The Lounge Podcast

Professional development is important and should be added to your list of things to do - ASAP.  As training, learning and development professionals our role is to ensure we create, instruct and provide engaging educational opportunities for those who will be participating in our courses or using our job aids, checklists, videos and simulations. We do this every day, providing others with development opportunities. BUT when do we invest in ourselves? When do we set aside time to learn something new, or put a new technique to the test?

For most of us, our time at the office is dedicated to everyone else in our organization - to helping them solve problems, train them on new tools and techniques, and often lunches and breaks are donated back to helping resolve an immediate issue or provide a quick solution to a problem. Most days we don't have time to dedicate to our own professional development.

In this solo episode I talk about a few things I'm doing to ensure I get back to being at the top of my game, to keep informed and up to date with what's going on in L&D, ed tech, elearning and instructional design.

Resources from this Episode *does NOT contain affiliate links

Books:

Design for How People Learn

Map It:  The Hands-on Guide to Strategic Training Design

Show your Work

Game Thinking

Documenting Learning

Podcasts:

Instructional Redesign Podcast

Good Practice

IDIODC

Learning Uncut - Australian podcast about L&D

Episode 3 of The Lounge Podcast

Episode 8 of The Lounge Podcast

Challenges

Matt Guyan's post about Design Challenge

#ID6WC

Articulate eLearning Heroes Weekly Challenges

Communities

TLDC - weekday presentations by learning professionals FOR learning professionals - an amazing community!

Articulate

What are you doing to move your development forward?

(PS: did you notice the visitors who came to see me when they heard my screen door? The neighbour's chickens, headed by Leroy the Rooster came to see if I'd give them a snack. Never a dull moment around here!)

I found some inspiration last week - it really sparked a desire to look differently at my daily interactions and experiences and to let loose and just enjoy! And as a result, this episode is a little different. It's my first solo episode.

It's been really hot the last couple of days, but what a difference a day makes. Yesterday, when I recorded this episode it was super warm in my house, we don't have central air (don't really need it for the few days a year it's scorching) but believe me, I've waited for this warm weather so I am NOT complaining. But it's too hot for a warm beverage, so I'm enjoying a homemade lemonade. What's in your cup today?

My First Solo Episode

This episode is about finding inspiration and rediscovering your creativity. I think we've all been there - a place when we felt we were lacking in creativity and maybe we put off a project because we just couldn't imagine a way to complete it. I know I've been there once or twice. But what did you do about it? How did you get inspired to create something amazing?

I took a few days off last week and my husband and I rode our motorcycles 1600 KM from our home in Ontario to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to meet up with my best friend Jenn and her hubby. While we were there we did a bunch of touristy things, historic sites, the liberty bell, Independence Hall, the Rocky stairs (because you just have to). We visited City Hall and right near it is a super game piece filled terrace- with Monopoly pieces, Sorry pieces, chess, dominoes, bingo - it was really cool. We had a great time walking around and getting the US perspective on the US declaration of Independence

and the US Constitution. We had only our Canadian history books, so hearing the American telling was interesting.

 

The Franklin Institute

One of my favourite things was the museum mostly geared towards science and education for children - the Franklin Institute.  There was a special Game Masters exhibit that we went to and learned about some of the great game designers and  developers from all over the world. It was neat to see and play some of the early video games again and being game enthusiasts, we really enjoyed the experience and seeing the evolution of arcade games and gaming systems.

We also experienced some really cool hands on play. I gave myself permission to be a kid again, to get my hands wet in the sand, to climb through a heart, to build a building that could withstand an earthquake (of the four of us, mine was the only one left intact!). It was super fun.  Playing these games and some of the engaging interactive screen scenarios really helped me find some new inspiration and creative thinking on techniques and examples I could include in something for adults.

Your Summer Inspiration Challenge

Go do something fun, document some neat new ideas, concepts and .

Links Mentioned this Episode

Franklin Institute

Episode 003 - Personal Learning Networks with Cara North

Today we talk about virtual teams with my amazing friend Shelli Warren!

