Recently I had a discussion with someone who is setting up a webinar series. I recommended a vendor who I have had good experiences with but they turned out to be too expensive. Here is what she is looking for – please help out by recommending products you have used successfully in similar circumstances.
We will be hosting 10-12 webinars in 2010. Each will have one presenter, or a panel of presenters, delivering information on a topic to an audience of between 30-200. We rarely know how many people a topic is going to attract and often have more registrants than participants. What is most important to us is that we be able to record the sessions for sharing at a later date, and that we are able to offer integrated VOIP.
I’ve already told her about some of the issues in setting up and running seminars – and pointed her to some excellent, relevant articles in eLearn Magazine.
Roger Schank, eLearn Magazine’s contributing editor and opinion columnist, was interviewed (in Spanish) in El Pais, the major paper of Spain. (Actually, he was interviewed in English and it was translated into Spanish). I read a Google translation. Among other things, Roger said:
Everything you learn is based on practice. To learn to drive a car does not have to study how the engine works or why they move the wheels. All education should be so, practice.
Of course, understanding how something works can be both fun and enlightening. If you know Spanish, enjoy the interview!
Are you using Ning? Allow me to ask a seemingly dumb question: Why?
I don’t mean, “Oh, why would you ever use it!” but rather, “I understand what Ning is supposed to enable, but why do you personally use it? What does it enable or facilitate?”
For example, Facebook might have been intended at first to connect people in a similar time and place (university), but now, I personally use it predominently to keep in touch with people who live far away and get insight into their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, I hardly use Facebook as my primary method of connecting with people whom I see frequently.
Do you see what I’m asking? So, why do you use Ning? What do you do with it? Add your comments below, please! This is an earnest question!
I think “Up in the Air” is George Clooney’s best performance ever. The reviews won’t tell you this, but the movie revolves around a training problem: how do you teach a newly-minted Cornell MBA the difference between theory and practice? This occurred with 1) the shift from firing people face-to-face to using videoconferencing and 2) how to conduct the in-person firings.
Interestingly, the people using videoconferencing seemed to be more rigorously trained and monitored – all online – than those who go out on the road. And 1) proves to be a cost-effective failure, soon scrapped, and 2) is done through George Clooney’s mentorship.
I didn’t enjoy the movie because it inspired me as a trainer, but because it is was so well done and because I was so amused be the travel scenes. But there were great lessons there for e-learning professionals about the role of experience and the importance of mentorship in the workplace.
What’s in your backpack?
Fascinating Fragrance Fact #1: Women were “rated higher in intelligence and friendliness when they wore scent in a job interview than when they did not, reports the Journal of Applied Psychology”, as reported in Cosmopolitan. Scent matters, no question.
But it is not always successful. While I’ve heard that the smell of baking bread speeds home sales, Smell-O-Vision and Scent-O-Rama have had, shall we say, limited success.
Ultimately the question is: does scent aid learning?
eLearn Magazine Advisory Board member, Janet Clarey, wrote about Scented Webinars in her blog. A participant would receive a “USB that you add liquid to which then ‘activates’ when heated by the computer.” So the technology is there. Janet went on to speculate that scent could be used for “quality control at food companies…, detecting dangerous smells (chemicals, etc.),” and medical applications. I recall learning that our olfactory memory is one of our strongest. And there are probably fewer people with an impaired sense of smell than there are people who are colorblind, yet most learning applications use color.
The potential and technology exist for scented learning. Janet pointed out some learning situations that could be enhanced, and there may be enhanced recall of any material through scent. What would make you try it?