Category Archives: Mouthing Off

Aug 05

ASTD President Bingham Posts Intellectually Impoverished, Embarrasing Article on Learning Part II

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In Part I of this series we looked at the first part of Tony Bingham’s post on “Learning Socially” and pointed out that so far in the article, nothing the President of ASTD mentioned is relevant or telling regarding the need or movement towards “social learning. Let’s look further at Bingham’s article to see if there is any substance or valid data in it. We’ll continue with an attempt to deal with what has to be one of the silliest fad terms to hit the training world — informal learning.

Bingham says: Continue reading →

Jun 11

Elliot Maisie Replies to Bacal’s Criticism of Social Learning Survey (#astd, #trdev)

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netbyte-design-studio-0992

Just getting to the bottom of things, M'am. Just the Facts!?

Thank you, Elliot, for commenting and filling in some of the reasoning behind your publishing of the Social Learning Survey results. I decided to respond in a new post, since your reply deserves as much exposure as my original post, and it’s easier to manage the formatting.

Continue reading →

Jun 09

Elliot Masie Survey on Social Learning – You’re Kidding Us, Aren’t You?

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Robo-Trainer Presentation Style Too Stiff

Robo-Trainer Presentation Style Too Stiff

There’s no question that there’s a current “buzz” among trainers around the use of technology, and particularly “social learning”, to facilitate, and make more efficient, learning in the workplace. Elliot Maisie is considered one of the leading experts on the topic of workplace learning in general, but also in the use of technology for that function. Continue reading →

Jun 07

Comment on Some ASTD Comments (or, My God, You let these people train others?)#astd #trdev

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Super Duper E-Trashcan Made Specially as a Receptacle For Idiot E-Fads.

Super Duper E-Trashcan Made Specially as a Receptacle to Idiot E-Fads.

Some of you may know that the ASTD Conference concluded last week (American Society For Training and Development). A few people took the time and made the effort to either inform during the conference, or write up their impressions after the conference, and no doubt, they should be commended for the spirit of sharing.

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May 15

Response to Twitter Critique re: Relevance to Training #trdev

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Thought I would pass this on. It’s a response to a person who believes twitter has nothing to add to the training and learning field. The thread was started initially when I posted about efforts to create a community of practice for trainers, instructional developers, etc, via twitter. Comments?

> ===>From TRDEV-L<===
>
> Robert,
>
> Perhaps I’ve not been quite clear as to my experience with Twitter.
> While I have no account, I have seen the web pages of several of those
> who do “twitter” and the messages that they have sent.  There are
> several of the business shows that I watch who have Twitter accounts, as
> well as other pages that I’ve seen now and then, and they all look
> pretty much as the one you shared.  I’m not sure that I have to have an
> actual account to make a decision that it would or wouldn’t work for me.
>

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May 05

Attempts to sabotage creating a training/development community of practice

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Earlier today I announced the creation of a twitter hashtag, #trdev so people wanting to create a training and development community of practice on twitter could find each other, and interact. We have additional plans to make this work. However it will NOT work if the tag is used for NON-RELATED tweets.

Within 3 hrs. of announcing the tag, providing instructions for use, etc, Doug Constant @onpointcoaching started spamming the tag with messages of various types NONE of which pertain at all to the topic. You can see for yourself what he is doing by doing a search within twitter for #trdev, and you can see what appears to be a deliberate attempt to prevent you and I from creating this community.

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Feb 15

Time to throw the learner centered sock puppets out of training

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They probably should be running around in tie-dies, man. Probably do the training session and blow a spliff after, brother. But they aren’t that obvious. I like to refer to them as the hoowah diddy diddy California trainers who survived Esalen. Remaindered like old books from the human potential movement. Great empty statements about how people learn. Totally lost. Not worth a penny.

It’s about the “professional trainers” who believe that all learning (usually they say “real learning”) must be under control of the learners, at the learner’s own pace, and so that the learners can determine the content. They call that being “learner centered”, as opposed to trainer centered, the latter being akin to brainicide or something, best exemplified by waterboarding and lectures, and death by powerpoint.

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Jan 31

Blogging – Losing Distinction Between Content and Form

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I was doing a lot of searching on the Internet to provide content for our new TrDev Toolbar (described elsewhere), and so I’ve been coming across some interesting things. One of the most interesting comments went like this:

“I blogged about this topic….”

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May 30

About Politically Correct Language – Tyranny or Sensitivity

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Gary  wrote:

> So I guess the point I’m trying to make is that often those who are the
> most vocal about the “correct” way to call someone or some group of
> people, etc., that these people are perhaps not as comfortable with their
> own selves as perhaps they would like to be.

Gary, I’m sorry, but while what you say may be true (I have no evidence one way or another), I don’t see it  that way. And, I’m not sure that your experience is typical of minority groups, since it sounds to me you did not grow up bearing the prejudice and bigotry that “could” have been addressed towards you based on your
heritage. (I’m assuming) Neither are you choosing (I am assuming here), the role of advocate and activist.

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