I have a little time-lapse demo up my sleeve for a future post, so I thought it might be relevant to first define time-lapse. What is Time-Lapse? Time-lapse is a photography technique that involves taking a series of photos of one object over time and stringing those still photos together, often in video format, to illustrate change over a duration of time. When strung together, the video is often sped up and the result is one of my favourites. I could watch time-lapses all day long! A great example of this photographic technique in action can be seen in the documentary Chasing Ice. If you haven’t seen it, you really should check it out! Using Time-Lapse Demos When I create a time-lapse, I don’t do it in the same manner as photographers would. Instead, I record screen capture videos of a process, such as building out an interaction in Storyline, and then speed the video up to create the effect of a time-lapse. This is a great way of demonstrating your process and giving folks a birds eye view into your developmental mind. When it comes to technology, I prefer to create my time-lapse demos using Camtasia; it provides a lot of options, with minimal learning curve! Examples of Time-Lapse Demos The most popular time-lapse demo I’ve built out would have to be my Basic Storyboard Template: Basic Storyboard Template from Ashley Chiasson on Vimeo.  Another example is this Basic Circle Diagram created in Articulate Engage: Circle Diagram from Ashley Chiasson on Vimeo. 

This year I’m presenting at the Articulate Community Roadshow 2015 - Toronto; I presented at this event last year, and it was so much fun! So nice I thought I’d do it twice! All of the presenters are fantastic and the group looks like a fun one. Last year I presented on How to Build Your E-Learning Portfolio, and you can check out some blog posts based on that topic below: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 This year I’m presenting on How to Become a Successful Freelancer; the presentation is very broad in the sense that users from many industries can take this advice and run with it. It’s based entirely on my own experiences as a freelancer and independent contractor, and I really hope that you can glean some good tips. I’ll post the presentation after I give it, but for now here are some resources for the presentation: Freelance Sites: Freelancer Elance Odesk (now Upwork) Where Clients Might Be Hanging Out: ELH Community Freelance Sites (as previously linked) Social Media: Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit Time Management: Todoist Wunderlist Pomodoro Technique

#edtech, #edchat and #techcoach top the list of my most favorite Twitter hashtags. But these trending topics are not the only social media hotspots in which educators with common interests can share ideas, best practices and resources to level up the teaching and learning in their classrooms. If you really want to be in the know and/or get involved in the cyber conversation, then you’ll definitely want to check out the infographic shown below. This nifty visual provides a super cool color-coded word cloud showing the most popular educational hashtags, topics and chats on Twitter as well as a key to help you decide how and when to use each topic to connect with other like-minded peops. A shout out to OnlineCollegeCourses.com for creating and sharing this useful info!

Last week, at the Articulate Community Roadshow in Toronto, I provided an example of how important it is to value your time and resources, and it involved transcription…and the fact that I learned a very valuable life lesson regarding the value of my time and pricing myself appropriately. Transcription Transcription is a written representation of something, and often occurs when a print version of a video or audio recording is prepared. Transcription is often word-for-word, but may omit extraneous words (e.g. ‘uh’) that do not provide value, but which when removed to not impact the semantics of the message. When I first began freelancing, my very first gig was transcribing 8 hours of audio interviews into text…for 60 dollars. 8 hours of audio transcribed to text for 60 dollars. I see you laughing. It was a painful, painful, painful, lesson, but at least the content was interesting. Needless to say, you will seldom see me volunteering to transcribe materials. Within education, a main function of transcription is to increase accessibility of materials. Individuals may prefer to learn by reading text versus listening to audio, or they may have a visual or auditory impairment that requires a transcript. Too often I see faculty members including videos and/or podcasts in their courses without including a transcript, and while this may not be a problem 90% of the time, it puts students requiring a transcript the an awkward position of having to ask for one. Often times individuals are oblivious to the need or feel as though someone else (e.g. disability services) will take on the responsibility of creating transcripts. The omission of a transcript is almost always unintentional. However, in keeping with universal instructional design principles, I always explain the importance of transcription and accessibility whenever I meet with faculty members. Some major concerns I hear include: "but how will I do that?!" or "I don’t have time for that!," and for these questions, I’ve discovered some easy solutions: F5 Transcription - Free and easy; aids in transcription of audio/video files. Transcribe - Free transcription service. Transcriber Pro - Tool for manual transcription to test.

