BPG Launching Educator E-zine

The Bob Pike Group will be sending out its inaugural quarterly e-Zine with articles and tips just for educators in February. Timely topics regarding education, technology, and creative ways to meet standards will be featured in every issue. And we’ll continue our commitment to increasing retention by increasing interaction by providing learner-centered activities in each e-Zine.

To subscribe, click here. To submit your own articles or thoughts on what you’d like to see in the e-Zine, email EzineEditor@BobPikeGroup.com.

E-learning Best Practices

How long should an e-learning course be? Chris Bennett, founder and CEO of Ah Ha! Media, offers his thoughts on some simple guidelines for producing an e-learning course. They include: have an interest in your subject, make it interactive (archived e-Zine articles and Bob Pike’s Creative Training Techniques newsletters have ideas for making e-learning interactive), and make sure it’s logical and easy to follow. As for timing, between 15 and 30 minutes for each module is perfect. To read the whole article, go to http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=41-1

Productivity Tips of 2007

Of course, the end of the year always provides hundreds of articles on the best and worst of the prior 12 months. Rick Broida, blogger for BNET, put out a relevant one on the best productivity tips he gleaned during 2007 in a podcast. Some of his favorites?

• Jott.com—free voice-to-text reminder service which gets sent to your inbox.
• Magicjack.com—purchase the equipment for $40 and receive unlimited local and long-distance for one year. Additional years are only $20—very inexpensive way to get a second phone line. Uses Voice Over Internet Protocol.
• Fitness ball as desk chair—help alleviate back pain while working
• Copernic.com—desktop search engine. Works better than the windows search—not as slow or bulky.

To listen to the eight-minute podcast, go to http://blogs.bnet.com/intercom/?p=1436

Banish Webinars? Wow!

One of my favorite lists put out each year is the list from Lake Superior State University of words banished for overuse or misuse. Business terms to be banished this year? “Webinar” and phrases such as “X is the new Y.” “In spite of statements to the contrary, 'Cold is (NOT) the new hot,' nor is '70 the new 50.' The idea behind such comparisons was originally good, but we've all watched them spiral out of reasonable uses into ludicrous ones," said word nominator Lawrence Mickel, Coventry, Connecticut. To check out the entire list or to submit your own nominations for next year, go to http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php

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