Research-based Creative Teaching Strategies had its first international presentation in December 2009 in Seoul, Korea.

Have your participants revisit material by creating a fun, energy-filled gallery.

Sample Standard: Understand events, trends, individuals and movements shaping colonial history and settlement in the United States.

Standard: Knows the kinds of forces that exist between objects and within atoms. Understands general concepts related to gravitational force. Purpose: To hypothesize about the effects of gravity on certain objects as an introduction to a lesson on gravity.

Ken Gimm became our first international certified partner for Research-based Creative Teaching Strategies.

When I heard that Mel Silberman had died, I was deeply saddened. He was a friend, a colleague, and a golf buddy. He was not only a student of Active Learning, he was also an active participant in life; he realized how short it was. He, Ken Blanchard and I shared a Faith at Work session at ASTD. I was blessed. He had a long, patient, and courageous battle with cancer. I will miss him.

As a company, The Bob Pike Group uses brain-based research to create our training principles and promote our participant-centered methods. Here is part one of a two-part series that gives you the why behind our instructor-led, participant-centered how.

The training community is abuzz with phrases like "interactive" and "learner-focused." Bob Pike is a pioneer of this type of learning, what he coined "Creative Training Techniques" and what is now known as participant-centered methodology. While knowing you need to continuing sharpening your trainer's edge with education, how do you overcome time constraints and budget restrictions?

Study Shows Significant Drop in Employee Learning and Development Spending for Second Year Results of ASTD's Learning Circuits eLearning Survey

For those of us who train for a living, each year brings new challenges. For example, we might have new programs to deliver or new audiences to work with, but, what if, due to the economy and other budgetary constraints there is nothing "new" to deliver? What do we do then? In my mind, the next step is what I would call continuous improvement. No matter how long you've been training, it's important to continue to improve upon the skills you have. You know the old saying, "You can't teach an old dog a new trick;" well, I disagree! I think you can continue to learn and improve upon the basic skills and competencies you have. With that said, here are a few "Tips and Tricks" to re-visit as you gear up for 2010.