In the words of Edward Sandford Martin, "Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow." True words to live by—not just on this special day of thanks but every single day. That said, regardless if you celebrate this holiday or not, always carry a grateful heart as there is always a blessing to be found; a silver lining; a reason to believe, to smile, to have hope… For me, today is all about cherishing the time I will spend with my life’s greatest treasure—my family—while counting the many blessings God has provided for me, including the opportunity to share edtech ideas with all of you! So, thank you for visiting this blog and giving me the inspiration to continue writing about the tools that motivate teachers to teach and students to learn! 1 Thessalonians 5:18 ♥

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written and spoken frequently on the topic of freelancing and independent contracting. After presenting on How to Become a Successful Freelancer at the Articulate Community Roadshow 2015: Toronto, I had a lot of questions that involved things I learned through doing (e.g. sending my first invoice, drafting a contract, etc.). In an effort to respond to these questions, I’ll be starting a new blog post series! The series should go live next week, so stay tuned, but in the meantime, here is a collection of some of my most popular blog posts where I become your Freelancer Sensei and impart all of my wisdom: Where to Find Freelance Instructional Design Gigs 3 Bits of Advice for Aspiring Freelancers 3 Tips for Countering Feelings of Overwhelm 10 Things I Learned in My 1st Year of Self-Employment Preferences and Assumptions 3 Ways to Increase Your Productivity 3 Ways to Improve Your Workflow Letting Go of Fear On Getting Out of My Comfort Zone Take a look through those posts and let me know if you have any pressing questions - just leave those in the comments section; I’ll address them, I promise! And don’t forget to pop back frequently next week when the new post series goes live.

As Quincy Jones once remarked, "I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, "Ain’t that the truth." That said, Edu-fun Friday is a series devoted to adding some humor to the lives of teachers who visit this blog. After all, there’s nothing better than ending the week on a positive note! Plus, do we have the best topics to provide us with some comic relief or what? Black Friday shopping: Not even for a free iPad mini 3. Not for this girl! If I want to watch an episode of the Hunger Games, I’ll go to the movies or rent the DVD!

I’m a very visual person and I have seen some terrible use of colours in e-learning, so I thought I’d talk a little bit about colour palettes and how to effectively use them in e-learning. Colour Palettes Colour palettes are the range of colours used by an individual in a particular project. Choosing an appropriate colour palette is essential to any project as it sets the tone for the e-learning. For example, if you choose a yellow background with white text, your learners may hate the project because it’s difficult to read the content. Whereas, a white background with black text is much easier on the eyes. Considerations When choosing a colour palette, you should first consider whether your client has any existing visual standards or branding guidelines. If they do, you will want to align your colour palette with these guidelines. If you have free range to define the colour palette, you should keep the colour range between 3-5 colours. Too many colours may overwhelm your audience. If your client has provided visuals of any sort (logo, photos, graphics, etc.), you may want to begin with one of these visual elements and pull colours from the visual. Use Your Resources! There are heaps of colour resources out there, so don’t be intimidated if you’re not graphically inclined. These websites can help generate palette options and/or allow you to pull colours from images to create palettes. Here are some examples: Colourlovers.com Colourlovers.com allows you to sift through thousands of user-created colour palettes and retrieve the associated hex values - over the years, this has been one of my favourite colour resources. Coolors.co Coolors.co is a new-to-me resource, and is currently my favourite colour palette resource. It is a colour palette generator, and all you have to do is click the space bar to see a new palette - SO EASY! You can even adjust the colours if aren’t quite right, without losing the rest of the colours in the proposed palette. Adobe Color CC Adobe Color CC is neat because it allows you to upload an image and will then generate colour palettes from this image. You can choose the colour mood, which provides varying shades to the palette suggested, and you can also select a custom colour mood and customize to your liking.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to participate in this one because there just hasn’t been enough hours in the day for me to do anything, and earlier in the week I was pining over whether I could feasibly complete my Guru entry in under 24 hours (spoiler alert - I didn’t - WAH!). Anyhow, I found some time and here we are. The Concept This week’s challenge was an easy one: have fun with buttons and adding creative effects - FUN! Thanks, David! The Method I usually keep all of my visuals (e.g. icons and free graphics I’ve paid for and/or downloaded for free along the way) on an external hard drive, which I don’t usually have on me at all times. However, I quickly found some lovely sea-themed icons, and got motivated! For this challenge, I knew I wanted to have an icon, which when clicked or hovered over expanded the option name for that icon. In this case, I kept the names as simple descriptors of the icon, but I imagined having a cog that when clicked expanded to read "Preferences", so you can definitely use this concept in a more practical application. Once I chose all of my icons, I added a Hover state to each icon which consisted of a rectangle with the descriptor. I used the eyedropper tool to outline and fill the rectangle and I applied a wipe animation. The Result You can view the full interaction by Clicking Here. If you’re wondering how I did this, you can download the Storyline 2 file by Clicking Here.

