CEdO535 Week 4 - Podcasting, Screencasting, and Social Learning

This class has certainly given me many ideas that I can apply to my current job.  As I have mentioned several times before, we are looking at a major overhaul of our corporate software.  All of the technologies that we have talked about in this class could be directly applied to the training program that this software will require.  What I like best is that it will allows us to capture the knowledge of the individuals themselves as they are using the software.

For example, this week I especially like the idea of screencasting.  As we install the new software we will have several early adopters.  These will be people who work with the software who are experts in their particular area of the business.  Rather than creating a long, pre-packaged training presentation for everyone, we can have these early adopters create a screen cast that shows how they perform individual functions of the software.  These will be especially powerful if they can be tied to common tasks or procedures that the users will be performing.  The early adopters will then publish their screen cast in a blog or Wiki, and will make it available to the rest of the company.  Other users can search for the particular procedure or task that the screen cast illustrates.  They will receive their training in short video segments, instead of one long class.

I also like the idea of using blogs to record the thoughts of the early adopters as they learn about the software.  This can help smooth the transition as others begin to use it.