10 tips for trainers part one: bumblebee butts & booty
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Diversity & culture, Teambuilding, Training & development
It’s my birthday tomorrow and as tomorrow’s not a usual day for posting I thought I’d give you a gift today.
Ever since I hit the earth some 4+ decades ago I’ve not had to wait for Christmas to open gifts so I thought I’d share the bounty with you, my dear blog reader, with you. Thanks for your readership. I hope you enjoy this gift- 10 tips for trainers part one (part two comes next post).
1. Take care of your bumblebee butt
- no I’ve not gotten into the nog, rather I’m taking a page from bumblebees. In order to communicate, from one bee to another how to find the source of nectar bumblebees do a cute, hairy, little butt dance. Yep, they shake their booty to communicate their treasure map.
- turns out though that when they’re tired their dance suffers and so too do the instructions.
- it’s the same with us trainers. Training’s really hard work. If you want to shake your booty and have all neurons firing you’ve got to take care of yourself.
- get sleep, eat well, bring a snack with you. If it’s going to be a conflictual setting bring lavender spray.
- bring and/or do whatever helps you be your best so you can do your best for the learners.
2. Nix the jibber jabber ‘tude
- humour is a strategic tool for training because when participants are laughing they’re using the same part of their brain they use for strategic, critical and innovative thinking
- the strategic use of humour (and I underscore strategic, no clown noses or fake dog poo) primes the brain for learning
- so don’t check your sense of humour at the door like the judge asks in the clip below, rather embrace it and encourage your learners too as well
3. Praxis
- other than a luscious word that rolls off the tongue, praxis is one of the most underutilized and potent tips for training
- praxis is a tenant of popular education and it simply means constantly cycling back and forth between action and theory
- great trainings take full advantage of this, adding some theory / information and then anchoring it with practice / application / experience, then back to more theory / information
- rinse, repeat – practice your praxis
4. Get your free flishtube
- it’s free, it’s easy to use and most of all it has great impact on learning – it’s flishtube a.k.a. Flickr, Delicious and Youtube
- these examples of educational technology really add oomph and they’re fun to use
- Flickr is a photo sharing site; by doing an advanced search you can find gorgeous photos with a Creative Commons license that gives you the artist’s permission to use. Here’s my Flickr account – you can see not only photos I’ve taken and used in trainings but also my favourites (other people’s photos I’ve used in blog posts; always with credit).
- how many times have you found a great resource on the web only to not be able to find it later. Enter Delicious, a social bookmarking site – click on my Delicious account and you instantly have free access to some 1500 training resources I’ve tagged on the web.
- if I have to tell you that Youtube is a video sharing site I seriously want the address of the cave you’ve been living in. You can find almost anything on Youtube and it’s a powerful way to illustrate your training points. Here’s my Youtube channel for some examples of videos I’ve made and use in training.
- whichever educational tech tools you use make sure they are anchored in your learning objectives
5. Don’t default to your personal vault
- deeply buried, in the cobweb corners of your mind vault are your assumptions about the RIGHT way to learn, which translated means the way YOU learn
- unless we take out those assumptions and dust them off we’re at risk of teaching how we like to learn … which is great … for the portion of your learners who happen to learn like you
- examine your training content and delivery methods to make sure they’re both accessible and inclusive
- don’t default to your personal vault or you’ll unwittingly exclude learners
So there you have it – the first half of 10 tips for trainers- bumblebee butts & booty. See the next post for part two – avoiding hairy, naked guys.
I welcome any tips you’d like to share. Please feel free.
Tags: access, bee, birthday, bumblebee, delicious, flickr, humor, humour, inclusion, popular education, praxis, self-care, tip, tips, youtube
December 24th, 2010 at 9:13 am
[…] is part two of 10 tips for trainers. See part one here. It’s my gift to you the day after my birthday. I figured as I don’t have to […]