A couple of years ago I submitted a sample interaction to an E-Learning Heroes Challenge related to Instructional Design Principles. The interaction sought to explain cognitive load theory. You can check out the full interaction by Clicking Here. Within the university I see a ton of cognitive overload happening, albeit unintentional. When faculty members use their online course site as a repository, I look at it feeling very overwhelmed and set about organizing the content appropriately to ensure students don’t feel as overwhelmed as I do. Cognitive Load Theory In the early 80s, John Sweller coined the phrase ‘cognitive load theory’, which represents the total amount of brain power being used in a given task. Basically the exertion associated with working memory and how much effort is required to employ working memory. In order to be most efficient with cognitive load, individuals must appropriately balance information presented to the audience in order to enhance overall information retention. There are three types of cognitive load: Intrinsic - this represents the level of difficulty (e.g. complex math problem versus basic math problem). Extraneous - this represents how the information is provided (e.g. is the information need to know or nice to know? If nice to know, you may want to leave it out to enhance retention). Germane  - this represents how easily a learner can process the information for which they’ve been provided. Keeping these three types of cognitive load in mind will allow you to optimize your content and enhance the overall learning experience. As an educator, you want your students to succeed, and pummelling them with information to get a simple concept across is not always the best approach. You need to put yourself in the shoes of your learners and simplify concepts as much as possible to ensure student success. Have you been overloaded with content? How did this shape your learning experience and academic achievement? Let me know in the comments!

Nowadays, there are numerous platforms, web tools and apps that can be utilized to engage students in the learning process. Although this can be a good problem to have, choosing the right device and corresponding resource to meet educational needs can sometimes be an overwhelming task. But thanks to Clay Reisler, a technology integrator at the Pulaski Community School District in Wisconsin, teachers can easily locate a variety of tools for classroom use by referring to the infographic shown below. This super cool visual provides 18 concepts such as Audio Recording, Book Creation and Interactive Posters as well as suggestions for which tools within each category can be utilized with the iPad or a Chromebook/Laptop. The best part about this image is that it is interactive. Users can click on the icons of the recommendations for one click access to the tools’ site or the app’s iTunes Preview page for additional information. There is also a link to a Google doc with a detailed summary of each tool as well as a Google Presentation highlighting the resources. Good stuff! Unfortunately, the image embedded below is static, but the super cool interactive version can be found here. Classroom Connection: Use the Top Tech Tool infographic to locate resources that best suit your students’ needs.

