Chain of fools

by Viv Cole on May 9, 2013

I chose the title for this blogpost because I like the tune, not because I wanted to offend… Anyway, here’s a chain of events that’s been played out in hundreds of organisations. Often it has pretty depressing outcomes, but in case you get too despondent, let me assure you there is a happy ending, especially if you like flowcharts. [click to continue…]

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News is bad for you

by Viv Cole on April 19, 2013

A really thought-provoking article by Ralf Dobelli (based on a longer essay) about information overload and in particular, news. To pick out some headlines, “news inhibits thinking, kills creativity, makes us passive and wastes time”. So if Dobelli’s arguments are valid, why would anyone read or watch the news? [click to continue…]

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So does Linkedin really work?

February 15, 2013

I’m often asked the question does Linkedin really help or is it a waste of time? Like most social media it allows us to do things that we do in real life faster, more cheaply, with more reach and more publicly (or with less privacy, if you prefer). The answer I usually give involves a [...]

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What a fantastic widget!

January 24, 2013

You may have noticed that more and more websites are allowing you to download appointments into your calendar e.g. www.nationalrail.co.uk lets you get the train time you have looked up straight into Outlook with just the click of a button. Though the technology for sending iCalendar files (.ics) from the internet to your Outlook is [...]

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Did you get potatoes in your stocking?

January 10, 2013

Now that the festive season is becoming a distant memory and the kids are back at school, the magic fabric of Christmas has begun to fray a bit in the Cole household. And I admit, I’m to blame. Let me try to explain…

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eLN Insights advent calendar

December 3, 2012

After a weekend of getting advent calendars underway, once again it’s great to see that the eLearning Network has its own advent calendar up and running. Check it out at http://insights.elearningnetwork.org/

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Pitfalls in mobile learning #5:

November 30, 2012

Although this is my fifth pitfall it’s probably the most fundamental – it’s just that I was hoping that this time round the e-learning industry had got its heads round the idea that emerging technologies are not solutions that we need to find problems for. Ask the right questions and your business has several problems [...]

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Five key questions when buying e-learning

November 8, 2012

For many years I’ve designed practical e-learning to help explain the tricky technical intricacies of CPD topics to accountants. I thought I’d flip this around to invest some time demystifying the tricky technical intricacies of e-learning for accountants. The difference between good e-learning and bad e-learning often comes down to decisions made early in the purchasing process so this means knowing what questions to [...]

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Pitfalls in mobile learning #4: Are you really compatible?

October 28, 2012

Many development tools claim that they produce learning content which will publish automatically to different models of mobile phone. So for the L&D manager commissioning mobile learning it’s just a game of finding out from IT which phones are on the standard list, cross-checking and then away you go…if only it was that simple…

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10 top tips for using audio in e-learning

October 15, 2012

At last week’s eLearning Network conference I led a practical instructional design session on audio and e-learning. As Bill Miller’s earlier session had covered learner’s emotional states  and readiness to learn, it was easy to make the point that audio used well can connect emotionally with learners in a way that screen text can’t reach. [...]

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