Many instructional designers and learning developers work freelance, and often for more than one company at a time. This also means they may be virtual members of a learning project team.

As a manager you may not need to hire permanent learning professionals for your projects. Instead, you may require a virtual learning team, or you may want to know how to find awesome virtual learning team members! As a designer and developer working from home, you may want to get some tips on how to be a better teammate. This episode has it all.

We talk about how to get started, the challenges, how to make it all work and how to be the most successful virtual team participant you can be. There's a lot in this episode, and Shelli brings a wealth of leadership and team building experience to table. It was a real pleasure to speak with her and I know you'll enjoy this episode too!

About Shelli Warren

Shelli Warren joins us to talk about stacking your virtual team with amazing people, being an effective leader of a virtual team and the keys to making it work for all parties involved. You don't want to miss this episode!

As a former Procter & Gamble leader with 25 years’ experience leading technical teams to deliver multimillion dollar projects, she now is a Team and Leadership coach serving high performing female entrepreneurs to curate their dream team.

She recently joined the executive team of BizChix, a US based that serves thousands of female entrepreneurs around the globe to launch and scale their businesses.

As the Chief People Officer at BizChix she leads Masterminds, Strategy Sessions, and community for business women just like you. Shelli is also the host of the BizChix Stacking Your Team Podcast.

email: [email protected]

website: http://bizchix.com/

Shelli-s Stacking Your Team Podcast

If you enjoyed this episode I'd be honoured if you would share it with a friend or colleague!

Wishing you a fantastic day - see you next time, in the lounge!

Personal brand...you've likely heard or seen the phrase, but may not realize the impact it can have on both your personal life and your professional career. Taking care of your personal brand, and nurturing it can make the difference in getting that next promotion or new job.

My friend Diane Diaz joins me to discuss the impact your personal brand can have on you and why we need to care about how we use social media.

In this episode

What is a personal brand

the 3-C's of personal branding

what your brand says about you

how to "show up" as an expert

what to do if personal and corporate brands don't align

it's A-OK to shift your personal brand as you navigate your career

how an archetype assessment can help you build your brand story

.... and so much more

I had a lot of fun talking with Diane and I hope you'll tune in and see how you can shape your own brand story and be the best brand ambassador for yourself!

Diane Diaz is a self-proclaimed brand geek, Certified Personal Brand Strategist and Social Branding Analyst, and a CultureTalk Certified Partner in using Archetypes in personal branding and team building. She uses her two decades of combined branding and teaching experience to teach professionals and entrepreneurs how to unleash the power of their personal brands.

Her passion for branding is combined with 15 years working in the corporate world, 9 years of which was spent leading the marketing and branding efforts for two award-winning residential communities, and supported by a BS in marketing from University of West Florida and an MBA from University of Central Florida. In addition to running her business, The Brand Teacher, Diane has been teaching branding and marketing classes at Full Sail University for the past nine years.

Diane works with her clients to help them define their unique personal brands so that their online presence matches their in person presence and helps them attract their right fit jobs or clients. She also leads workshops with companies and organizations in using Archetypes to better understand each team member’s drivers, motivators, work style, and more to develop stronger employees and better functioning teams.

Connecting with Diane

The Brand Teacher where you can find out more about her archetype assessments and personal branding workshops

on Diane's LinkedIn Profile

Diane on Twitter

We also mentioned Episode 001 with Mike Taylor, so if you haven't had a listen in - we suggest you do!

I'd be honoured if you liked this episode, if you would be kind enough to like and share the episode with your friends and colleagues. We use the hashtag #theloungepodcast on all LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. I'd also appreciate a rating and review over on iTunes. You can subscribe there as well and make it easy to get every episode as they are released. Subscribe on iTunes.

Have you ever wondered how you could become a superhero? Not a cape and spandex wearing hero, but a hero that creates amazing elearning solutions while solving enormous business problems without all cape wearing hype and pomp... Yes? Great this is your episode! Today we hear from a real elearning hero about her journey and how she became a real-life superhero in the Articualte eLearning Heroes Community. As a training manager, you may be wondering how you can FIND an elearning hero, and if that is the case, this episode is for you too! Grab your favourite beverage and join me in the lounge!

