Domino’s: You Make The Call!

By now, most of you have heard or read about the two Domino’s employees who decided to film their exploits and post them on YouTube. The speed at which the video spread should be nothing surprising to those of us who live and work in the social media arena. Rather then revisit what happened, I wanted to talk a little about what could or should have been done differently.

Let’s analyze what happened:

Monday (April 13, 2009)

• Domino’s is alerted by a blogger – Video has now been viewed over one million times!
• Commenters at the site Consumerist.com use clues, in the video, to find the franchise location.

Tuesday (April 14, 2009)

• Domino’s fires the employees and brings in the local health department which advised them to discard all open containers of food.
• Employees apologize in email to company.
• Domino’s contemplates how to respond.
• Twitter users start asking what Dominoes is going to do about it.

Wednesday (April 15, 2009)

• YouTube is removed due to a copyright claim by Ms. Hammonds (one of the employees who filmed it)
• Domino’s CEO responds on YouTube and also sets up a Twitter account @dpzinfo to respond to comments

If you were in charge, what would you have done differently to protect your brand?

• Should the CEO have posted the YouTube video on Monday night?
• Should Domino’s have a department/group that monitors the Internet for issues that could impact their branding in a negative way? A quick response unit if you will?
• Is there really anything that Domino’s could do to prevent this in the future?
• Should a company be able to ask that a video, such as the one posted, be pulled immediately from YouTube?

Rapid Elearning Tools?

I’m currently evaluating rapid e-learning tools. I’ve used Adobe Captivate as well as Articulate. What else is out there that will provide me with the ability to author content (demos, simulations) and produce printed content from the same output? I’ve looked at Datango, OnDemand… is there anything else out there? What do you use?

Top Tools for Learning 2009

Jane Hart has a great list, or should I say lists, of the Top 100 tools for learning. The 2009 version is broken into two lists:

• Top Tools for Learners (informal and formal tools being used)
• Top Tools for Learning Professionals (tools we use)

Make sure when you stop by to contribute to her lists! Here are the Top 10 tools I use:

1. Snagit
2. PowerPoint
3. Adobe Captivate 3
4. Twitter
5. Articulate
6. Jing
7. WordPress
8. Gmail
9. Google Reader
10. PBWiki

Datango?

We’ve been using Moodle as our LMS for that past year and need to look at other options. Has anyone worked with Datango?

I’m very interested in what you have to say about this product. In the past, we’ve looked at the OnDemand product but with the recent purchase by Oracle, I’m concerned about support for SQL down the road.

We want a solution that provides the ability to create a demo, simulation, simulation with grading, and also the ability to track who has completed which tutorials, who has completed which tests, etc.  The goal is to support a user base of around 200 people (inside company and outside U.S.)

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Your Computer Called My Computer?!?@@@$$

Call #1: Day 1
Person from overseas: “Your computer sent information to our computers indicating it has lots of junk files that are slowing it (my computer) down.
Me: That’s too funny (laughing as I slammed the phone down)

Call #2: Day 4
Person from overseas: “Your computer sent information to our computers indicating it has lots of junk files that are slowing it (my computer) down.”
Me: Which file is my computer sending to you? Is it ntldr,ntoskrnl, boot.ini? This is a serious issue!!
Person from overseas: Silence…. (quickly followed with them hanging up on me).

Call #3: Day 10
Person from overseas: (same script as first two calls)
Me: Really? That doesn’t sound good! What do I need to do?
Person from overseas: Sir, I will have a Microsoft Certified Technician work with you in just a moment but first I need you to go to your computer.
Me: Well, that’s going to be a problem?
Person from overseas: Why?
Me: I don’t have any computers so I don’t quite understand how one could have called your computer? I’m very confused by all of this.
Person from overseas: Don’t you have any computers in your home?
Me: Nope!
Person from overseas:I’m sorry, I must have misdialed the number.

I can’t wait for the next call. It should be fun.

Using Pictures Effectively in Presentations

At least 2-3 times a week I am approached to “clean-up” a PowerPoint presentation. Most come loaded with text and a clip art cartoon. This afternoon, I came across an excellent document that I will be sharing with others at work. Enjoy!

10 Ways to Use Twitter in Your Next Training Session

As an Instructional Designer/Trainer, I’m always looking for ways to help others learn new concepts both in and out of the classroom. In this post, I’ll focus on how you might use Twitter in your classroom to increase interaction and make learning fun!

