So that is what is inside my head!

What a great representation of the two sides of the brain and how they see the world and relate to each other.  I am keeping this in mind as I develop two new workshops for the new year.   I found this looking for information about random learning for a post.

It came from Wired Magazine via this blog: http://informl.com/2005/01/29/random-learning/

Jottit — a hyper-quick website creation tool

What a wonderful web 2.0 tool. This site allows you to create a website that looks wikisque in about 2 minutes. And that is from going to the http://jottit.com to having something you can show to people. It uses wiki technology and coding to create quickie webpages.

In those 2 minutes, I created a little site, renamed the url to http://baldgeek.jottit.com, password protected it and made minor edits to the title information.

Also, for training and information keeping purposes, your jottit site can have three flavors of security.

Private – Which requires a password to VIEW and EDIT site. Great for posting proprietary training information.

Public – Which requires a password to edit the site. Which is what my site is right now.
and

Open – Everyone can view and edit the site.

I can think of some applications for this tool.

How do you pronounce this?

Have you ever need to hear the pronunciation of a word and no one knew it?

Well the internets have the answer for you:

http://www.howjsay.com/ has the pronounciation for you.  In the King’s English, no less.

The Kindle – One Review

The Maise Center, a “Learning Lab and ThinkTank,” has posted a 6 minute personal review and overview of the Kindle. The presenter is the director and he brings up a good point about using the Kindle in instructional delivery and new employee orientation.

The photo to the right is from the Amazon page where you can order the Kindle. Just click on the photo to go there.

http://www.masieweb.com/video/non-event-video/amazon-kindle.html

The Maise Center hosted the Learning 2007 Conference (Site, Wiki) with learning professionals from the for profit and non-profit world. In fact, Maryland’s State Library Consortium is a member. Looks like a conference I want to get to next year!

New (to me) Wikis

I like to use wikis for looking up what little stuff that I do not readily know <g> at work or in the rest of my life.

Here are three wikis I have added to my collection of wiki’s on my sidebar.

Citizendium: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page
Scholarpedia: http://www.scholarpedia.org/
Veropedia: http://www.veropedia.org/

Try them out and let me know what you think.

Change is constant, but not always good or needed.

This past weekend I learned a valuable lesson in life that can be used in my training life. 

For our 5th anniversary and Christmas present to each other, we purchased a large screen television.   Frankly our old television was slowly going to the dogs and we were sick of squinting to see what was on the screen.  There is also the outside wall where our couch sits, that gets very cold on your head during the winter.  

So my wife and decided to move our entire basement around in an effort to change our basement setup for the better.   That means two bookcases, DVD tower, six sectional sofa pieces with 4 custom built supports for each, a large chair, an entertainment center and a couple of smaller pieces.    All in one long evening.   We did a great job moving everything around to prepare for the television delivery. 

It took us about 32 seconds to hate it.  Completely.  Totally. Without question.  

So, the next morning, I moved the entire thing back to the way it was.   And now we are happy. 

The moral.  While change is good sometimes it is not necessary.   So when training, sometimes the old habits and the way you do things are still the best way to do things. 

I am sure my grandmother is somewhere agreeing with me.