Linda Lorenzetti is an Articulate eLearning Hero and an eLearning Developer.  She has been creating engaging and innovative eLearning presentations over the past nine years.  She is currently the highest contributor to the Articulate eLearning Heroes Weekly Challenges.   Ten of her Challenge entries are featured on Articulate’s eLearning Examples webpage.  In 2011 she received Honourable Mention for her entry, Skid Skills in the Articulate Guru awards.

I met Linda in Toronto at an Articulate Roadshow where she presented a session on elearning challenges. I was in awe that she had completed so many of the challenges. I'd also been following her in the elearning heroes community for years! Listen in as Linda talks about the value of completing challenges and how they help you to stretch your skills and get creative in designing elearning solutions.  Being a hero isn't easy, and requires active participation in a community, helping others and sharing openly. Completing the challenges can be helpful in getting a new role, shifting careers, and helping training department managers find you when they need help solving a business problem through elearning. What you share may be exactly what someone else is looking for!

Here are the links to some of the items we talk about:

Articulate's eLearning Heroes Community challenges (you do not need to be an Articulate user, you can get all kinds of great ideas here and use the challenges with any development tools)

Trivantis Community

Linda on LinkedIn

Linda's Hero Profile

Linda on Twitter

Linda's Website - a great place for some creative ideas!

This discussion with Linda links nicely with the discussion we had with Cara North about personal learning networks. You can build your network, help and ask for help, participate in the community an learn as you grow your elearning skills. the Episode Now it's time to take action - after you listen to the episode, take action! Go and participate in one of the challenges on any of the sites you want to be part of, help someone, work out loud.  It also ties in with Cara's Instrcutional Design 6 week Challenge... so take a look and see how you can participate.

I'd love it if you enjoyed this episode if you would share it with a friend or colleague - on Twitter and LinkedIn, add the #theloungpodcast hashtag or tag me @jachutchinson - I'd also love to hear how you are working towards being an elearning hero too!

Voice-over (VO) work is crucial for creating e-learning courses. It helps ensure your hearing-able audience is engaged so they can connect with the content.

Josh Risser, a professional voice-over actor (who just happens to have done the voice work for the opening and closing of The Lounge Podcast), is on today’s episode to share tips on recording your own material, as well as insight into hiring voice-over talent if you are able to delegate the work.

Josh began in training and development for a cable company, moving on to management and web development but found himself thinking about voice-over work in the back of his mind. He decided to pair with a voice coach and created a demo discovering that this career path was right for him. Listen in as Josh describes how his voice varies depending on the type of project but that they are all “variations of me”, along with other behind-the-scenes insights.

In-house recording or “home brew”, as Josh calls the process of recording your own audio, isn’t a particularly easy path and there are several considerations. Josh recalls recording at work with lots of office chatter in the background and an air conditioner directly above his desk. He has learned much since then and has kindly shared a Cheat Sheet for DIY audio (and a special little treat for you - so go take a look!).

Josh also shares how to find voice-over actors and walks you through the process of working with them so there is clear direction and communication. Some of the helpful resources you can provide are: sharing information about your audience, pronunciation help with some of the trickier words, and access to the storyboards or slides so the VO talent has a greater knowledge of the topic they are speaking about. Another important aspect of communication is making sure you’re informed about the costs associated with hiring a VO artist.

So, if you’ve thought about creating an e-course, sit back and relax, grab your favourite beverage, this episode is for you.

Links

Josh’s email: [email protected]

Josh's Website

Josh on Twitter

Josh on Facebook

Josh Risser's Cheat Sheet: Effective Narration for Instructional Designers

Forvo: The Pronunciation Dictionary

VoiceOver.Biz- for more information finding VO talent

Global Voice Academy- for more information on VO work and rates

Audacity Audio Software

Reaper: Digital Audio Production Application

Josh has a new offering! Helping you do a better job with audio narration for your courses. Go take a look at his DIYNarrative site! It's a GEM.

