a cool slide or background. When you go to the web site, you’ll see many people use them for silly things, and some inappropriate things. I will show you how to use it for data analysis of your open- ended questions.

First, copy and paste responses from the same question into a text document or word processing program. I use Microsoft Word so I can spell check. Next, go to Wordle.net and click the Create your own link. Paste the copied text into the text box provided, and then click the Go button. You may be asked to run Java on this site by your browser.

TA-DA! You have your Wordle. If you don’t like how it looks, you may customize the language, font, layout, and color. Use the Language menu to change the case, not remove common words and view the word count. There a bunch of fonts to choose from in the Font menu. The Layout menu lets you change edges of the shape, the direction of the words and a bit of the order or maximum words to display. You can use a built in color palette or create your own in the Color menu. If you want, you can also use color variations or exact colors. If you work with company colors and the color is a part of your brand, like the red for UNL, you’ll probably want to work with exact colors. If I didn’t, I’d have lots of pink in my result and at UNL, we are “Go Big Red” and not “Go Big Pink.” If you find some words you’d like to filter out from the result, right-click the word and choose to remove it. If you remove a word, the layout will adjust for the change.

Your final step is to save your Wordle. You can choose to Save to public gallery where it will be accessible to the entire Internet world. Once posted in the public gallery, you’ll receive code to embed the Wordle into your blog or website. If you just wanted a printed version, choose the Print button instead. I like to have an electronic version to use in my presentations, but there isn’t a “save as image” option. I work around this by doing a screen print of the Wordle. Jing or SnagIt work great for this.

Now that you have the Wordle with the results from your open-ended survey questions, how do you use it? You must keep in mind that Wordle will show individual words and highlight those used most frequently. It will NOT give you the context in which it was used. If you see the term “instructor” used a lot, look for other words that appear to give context, such as “great” or “horrible” to provide some context in which it’s used. Sorry, there is still some work to get some good out of your results, but at least you know what is talked about most frequently, good or bad. That, at least, is a start for you. Wordle also makes that horrible job of reading and analyzing survey results a little more fun.

If you want an example, here’s a Wordle for this blog post.

If you read the post from June, Flipping the Classroom, I have a tip for you. Did you know you can flip your meetings, too? It’s something my department has begun to do. This month, I’ll share with you how we took the Flipped Classroom concept and applied it to our meetings to save time and make our meetings more meaningful.

At the beginning of every meeting, we would go around the room and the managers would share what is going on in their area. This is to evoke questions or concerns where a change or process might impact another area they didn’t think about. We found this can be quite time consuming and we spent a lot of time learning about each other’s areas with such detail, it wasn’t beneficial for everyone.

To save time, a blog post was created where the managers post an update by a designated time prior to the meeting. The post was tagged with the name of our area for easier searching. Our director also posts the agenda in advance for us to comment on and have things added to the agenda prior to meeting. Our homework is to read the updates before arriving at the meeting. If there are any questions or concerns, they can be brought up in the meeting. This has saved us about an hour of time in our meetings.

Another benefit is for those not able to attend, can still read posts and catch up what is needed. It has also made for a great reference for follow-up after meetings. Commenting is open to everyone to post and contribute. We have been able to post links to articles and videos later that support or back-up our posts and comments. This makes for our interactions to be much more interactive long after the meeting has ended.

If you want to apply Bloom’s Taxonomy to our meetings, we achieve Level 1:  Knowledge/Remembering and sometimes Level 2:  Comprehension/Understanding prior to attending the meeting. Level 2:  Comprehension/Understanding and Level 3:  Application/Applying can apply during and after the meeting. Our commenting achieves Level 4:  Analysis/Analyzing. We are now ready to accomplish Level 5:  Synthesis/Evaluating and Level 6:  Evaluating/Creating in our interactions after. For some, we use Level 6 in our own blogs or staff.