I sat in on some training yesterday, and the trainer was discussing task analysis…I have a love/hate relationship with task analysis, because within the military, these are often very tedious to develop. However, they are important. I understand that. Task Analysis A task analysis involves breaking down a task into each step and sub-step required to complete the task. It seems simple enough, right? Task analysis are important when it comes to breaking down the components of a task to ensure effective training. Often times we take for granted things we already know how to do, but when we’re trying to teach someone else how to do a certain task, the learner needs to know each of the elements required to effectively complete the task. For example, the task "Make a latte" involves more than just a cup, espresso, and milk. It may require: - Selecting the appropriate sized cup - Selecting a steaming pitcher - Remove milk from fridge - Pour milk into steaming pitcher - Steam milk - Brew espresso into cup - Remove cup once espresso has finished brewing - Pour steamed milk on top of espresso Now, these are just some of the steps, but within these steps, there are sub-steps. For example: - Steam milk - Place steaming wand in milk - Place thermometer in pitcher of milk - Activate/turn on steaming wand - Begin aerating milk - Steam to a temperature of X - Remove pitcher of milk - Wipe steaming wand down - Turn on steaming wand to clear milk residue - Turn off steaming wand And within these sub-steps, there may be even more sub-steps. When conducting a task analysis, you really want to break down the original task into the most painful of details (and sub-tasks). Within the military, this often involved extremely lengthy Job Task Analysis spreadsheets, that would further break down whether each task and sub-task was considered a knowledge, skill, or attitude. These further breakdowns will allow you to better refine the way in which you train the user how to do the task/sub-task. Ensure you’re concise with your task analysis and that you’re only including one task or sub-task per item. Nothing should piggyback on top of one another…that’s just lazy and will become ineffective when you move on to develop training. Task analysis are also useful when working with other developers (e.g. programmers or media developers). You can use a task analysis to describe the breakdown of media or programmatic (or both) elements, and then you have a detailed account of what should happen and when so that these developers have a greater understanding of how to develop the content they’re developing. Stay tuned for a time-lapse demo and freebie of a task analysis template! Resources Task Analysis in Instructional Design by Donald Clark How to Do a Task Analysis Like a Pro by Articulate Task Analysis: An Individual and Population Approach, 3rd Edition by S. Wilson and G. Landry

The fabulous engineering team at Litmos recently released some significant feature updates. Besides the usual bug fixes and optimizations, customer input had a significant influence on these new features...as it always does. Here's the quick list. WebEx Training Center Integration Enhanced Module Content Conversion to HTML WordPress & Drupal Plugins Learning Path Enhancements Bulk User Admin: 1) bulk unasign users from course, 2) bulk deactivation, 3) bulk import Single Sign On Integration with CallidusCloud Lead to Money Suite And you can also watch the webinar. The post New Litmos Features: WebEx, Drupal, and WordPress Integration, Improved Document Conversion, and more appeared first on Litmos.

