Face to face trainers often see technology as threat or replacement of the face to face experience. But when used appropriately technology can enhance what happens in the training room (and afterwards). At the eLearning Network event “A fresh look at elearning”, Julie Wedgwood demonstrated five tools which have great potential and they’re free! These tools are especially applicable when participants have access to tablet computers or smartphones.
- Wordle If you have a back channel set up for the classroom e.g. Twitter, copy and paste the text into Wordle. This will produce a word cloud. You can then easily pull out the main themes, saving you a load of thinking on your feet time.
- Linoit Rather than brainstorming ideas/ processes using Post-its on a flipchart, use Linoit to do this online. This means that you have the outputs captured and none of the usual struggles to decipher participants’ handwriting
- TodaysMeet Instantly set up an online meeting space. Rather than waste time sending people off to syndicate rooms for small group discussions, it may be quicker to set up online meeting rooms for the subgroups.
- Quizlet Make quizzes and flashcards. You can easily set up a quiz for group to reinforce the learning. For competitive participants there is the opportunity be recognised for getting the high score.
- Xtranormal Use this tool to create animations. Whenever you use a role play in training this could replace it. Although there is a time investment , it may help learners who are reluctant to participate in role plays and gives you a resource that you can re-use .
If you’d like to research more of these tools, another good place to look is http://c4lpt.co.uk/directory-of-learning-performance-tools/
