Engaging learners

Globalize your On Demand Business

/ Susan Hendrich / 2 Comments

Check out these excellent writing tips from IBM on how to “Globalize your On Demand Business” 

Style tips

The following style suggestions can help ensure your information is clear for all types of audiences:

  • Write sentences as short and simple as possible. Try to keep sentences to 25 words or less.
  • Make sure that lists are complete and can stand by themselves.
  • Use a complete sentence to introduce a list.
  • Make list items complete sentences or complete phrases.
  • Make list items parallel in structure.
  • Avoid slang, jargon, humor, sarcasm, colloquialisms, and metaphors. For example, use “estimate” instead of “in the ballpark.”
  • Be succinct. Eliminate unnecessary text and redundancies.
  • Do not use Latin abbreviations.
  • Avoid negative constructions. For example, use “It is like the previous request” rather than “It is not unlike the previous request.” Or, use “Log on again to reconnect” instead of “You cannot reconnect without logging on again.”
  • Avoid ambiguity.
  • Use an appropriate and consistent tone.
  • Choose examples that are appropriate for the intended audience.

Grammar tips

Appropriate grammar enables easier, more accurate translations and enhances audience understanding:

  • Write in active voice whenever possible and use the present tense.
  • Avoid the infinitive (to create), present participle (creating), and past participle (created) forms of verbs in the beginning of sentences. These verbs are less direct, and the subject of the clause is not always obvious. Completing steps could mean “When you complete the steps” or “Because you complete the steps.”
  • Avoid noun strings. Limit compound phrases to no more than three words. When a compound phrase is used, be sure that it has only one meaning and that the phrase is used consistently.
  • Make the subject of a verb phrase clear. Avoid complex sentences where several adverbs or other modifiers are used. If you use complex sentences, it is particularly important to include whatever words are necessary to make the subject clear. Do not omit the word “that” from clauses. The use of the conjunction “that,” while technically optional in some sentences, is never wrong and makes the sentence easier to translate and clearer for users whose primary language is not English. For example, use “Verify that your directory service is working” rather than “Verify your directory service is working.”
  • Avoid using words in multiple grammatical categories (verb, noun, adjective). In English, many words can change their grammatical category. In most other languages, the same word cannot be a verb, a noun, and an adjective. (Use “during the restore operation” instead of “during the restore.”)
  • Avoid ambiguous pronoun references where the pronoun can possibly refer to more than one antecedent. For example, in the statement “If there is prompt text for the completed field, it does not change,” it is not clear if the “prompt text” does not change or the “completed field” does not change.
  • Use simple and clear coordination so the reader can tell what the relationships are between the elements of a sentence. For example, “the file or result field definition” could mean: “The result-field definition or the file,” “The file definition or the result-field definition,” “The file-field definition or the result-field definition,” “The definition of the file or of the result field,” or “The field definition of the file or of the result.”
  • Ensure the elements of a sentence are parallel. Words, phrases, and clauses should be grammatically equal. Use “network management, databases, and application programs” rather than “network management, databases, and writing application programs.”
  • Avoid using too many prepositions in a sentence, but do not omit prepositions or articles that are necessary. The sentence “This is a list of the current status of all event monitors for this process” could be rewritten to “This lists the current status of all event monitors for this process.”
  • Do not use the dash parenthetically (as in “It is at this point – the start point – that designers and writers meet”). Translators, however, accept the dash being used to show an extension of a sentence (as in “The most important people in IBM are the customers – they pay us”).

Creative Slump? Try Something, Anything New

/ Susan Hendrich / 3 Comments

Creative Slump? Try Something, Anything New

The Slump

As Spring 2010 settled in, I found myself in a creative rut. Not that I wasn’t coming up with some pretty good instructional design solutions. I just didn’t have the sparkly “kick” in my design step.

My first instinct in considering how to clear the innovation fog was to focus on learning something new about instructional design. “Surely there is some new technique or method out there that will inspire me back into my creative groove,” I told myself. Four hours of semi-conscious web surfing for articles on social networking, blogging, graphic design, and adult learning later, I was in no better creative place than when I first started this aimless journey.

“A good night’s sleep will do the trick,” I murmured to myself in lieu of clicking the Facebook link one last time before throwing the creative towel. Another half hour passed, and while I now was up to speed on my Facebook friends’ opinions on skirt lengths, parasailing, potty training, and bar hopping, I was no closer to sleep than to a creative revelation.

Defeated, I dragged myself to bed.

The Surge

Disarmed of my intellectual shortcomings by the start of my semi-conscious snooze, it came to me…

“Cake Pops!”

No, this was not some animated .gif I would create for a PowerPoint presentation. Nor was it a racy idea for an attention grabber at the beginning of a module. I had realized that my creative sparkle could be restored through an age-old domestic act. Baking.

I recalled seeing some Martha Stewart-y web article on “Cake Pops,” which showed fun bite-sized cake creatures perched firmly on a lollipop stick. “I’ll try it! Should be a piece of cake,” I chuckled to no one in particular, mildly amused by the metaphoric ease of my belief that the creation of these mini-masterpieces could be mastered in a single shot.

So, 67 dollars and one maddening pre-Easter Michael’s trip later, I had everything I needed to make cake pops. Or at least that’s what the “easy cake pop instructions” recipe at Bakerella.com promised. What then ensued can only be described as a tortuous 12 hours of mixing, scraping, baking, shaping, smooshing, poking, and re-attaching nightmare. I kind of loved it, even though at one point I threw an unfrosted cake ball (a pre-cake pop iteration) against my refrigerator in disgust.

My first cake pops were disasterously, unmanageably bad. Think of ABC gum smashed under an old shoe, then jammed with two jelly beans and told to stand up straight and look presentable. Yuck.