You're a training professional in a SMB and you have few resources to achieve high expectations. The product team needs you to help train the sales channel, and the customer service team needs regular training sessions as well.  There is new hire orientation to manage and annual compliance training requirements that need to be met. Not to mention the occasional random training session that is required due to an incident, or other issue within the business. When you look at these expectations through the lens of a traditional instructional designer they seem impossible. But they're all doable. And with the right mindset and a few technologies, like an LMS, you can manage them all with very few resources devoted to training full time. The key to success is understanding that most employees have the motivation to learn on their own when they have a need, and are given access to content. And many employees already make a habit of creating content. Or are required to create documentation content for other purposes. You're not in this alone. What is Raw Content My definition of raw content is any content that has not been filtered through an instructional design process. The content you get from Subject Matter Experts(SME) is often very raw.  This doesn't mean the content is bad or lacking in polish. We simply need to differentiate between course content that has been designed with an instructional purpose, and content that was created as reference material. Raw content might be Technical Specification Documents, marketing collateral, engineering drawings, flowcharts, or presentation slide decks. These are the classic instructional designers raw materials from which the training masterpiece is built. The Truth About Raw Content Raw content is valuable. In many cases it's more valuable than the final course product you end up creating based on that content. And here's why. How many times have you lived the following story? You've spend weeks creating a course. You met with stakeholders.  You met with SMEs. You learned the job and the work that needs to be done after the course is complete.  You wrote precise and specific objectives. You either planned all of the logistics for face-to-face events, or spent a lot of time and money creating a self-paced eLearning module.  Either way it doesn't matter.  The story still ends the same. After all of that hard work and effort, you are quite proud of your final masterpiece. And some people praise you for your efforts and appreciate what you've done.  But inevitably someone asks, "I don't have time for the training. Can you just send me the materials?" After living that story over and over again, it didn't take me very long to understand the limited value of instructional design. Significant business value is in raw materials. And access to those raw materials. It's all the stuff made by those who have the knowledge for those who will need the knowledge. It's not uncommon for online courses to provide links to the reference material used to create the course. This has become fairly standard. But more often than not, the course was requested and created because most people couldn't find or access the content on their own. The Most Important Question to All Stakeholders Is there any existing content? If you are inquiring because there has been a training request made, then you will most likely get different answers. The SMEs will tell you triumphantly that there are many documents on the subject. Those requesting the training, or have the need, will sadly tell you they can't find anything on the subject. At this point we need to take into consideration employees' ability and motivation to search for and find the content they need. Maybe the workers have limited access to a computer, or simply don't understand how to search for digital content. Solve these problems first and you eliminate their reliance on others, including the training department. Frictionless access to content provides major business value. Your LMS gives you the power to make this happen. You don't need the IT department to solve the problem of access to content.  And you don't need a different system just for content.  Besides, your company most likely has several digital storage systems including email, shared drives, social networks, etc, and yet you're still in this mess. So, lean on your LMS and feed it with raw content as your first step. Much of the raw content you find will be surprisingly good. Use it as is. Don't worry about it so much. Use the LMS to create a course. Load the raw content into that course. Be sure to add a short disclaimer at the beginning to explain what content is in the course. And most importantly ask questions at the end of the course and request feedback.  Their feedback will drive how you refine and polish that content into something with instructional integrity. And it's okay to involve your learners in the creation process.  As the previous story highlights, many employees already own their own learning.  Other employees just need to be given permission.     The post The Value of Raw Content in Your Training Strategy appeared first on Litmos.

Hey, Edutech for Teachers fans! The nominations have been tallied and voting is now open for the 2014 Edublog Awards. But the good news doesn’t end there! And that’s because I’m beyond psyched to announce that Edutech for Teachers is a finalist in three categories: Best Teacher Blog, Best Ed Tech/Resource Sharing Blog and Lifetime Achievement! Boom! But even more super cool than any shout out I can personally receive, I am most proud of the fact that one of my most favorite Tech Club peops, author of Simply Aubree, has been nominated for Best Student Blog—one of her most desired goals. Now that really rocks! But here it is: Before we can crack open the root beer and celebrate, we need your support. Help both of us win some digital bling by casting your votes for our respective blogs below. Here’s how it works: After accessing the link(s) shown below, find the name of the blog in the nomination page. Then click on the gray "thumbs up" icon in the bottom left-hand corner. You will be prompted to sign into the Listly web tool using your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (Gmail) or Linkedin account. Once you give Listly permission to access your account, the screen will disappear, and you will be redirected back to the voting page. (Don’t worry—no personal info, pictures, etc. is revealed by doing so.) Then click on the "thumbs up" icon again to officially cast your vote. Following a "Thanks for voting" message, the icon will turn blue indicating your vote has been received. Lastly, you can click on the numbers next to the "thumbs up" icon to check out your voting record! Once you have completed this process on one nomination page, you can vote on the other remaining categories without repeating the process. » Best Teacher Blog » Best Ed Tech/Resource Sharing Blog » Lifetime Achievement » Best Student Blog Voting is open until 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday, December 15th. Thanks in advance for your support to recognize Edutech for Teachers and Simply Aubree as two of the best edtech blogs on the web! ♥

Time to reveal Tech Treasure #2—a cool bike racing game in which Santa competes against the naughty elves to collect candy all the way to the finish line. Check out the Santa Fun Bike Ride on The Twelve Digital Days of Christmas Thinglink image located here.