In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Cara North to discuss personal learning networks (PLNs). Along with being a life-learner, Cara is passionate about personal learning networks and learning and teaching using social media. She defines for us what Personal Learning Networks mean to her, how she developed her network and what she does to cultivate it. Listen in while we talk about how easy it is to get started and what types of things you can learn. We build on some of the tips we got from Mike Taylor in Episode 1.

Personal Learning Network Tools and Tips

Twitter - if you don't have an account - go create one now

Cara captures her posts while at conferences and uses this great tool IFTTT to help her

Video about mastery (hair stylist story) by Anna Sabramowicz

NEW RESOURCE JUST ADDED:

Cara kindly created a screencast on how she gathers her Tweets to a Spreadsheet!

About Cara North

Cara A. North is a PhD student in Educational Studies with an emphasis in Learning Technologies at The Ohio State University.  Cara holds a MA with an emphasis in Workforce Development from The Ohio State University and a BA in Journalism from the University of Kentucky. North is an Instructional Development Specialist for The Ohio State University’s Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE).

She has worked in learning and development for 10 years as a trainer, curriculum developer, learning management systems administrator, and instructional designer.  Her learning and development experience includes Amazon.com and various non-profit and higher education organizations.

North is committed to lifelong learning and scholarship through her leadership in many organizations.  She serves as President-Elect of the Central Ohio Association for Talent and Development (ATD) and is also the Community Manager for the Training Learning and Development Community (TLDC).  North was elected to serve as the Communications Officer for the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Education Communications and Technology (AECT). She is also a founding member of the Learning Experience Design (LED) research group at The Ohio State University.

North’s research interests include social media, communities of practice, and personal learning networks.

You can connect with Cara on Twitter and LinkedIn, the Instructional Redesign Podcast with Joseph Suarez, and the Training Learning and Development Community.

We'd love to hear from you, leave a comment, send an email and most important, if you liked this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. you can share this episode on twitter using the hashtag  #theloungepodcast .

Well here we are, It's time for the second full episode of The Lounge Podcast about the academic world of adult learning. I'm so glad you decided to join me, and to listen in on this conversation.

I've got a cup of tea in my "SHHH...there's WINE in here!" mug. I put wine in it one time. If you see me with it, you can bet it will really be my old stand-by Canadian Breakfast tea. The mug is great though, isn't it? I picked this little gem up at Caroline Cellars Family Estate Winery. I visited Niagara on the Lake with my best friend Jenn and our husbands last summer. It was their first visit to the Canadian side of the falls and although it rained, the view was spectacular.

Now, the real reason for being here. This episode is the reason I created a podcast. Adult learning, educational technologies and employee performance, excites me. The realization that this is my passion happened in 2008. Dr. Julie Dixon was professor for two of the courses in my BEd,AE,  She encouraged me through a tough transition from being a teacher of adults, to being an official adult scholar. She helped me find and define my passion for academic research in adult learning.

What's in this episode:

There are a lot of really great tidbits about all things academics in the world of adult learning and education, including:

The changes  in the academic world of adult learning and development

The challenges facing adult educators today (are they different than they were 10-20 years ago? )

Where do professionals go when they do not have access to all the fancy journals and want to get the low-down and most recent research on L&D and Adult Learning

The next steps for someone out there who may be interested in the academic side or adult learning, or interested in a BEd.,AE, Master's or PhD program.

Let me know how you like the episode, and join the conversation in the Lounge Podcast Community - a place to continue discussions from the episodes and to learn with each other.

Reach out if you would like to suggest a discussion to have in the Lounge, [email protected].

I'd really appreciate if you could share this episode with a friend, colleague or anyone interested in or actively working with adults in an educational capacity. If you share this on Twitter or LinkedIn, use the hashtag #theloungepodcast to join the conversation string.

Hope you enjoy this chat. See you next time!

Welcome to the very first episode of The Lounge Podcast with Jacqueline Hutchinson. I've got a tasty cup of coffee thanks to my Bestie Jenn, so I'm ready to jump right in. In this discussion, we chat about content curation. Content curation is a key to helping you collect, organize, use and share resources.  Let's listen in to hear how you can elevate your content curation skills, and help your team with theirs.