1. Setup a Twitter Account: To get started, setup your own Twitter account so students can subscribe to your Twitter feed in Step 3.
2. Create a “Getting Started with Twitter” Job Aid: This should include a brief tutorial on how to setup a Twitter account and how to use basic Twitter commands. Ask your students to read and review before proceeding to Step 3. This can be posted on a blog, wiki, or even distributed as a paper document to your students.
3. Getting Students Linked In: Show students how to sign up for a free Twitter account and subscribe to your Twitter feed.
4. Sending Additional Reading Links: If a student is struggling with a concept or wants to learn more about a topic you’re discussing, send your class a link to a Web site (you have pre-screened the site for accuracy right?) to learn more.
5. Shortening those Hyperlinks: Use Tinyurl to create a short link to Web sites you want students to read. This eliminates the problem of broken links and also allows you to send longer hyperlinks within your tweet (message). Remember, you are limited to 140 characters total which includes the hyperlink!
6. Sending Reminder Messages: Do you want students to focus on a specific concept before your next class? Maybe you need to make a quick change in an upcoming reading assignment? What about sending a question for an upcoming class discussion? If so, send a quick message and let them know what’s coming.
7. Checking for Understanding: You’ve just taught a specific concept and want to see if your students have retained the knowledge. Why not send a quick tweet and ask a question. Students can then send their responses. Once you’ve received all responses, you can respond with the correct answer or discuss it during your class.
8. Expanding on a Topic by Combining Twitter with Your Blog: Since tweets are limited to 140 characters, consider writing a post to your blog and then use Tinyurl to make a link to it to include in your message.
9. Searching for Specific Twitter Topics: Let’s say you have just completed a discussion about using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and had your students set up a DHCP server and DHCP clients in your classroom. To test their ability to troubleshoot, ask them to search for Twitter conversations on DHCP by entering the hashtag #DHCP in the Twitter search box. Twitter will then display all conversations that include the hashtag #DHCP in tweets. Ask your students to use their newly gained knowledge/skills to answer one of the questions.
10. Sharing: Ask students to share links they find that help them understand a topic you discussed in class.

These are just a few of the ways you can introduce Twitter into your classroom. What are some other ways you can think of?

Does Bad PowerPoint Kill Your Message?

I recently attended an online presentation that covered several aspects of online learning. It was presented by a very well known presenter. Although the information was very useful, I had trouble getting past the visuals that were being used. To put it into perspective, it looked like the slides were put together in about 5 minutes by a third-grader. Yes, they were that bad! Cheezy cartoons, text out of place, etc.

How many of you have attended a presentation where the message itself was diluted by the quality of the visuals being used? Some individuals might argue it’s the message that is important not the visuals supporting it. What do you think?

Missing in Action

Well, it’s been a while since I wrote anything in the blog. As you may recall, I started a new job in late May of this year and it’s kept me very busy! Although my original position was Instructional Designer/Trainer, I was promoted to Learning Services Manager on September 1, 2008 and was given the exciting challenge of architecting our e-Learning program.

Since I last posted, we’ve implemented Moodle, created branding for our e-Learning materials, hired a few people, settled on a “rapid authoring tool” and created a few online courses. Every day has brought a new learning experience! Some came easy; some were rather painful!

Over the next few weeks, I will start putting up more posts about what I’ve learned from beginning an e-Learning program from the ground-up as well as some of the materials I’ve used for reference.

New Job

Well, it’s been a while since I posted on my blog. The reason? First, I started a new job at a really great company. Second, I was preparing to take the ASTD Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) test.

Let me start with a few comments about my existing job. It’s for a fantastic company in downtown Portland, Oregon. I accepted a position as the instructional designer/trainer and I’ve had the opportunity to meet some really nice people and just love the place. The company was recently voted as one of the top 12 revolutionary companies in Oregon. I’ll talk about more of what I’m doing there in a later post.

The CPLP test! What can I say? It was 2 1/2 hours, 150 multiple choice questions. I started working with a great group of people in the local ASTD-chapter (Cascadia) several months ago to prepare for the test, purchased the ASTD Self-Study kit, and used some of the references on the Owl’s Ledge website. The test was pretty rough but I passed so now it’s own to my work project.

I’m currently looking at developing a train-the-trainer program for subject matter experts for my work submission. Feel free to share your thoughts on what has worked and not worked for you when developing this type of program. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts! Subject Matter Experts are an interesting breed and have a different perspective on “training.”