Are you ready to follow Jolly Old St. Nick on Google Maps as he makes his Christmas Eve journey around the world? Then tune into the 10th annual Santa Tracker, Google’s super cool interactive project, on December 24 to watch this year’s Christmas trek. In the meantime, check out Santa’s Village—a workshop full of festive activities including an advent calendar which unlocks new animations and games every day from now until the "Big Day". For example, access geography games for exploring holiday traditions around the world, lessons on how to say ‘Santa’ in different languages and there’s even a coding project that teaches JavaScript to help Santa with his once-a-year adventure. Check out the Google Santa Tracker and Christmas Village within The Twelve Digital Days of Christmas Thinglink image located here.

Just because you build a training course, and list it in your LMS, doesn't mean your target audience will automatically come flocking to enjoy your masterpiece. Creating a course is no different than creating any other product. You need to market that product. Training courses are developed for many reasons. Some courses only require idle threats like compliance deadlines. And training professionals can easily get too comfortable creating training courses that are mandatory. With mandatory courses you simply need to communicate the information and consequences of non-compliance. A much better approach would be to create training courses so entertaining and engaging that people would WANT to take it. And not only that they would promote it for you by talking with their peers about it. Not every good course will generate buzz by word of mouth. You need to have a marketing plan. And maybe times have changed for instructional design programs, but nobody ever told me that in graduate school. I remember just wanting to use the best technology to solve training problems, so that's what I did.  But when I discovered very little interest by employees, and managers, in my work I quickly learned that there is more to instructional design than...well...instructional design. Not only do you need a marketing plan for your courses but for your department as well. Employees, especially management, need to know you exist. Focusing all of your time on creating the best most instructionally sound course is only a small part of your success. When you're passionate about your work, it's easy to believe others will be equally interested.  The reality is that most employees don't really care about what the training department does.  At least not from an instructional design perspective. You need to build relationships with the departments you support as well as those whose resources you need. And learning from marketing professionals is a good place to start. Meet your CMO and get to know the marketing team.  Find out what makes them tick. You certainly don't have their budget or resources but you can learn a few tricks of the trade that can make the difference between your team's success or failure. Do you market your training team's efforts? Do they spend time marketing their available courses? I'd love to hear your stories. Connect with me on twitter @bschlenker. The post Why You Need to Market Your Training Courses appeared first on Litmos.

As Quincy Jones once remarked, "I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, "Ain’t that the truth." That said, Edu-fun Friday is a series devoted to adding some humor to the lives of teachers who visit this blog. After all, there’s nothing better than ending the week on a positive note! Plus, do we have the best topics to provide us with some comic relief or what? Isn’t it reassuring to know that our students aren’t the only individuals that need that "Think Before You Click" reminder!

Using existing content to create training is a great way to fire up a training program. Many companies don't have the time and resources to pay consultants, or hire an entire training team. And much of the training development advice on the internet is overwhelming for those non-training professionals who need to create training products or events. In this webinar I was hoping to comfort those new to the world of creating training content with the message that it's okay to create a course using existing content. But there is a catch. And the catch is knowing that your work isn't done. Publishing content created by SMEs to your internal audience is a great way to provide business value fast.  But then you need gather feedback and use that feedback to continually update and improve your course.  And in some cases, you may even discover that the course didn't even need to be created...and you saved yourself and the company time and money. Watch the recording and let me know what you think. I had some great Q&A after the webinar and via email, so please send me your comments. This concept works great in some cases and not so well in others.  If you aren't sure about your current environment, I'm happy to help you figure it out. @bschlenker The post Webinar Recording: How to Turn Existing Content Into Training that Works appeared first on Litmos.

