Is your training stuck in the Stone Age, or is it zipping off into the future? If you’re like most trainers, you probably don’t have a lot of time to learn new training tools, but that’s no excuse for letting your training get out of date. Modernize your training with these easy tech tools.
Lynda.com gives trainers access to 2,365 courses and 112,000 tutorials, covering a wide range of topics. Trainers are able to familiarize themselves with new technologies and, in turn, share them with the employees of their organizations. Lynda’s courses on education also allow trainers to keep up with the latest training techniques from their computer or mobile device.
Lynda is appealing to busy trainers and professionals because its courses are divided into small chunks. Trainers can quickly find the answers they seek by viewing a short video on their computer or mobile device. There’s no reason a trainer would ever have to take an entire course. However, for trainers who complete full courses, certificates are available as a reward. The certificates can be printed off or emailed to management to show your commitment to your craft.
Unfortunately, Lynda is not a free resource. Without a membership, trainers can only view an introduction to the site’s courses. For $25 to $32 a month, depending on what membership option you choose, you receive access to their entire online university.
Screenr.com allows individuals to make screencasts or videos of a computer’s screen. This service helps trainers demonstrate their actions to participants through the creation of short video tutorials. These tutorials can be used before, during or after training sessions.
This form of learning works particularly well when trainers create the tutorials as refreshers, allowing participants to quickly review material as they need it. To make the video tutorials accessible to participants, trainers can share them on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or their organizations’ websites.
Screenr is popular because it’s easy to use and free. To start your first screencast, simply visit the site and press record. When using this tool, there are very few technical problems, as few downloads are required for the browser-based tool. Typically, most computers are already equipped with the basic requirements for Screenr.
Raptivity.com. Interaction and gamification are two powerful forces that can add life to your training. Raptivity helps trainers insert these forces into your training sessions with 190 pre-programmed templates, which can be modified to teach any type of content. The templates range from customizable games, presentation aids, simulations, 3D worlds, flipbooks, interactive diagrams, brain teasers and quizzes. Videos can also be inserted into the templates to add more flare.
Although creating a computer game for your participants can be time consuming and costly, it is not with Raptivity, which takes little time, money or skill to create interactive games and activities.
Aside from being easy to use, it’s accessible to employees on a variety of devices, including Macs, PCs and mobile devices. Trainers can also easily insert their games and activities into their organization’s learning management system.
To learn more about the newest trends, tools and research in training, check out our Creative Training Techniques Edge workshop.
by Jordan Meyers