Jacqueline is pleased to chat with Mike Taylor. Mike specializes in crafting digital and social media learning. Jacqueline has followed Mike Taylor on Twitter for quite some time and has found his feed to be a wellspring of educational knowledge. In today’s episode, Jacqueline and Mike chat about content curation.

With all the available online resources including articles, videos, and images, saving them in an efficient way can prove to be quite and challenge. Mike shares his curation strategies including his top 3 digital tools. I've got a tasty cup of coffee thanks to my Bestie Jenn. What's in your cup today?

Mike has a lifelong passion for learning which can be summed up by his personal tagline “Ask. Learn. Share.” He shares his passion and wealth of knowledge through speaking engagements and presentations, on his website and in his newsletter.

 

Mike’s Top 3 Content Curation Resources:

Feedly

A feed reader available on Android and iOs devices

Efficient way to keep up in your areas of interest across news sources

Follow your favourite sites in one place by subscribing to their RSS feeds

Create boards through tagging

Boards are shareable with others

Several ways to save using extensions and bookmarklets across devices

Free for limited access or $5.41 per month for premium services

Pocket

A bookmarking app that saves articles, video, images and more

Available across several platforms

Once saved you can view the content offline

Content is shareable to social media such as Twitter and Facebook

Also connects to Feedly, use the same tag to keep information organized

As you save articles, recommended articles will be tailored to your interests

Free version available or premium options ($4.99/mo. Or $44.99/yr.)

Diigo

A social bookmarking website that allows you to bookmark, tag, highlight and use sticky notes on webpages

Can be used privately, with a group or shared

Keep bookmarks offline so they are saved if your computer dies

Useful to collect information for a course, you can use tags and share the link to your learners, as content is added it is automatically added to that link

Use RSS Feed can connect to Feedly

Free or a range of premium options (starting at $40/year for an individual)

Other Links from the discussion

Short Video from Mike: Illustrating my PKM process

My "Steal from Marketing" Deck and Related Resources

Harold Jarche's Seek-Sense-Share Framework

The eLearning Guild

DevLearn 2018 Conference and Expo

Who is Mike Taylor?

With over two decades of real-life, in-the-trenches experience, designing and delivering learning experiences, Mike Taylor understands that effective learning isn’t about the latest fad or trendy new tools. Known for his practical, street-savvy style; Mike is a regular and highly rated speaker at industry events and directs learning technology and online learning at Mindset Digital in Columbus, Ohio. He also has an MBA from Ohio University and a Master's in Educational Technology from San Diego State.

So this is it! The obligatory podcast episode number 000! This is where I talk with you about what my goal for this podcast is and why I hope you’ll be come a loyal listener.

What is this podcast all about?

This podcast is my passion project. I hope that you, the instructional designer, learning developer, trainer, teacher, mentor, team lead, supervisor, manager and director – I hope you join me to discuss L&D today, the tools the tech, the philosophies... We’ll be talking about corporate learning, organizational development, employee performance and, the topic I’m most excited about, the learning technologies that can accompany you and your staff through your days!

I’m drinking Canadian Breakfast tea in my “Reading is Sexy” mug. I hope you’ll join me!

You can subscribe to be notified by visiting us on iTunes or at get notified of new episodes by signing up at www.theloungepodcast.com.

Our first episode premieres May 1.

For more information or to make a topic recommendation, please contact [email protected]

FacebookTwitter

Jacqueline Hutchinson

Podcast Host | Creator of The Lounge Podcast

I LOVE sharing information, especially information about learning, development and employee performance improvement.  I hold a Bachelor of Education, Adult Education from Brock University, and a BA with a declared Legal Studies Option from the University of Waterloo.  I am the CEO of e-Learning Pros Instructional Design Inc.

Aside from my work and educational background, I have an amazing husband, daughter and a beloved family dog named Ellie.  When we’re not enjoying our country property or traveling, we’re riding our motorcycles, watching sports, finding awesome recipes to try in our InstantPot®, playing video games, drinking tea, coffee or copious amounts of wine (I should have been a vintner) and enjoying life.