Need a fun Christmas challenge? Then check out the Geeky Girl’s Tech Treasure #4—Winter Savior—to play a cool puzzle game. All you have to do is match the Christmas decorations by rotating tiles until you have four-of-a-kind in a square. Sound easy? Not so much. This activity will have you shuffling pieces again and again! If you dare to make it to Level 3, you’ll enter into open game mode in which you can compete for high score honors! Just hover over the interactive image shown below to get the party started! The full screen version of this interactive image can be accessed here. A special shout out to my mom, who reached the 70 milestone today! Happy, happy birthday, Babs! Love you! ♥

Do you produce any video content? You should. Producing video is easier than ever, but can seem complicated. I have a passion for all forms of digital media production but video is by far my favorite. I've heard from many training professionals that it just doesn't interest them and they'd rather just hire a production shop when they need video. But I've also heard from those who just don't know where to start and fear failure. There are good reasons for hiring professionals and there are good reasons for doing a little DIY video. This is why I'm starting the #vidfri hashtag so we can gather with a shared purpose. Why #vidfri #VidFri is a simple hashtag for communicating your interest in sharing and learning more about video production. It stands for Video Friday. I've discovered over the years that the most valuable part of social media is the connections and relationships built around a specific topic. I started to take notice of my person social media habits and realized that I was consistently experimenting and sharing with video most often on Fridays. And so, the hashtag #vidfri was born. What do we do on Video Friday? I'm far too casual about these things to put rules into place. So, of course you should learn about producing video on other days of the week as well. Friday seemed like a good day share and have a conversation about what we've learned, the videos we've published, or videos we've found and want to share. This isn't another twitter chat. Unless someone wants to take on that responsibility. For now, if you have an interest in video just put aside an hour or so on Fridays and try something new.  Then share it with the #vidfri hashtag on your social media platform of choice, or all of them. The primary focus will be on applying video in the realm of corporate training, but I don't think we should limit conversation. I'm a fan of letting the community drive the conversation. If the community takes it off the rails, then so be it. Think about using video on twitter to ask a question of the community.  Even if the question is not related to video production, by using video to ask the question we can all learn together. And it doesn't matter what day you use the hashtag. You can use the #vidfri hashtag on any day of the week. As I mentioned earlier, Friday just feels like a good day for personal development in general so let's roll with it. Things to try out for #vidfri If you're still with me on this, then here's a list of ideas that you may or may not be aware of. Twitter - The mobile twitter app allows you to record and trim video to less than 30secs. It gives you the ability to say a lot than what can be said in 140 characters. Sample Experiment: Say hi to the Litmos team by posting a short video on twitter with @Litmos #vidfri Instagram - Instagram allows 3-15 secs of video. Video on Instagram help page. Vine - Vine videos are VERY short. You are limited to only 6 secs. Facebook - You don't have a time limit with Facebook. However, you are limited to uploading files sizes under 25mb. Google Hangouts On Air - Participate in a LIVE streaming conversation using G+HoA (Google+ Hangouts on Air). Meerkat - It's a live mobile video streaming app. Watch a few live meerkat streams and then launch your own stream. Periscope - It's twitter's version of live mobile video streaming. And if those don't interest you then try one of following. Make a short software how-to video using a screen recording tool like Camtasia, Screenr, Jing, or Screenflow. Or make a short video with iMovie(Mac) or MovieMaker(PC). I'm not sure about WindowsPhone, but I know the iPhone has version of iMovie and it's pretty slick. So if you've already done some video work on a desktop, then push yourself a little bit by shooting, editing, and publishing all from your iPhone. If you are interested in learning more about Google hangouts then join me, Enzo Silva, Craig Wiggins, and Melissa Milloway this Friday for our Learning Circles hangout. The purpose of #vidfri is to have a unique hashtag for discussing our successes and failures with video production. As a community of interested instructional video producers we can begin to share ideas and expand our skills. I hope you'll join me in this conversation. I'm looking forward to learning and sharing. The post Learn More About Instructional Video Production - Recording, Editing, Publishing, Streaming appeared first on Litmos.

It’s the beginning of another wacky holiday week (especially if you live and breathe in a school) so there’s no better time to introduce Tech Treasure #5—Crazy Christmas, a fast-paced game in which users move an elf around the screen to catch the presents as they fall. I’m hoping to land myself a new iPhone 6! Just sayin’… Check out Crazy Christmas on The Twelve Digital Days of Christmas Thinglink image located here.