Two batches later, the sugared semi-orbs actually started to look like they were intended to look – bunnies and chicks. I was getting my groove now. The bunnies were pink with googly eyes and the beaks of the chicks looked as cute as they did real. Almost unnoticeably, I began putting my own twist on the not-nearly-as-easy-as-they-promised recipe instructions.

Here’s a view of the final products:

Hendrich's Cake Pops

After the final bunny was built and the last chick was cast, I was both mentally exhausted and creatively invigorated. After saran wrapping the last of the munchable art, I flopped into bed and was asleep in seconds.

Getting out of my comfort zone for those 12 hours initiated a creative flow over the next week at work that shocked me. I was in the groove, coming up with innovative and simpler ways of training my customers. But what perhaps is even more exciting is the fact that I had a renewed verve for life in general. An extra spring in my step. And an almost constant feeling that I was just about to conjure another cool idea. Not because I’d attended a webinar in my field of study. Not because I’d read a book to enhance my expertise. But because I tried something utterly new.

Moral of the story: Getting out of my comfort zone and trying something new initiated a creative flow in all areas of my life, both personal and professional. The simple (okay, not exactly simple) act of learning to do something I had never done before restored my curiosity, my creative inspiration, and even my confidence. And the learning was not in my area of expertise. In fact, prior to that day, I would not call myself a baker of any kind.

 Perhaps the old saying is true…

You can create your cake and eat it, too.

Training goes organic

/ Susan Hendrich / 1 Comment

Virtual Whiteboarding

Lately you’ve probably seen an increase in the use of hand-drawn “white boarding” in media and learning spots. Think about the long-haired UPS white board guy…   

…or the ever-endearing “Simon’s Cat” series on YouTube…

Now it’s your turn!

LectureScribe is a program for easily producing animated “whiteboard lectures” from a tablet PC or electronic whiteboard. LectureScribe is written by Brian C. Dean, an assistant professor of computer science at Clemson Univeristy.

On Brian’s website, you can find:

  • The LectureScribe program. To install, download this file and place it on any Windows machine. There is no complicated setup required — just double-click the file to start LectureScribe.
  • An example of output of LectureScribe
  • An animated set of instructions on using LectureScribe. This is slightly out of date (for example, image import is now possible, and magnification mode is now turned off by default). A new version will be posted soon.
  • Brian’s article in the Faculty Directions newsletter describing LectureScribe.

LectureScribe

Never say never

/ Susan Hendrich / 2 Comments

Never say never

Next time you doubt yourself, think about a few of these doomsday statements that turned out to be gloriously, wonderfully, wrong:

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – Western Union internal memo, 1876.

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” – David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920’s.

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” – A Yale University management professor, in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express Corporation.

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” – H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

“I’m just clad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” – Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With the Wind.”

“A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.” – Response to Debbie Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” – Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

“If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” – Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.” – Apple Computer, Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and Hewlett-Packard interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” – 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work.

“You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can’t be done. It’s just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training.” – Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the “unsolvable” problem by inventing Nautilus.

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” – Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

“I think there’s a world market for about five computers.” – Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM.

“The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” – Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.

“This fellow, Charles Lindbergh, will never make it. He’s doomed.” – Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast.

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” – Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” – Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

“Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.” – Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.

Thinking With Your Heart

/ Susan Hendrich / 1 Comment

Thinking With Your Heart

The sensory path to your brain has three steps, and the brain in your head doesn’t even process your experiences until they have been through the first two steps — from the gut to the heart, and yet another dimension of hidden intelligence.

Neurocardiologists, scientists in an emerging field, have discovered that the brain in the heart contains more than 40,000 nerve cells called baroreceptors. This heart brain is as large as many key areas of the brain in your head. It also has highly sophisticated computational abilities.

With every beat, a new thought or idea is communicated from your heart to the rest of your body. Like your intestinal intuition, this cardio-communication deeply influences how you perceive your world and how you react to it. The heart pumps out speech after speech and every other part of your body is in constant contact with the heart’s demands. These impulses race through the body many times faster than your blood, and it is up to your head brain to try to catch up to them and understand them. The heart also generates many neurochemicals that influence the way we act. One such chemical, atrial peptide, is a primary force in your motivation and commitment to your goals. As we discovered earlier, we need to believe in order to achieve. Well, the heart has more to do with our sense of believing than any other brain we have.

The Heart’s Sense

The brain in your heart also keeps searching for new opportunities to grow or learn, and cross references its interpretations of what those around you are feeling with its own inner state of values and passions. When people tell you to go for your dreams, no matter how far fetched those dreams may seem, people usually say something like, “Follow your heart.” There is now scientific evidence to support the idea that the heart has a dedicated sensory system perfectly calibrated to sniffing out innovative and creative opportunities.

But that’s not all: the heart’s electromagnetic field is by far the most powerful produced by the body. In fact, it is approximately 5,000 times more powerful than the field produced by the brain.

This is true of everyone to a certain degree. People ten feet away may sense exactly what you are feeling. They can even do it over the telephone, and it makes no difference what you are saying. Words are fodder for the brain in your head. Your heart will believe the feeling underneath the words. This means that those people who are most in touch with their own feelings, and the feelings of others, may be the most attuned to what’s really happening in life. It’s imperative that you focus your attention on what you can do, and what you can contribute, not what you can’t. This is one of the uncommon yet simple ways we can better draw upon the combined brilliance and potential of all three of our brains, not just one.

There is so much more to your gut and your heart than digestion and circulation. People are not machines, no matter how often personal or work relationships make us feel as though we are. It’s no wonder that when people don’t feel cared about and valued, it’s so hard to put their hearts into their life or work.