At the risk of starting yet another favorite mac apps blog, I thought I should mention a few of my absolutely favourate applications, those that every now and then I think, I’m glad I have this gem in my toolkit. As a trainer, I need hardly mention that Keynote or Powerpoint are a must, so I’m not going to mention them at all (‘whatever you do don’t mention death by powerpoint’, woops did I say that word again?)

Seriously, my all time favourate has got to be Imagewell, I always turn to it when I have a quick and easy image editing task. As stated on their site “ImageWell is a powerful, compact image editor for all the simple, everyday image editing that you need to do. Drag images in and out of the well, resize, crop, shape, rotate, flip, add watermark, label, border, drop shadow, plus more.” I use ImageWell weekly and it is great value for money.

My second favourate is Dropbox, it’s a great way to send files that are too big to send by email. Just load them into Dropbox, email the url to whoever needs to open the files, and they can download them. Great for sharing photos or large work files with pictures/illustrations. In my case these might be training manuals. The great thing about Dropbox is that it is free and you get more storage space if you refer someone else, and they become a Dropbox user. Speaking of which, anybody want a referral?

And then off course there is the very programme that I use to create this blog, and this website - Rapidweaver. I love the fact that at one end you can build and publish a very decent website with minimal know-how. Then as you grow in confidence and knowledge, your website can take on whatever look your creativity dreams up.

I could go on, but this is already getting too long, do you have any favourate apps that are useful to a trainer. ( Windows folk welcome to add their thoughts as well)

I recently joined an online forum for Training Practitioners; its one of those things you might consider to help you see what fellow trainers are thinking in other parts of the word. I was attracted by a a discussion on ‘Incorporating fun/humour into training’ So I joined in, most folk agreed that they found spontaneous humour helpful and there were some interesting ideas to plan in some chuckles. I thought I would share my contribution here :-

‘Part of it I think is about knowing yourself and what works best for you. I dont remember jokes and would not deliver a good punchline, but there are people who do. Most stand-up comedians spend a lot of time rehearsing their lines and the timing is important to them. As for me, rehearsing would be a disaster, I am spontaneous. But I do know that my spontaneous humour works best when I know the people I am with, so I invest in getting to know and relax with my course participants before the course. How? A few emails going between us prior to the course, being there with them having coffee/tea before the course, instead of standing up front reading my notes, a fun warm up activity fairly early on. So in a sense I have prepared the way for my spontaneous humour. And then there are those short video clips or comic strips salted into the presentation, carefully chosen to make a learning point, introduce a topic, but at the same time signaling that you have a sense of humour and we are going to have fun.’

You will find the full discussion here

Tags: train the trainer , Impact

Identifying Hazards and controlling them would seem to be a logical place to start a safety campaign aimed at reducing workplace accidents. But does this really reduce accidents? Do fully trained employees working in a safe environment injure themselves? Yes they do! People inevitably become complacent and take short cuts. In a nutshell, they develop unsafe habits.

Research undertaken in the retail sector showed that when it comes to accident frequency rates, companies that fare well on Safety Policy and Procedure audits do no better than companies without these sophisticated systems in place. So you ask, should I sack my Safety Officer, throw out the paperwork and save myself a bit of money? Not at all, what you have done is a good start to implementing safety standards and it may have helped to reduce your ACC premiums.

If on the other hand you are looking for more than this, you want your employees to practice safe working habits and you are keen to substantially reduce your accident frequency rate (and the cost in human trauma, rehabilitation, down time, bad press etc) then we suggest you speak to Adapto. These folk are associates of ours who really understand what it takes to make a workplace and the people in it safe. Dr Paul Reyneke of Adapto did his doctoral research in this area and has implemented his approach to safety at numerous sites with great success. It’s an approach that is life changing (and for some it may have in fact been life saving!)

So what will you get if you partner with Adapto to implement or revitalise your safety campaign?

*   A reduction in your accident frequency rate
*   A positive change in the culture of safety in your organisation
*   Employees using safe work habits
*   Simplified safety system and paperwork
*   Passing the ACC audit, leading to reduction in ACC premiums
*   Regular training and coaching through the process, over a 6-month period.

If that's not enough to get you reaching for the telephone, consider that organisations inevitably recoup the cost of the intervention though the reduction in ACC premiums. Give Paul a call on 021 312927 and mention where you saw this, who knows, he may shout me coffee.

Check out the Adapto website here

Tags: safety training

We used to call it CBT or computer based training, learning modules that you progressed through, sitting at your computer. But now its e-learning (electronically supported learning) as growth in the internet, and alternative means of accessing it, have flourished. We have dabbled in CBT over the years, from Macromedia Director developed modules for operator training, to Computer Based assessment tools. Now that computer based, or should I say electronic based, learning interventions are becoming more popular, we have decided to dive in head first and offer this as one of our skill sets/product lines. Our first e-learning module, on Fire Safety, will be ready in a few weeks. We are offering 3 months free access to it for all companies who send a delegate to our upcoming (3 May) Health and Safety course. All we ask in return is some feedback on the module. Here is a link to the flyer.

Tags: computer based training, e-learning, safety training, fire safety

Well it doesn’t seem to scare Purdy, the office cat, she’s all over the keyboard and off course the mouse; she has even been trained to watch the printing.

Personally, I love technology and can find my away around most situations when it doesn’t behave. But even in this day and age when computers are part of everyones lives, not everyone chooses to become fully literate with their hardware and software. One cant blame them, there is more to life than that and the field changes so quickly.

Crammed on the trainer’s table at our recent training for trainers course was a projector, amplified speakers, two macbooks, a camera, cellphone, remote controls and off course all the connecting wires. Over the years I’ve had to deal with laptops not talking to projectors, flash drives not showing up on the computer, video clips not opening on the available software, VGA connectors needing an adapter and recently a ‘keynote’ presentation created in the latest version of the software not opening on a computer with the previous version.

What’s the solution? Well, for me it’s 1.Take my own laptop and projector, even if there is a built-in system at the venue, 2. Checklist to make sure I have all the hardware I need (including that little adapter that I have left behind before, and the power lead) Have multiple video clip playback programs (quicktime, VLC, MPEG streamclip etc) 3. Save my presentations on multiple media (hard drive, flashdrive, CD/DVD) If you have created your presentation with the latest version of software and you are presenting on someone else’s computer you could use the ‘save as’ function to save a second copy in a previous version.

Overkill? feel free to join in the discussion to share your presentation horror stories or to give your ideas to cover all the bases.

Tags: Impact, train the trainer

It is difficult to predict what the economy will do. All we can really do is look back at the year past and say with certainty that for most it has been another tough year. Having said that, for some it has been good, growth, excitement, new opportunities. When we put together our year-at-a-glance calendar for 2011 we chose to take an optimistic view - a new day (year) is dawning, let it be a year of growth for the economy, employment for those in need of work, hope for those in situations that seem desperate.

With economic recovery means more training and retraining and that’s good for us of course. In addition, 2011 sees us broadening our training activities into a new field and we will say more about this in the new year. Over the last month we have been visiting some of our clients to hand out our 2011 calendar and ‘test the waters’ regarding this new area of involvement.

If we haven’t called on you, or sent you one of our year-at-a glance A4 size calendars, please email or phone if you would like one. The calendar features a picture of a sunrise over the Hauraki Gulf, taken from our offices on the North Shore.