More word fun with Jay Cross. This post is a continuation from last month's post part 1. Learn. Gain the capacity to do something. Learning styles. Faulty notion that it matters whether we're visual learners, verbal learners, or kinesthetic learners. Research found it’s total bunk. Lecture. Ineffective, one-way delivery of content. Listeners zone out in ten minutes or less. Logic. Context-free blather used to justify emotional decisions. Metadata. Information about information. Often, "metatags" that describe what’s inside a chunk of learning. Generally machine-readable. Analogous to a barcode on an incoming shipment. Meta-Learning. The process of learning. Learning to learn is a major component. Mindful. Opposite of mindless. Take a deep breath. Pay attention. Modern Workplace Learning. Jane Hart's term for focus on performance (support and improvement) and meeting business objectives - rather than on learning per se. A new, more inclusive and collaborative approach to solving performance problems in more appropriate ways, rather than imposing solutions top-down. Next Practices. Guidelines for building a sustainable future. Best Practices look backward, providing advice on what worked in the past; Next Practices focus on what to do in the time ahead. Nürnburg funnel. Metaphor that training is akin to pouring knowledge into a person’s head. Opportunity Cost. The cost of not doing something, e.g. the sales the rep didn’t make because she was away at a seminar. Often the largest cost associated with training programs. Over-clocking. Running something faster than it was designed to go. Paradigm drag. When old thinking holds back new. From David Gelernter’s Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology. Performance. The goal of learning. AKA productivity, results. It’s relative to context. Decide what constitutes performance, then design the learning to support it. Pronoia. The belief that the world is conspiring to make you happy and successful. Pull. Choose what you want. Self-directed. Pull learning = informal. Push. Take what you’re given. Directed by others. Push learning = formal. 702010. Successful managers learn three to four times as much from experience as from interaction with bosses, coaches, and mentors. And they learn about twice as much from those conversations as in classrooms and formal learning programs. Shelf-life. Knowledge is perishable. Some suggest it be labeled with pull-dates, like cartons of milk. Selective attention. Also, inattention blindness. You see what you are looking for. Singularity. When the artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, all hell will break loose. We won't get it. Social Learning. What eLearning was supposed to be. Subjective well-being. Ed Diener’s term for judging life positively and feeling good. A person has high SWB if she or he experiences life satisfaction and frequent joy. Diener chose it because studying happiness sounded frivolous. Synchronous. [pretentious] Live event. Talent management. Ideally, the entire process of developing people from initial recruiting to learning and development to keeping the alumni informed. In practice, synonym for recruiting. Tacit/explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is knowing how; it’s impossible to transfer to it you in words. Explicit knowledge is the opposite - you’re reading it right now. Technophilia. The belief that technology will solve all ills. Especially prevalent during the dot-com delusion, fostered by Wired magazine. Timing. The first 90% of a development project takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time. Trojan mice. Small, well-focused changes, which are introduced on an ongoing basis in an inconspicuous way. Trust. The foundation of human connections. Unlearning. Make way for the new by throwing out the old. WikiLeaks. Warning shot to all secretive organizations. There are no secrets. Might as well go transparent. Work. Learning. Working Smarter. Using your brain to be more productive at work and fulfilled in daily life. What finer definition do you need? Be mindful, not mindless. Common-sense practices include using social networks to foster conversations -- the main vehicle for deep learning. It is informal learning, collaboration, and experiential learning, whatever makes us more productive and fulfilled. Workscape. Performance ecosystem. Metaphorical environment where work and learning converge. Covers the entire ecology: could include the water cooler, the break room, the Friday beer bust, the conversation nook at the office, wi-fi in the cafeteria, the enterprise  The Workscape is where people do their jobs and develop professionally. YMMV. "Your mileage may vary." Recognition that your results may not be the same as mine. (Other things are never equal.) The post What the Words (of L&D) Mean - Part 2 - Guest Post by Jay Cross appeared first on Litmos.