MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

Earn and keep your PMP certification

Getting and staying certified by the Project Management Institute takes a hefty number of education credits, or Professional Development Units (PDUs). You must take a certain number of PDU credits to qualify for the PMP or CAPM certification, and you must continue to earn PDU credits every three years.

MindLeaders is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute, and two more of our series have been approved for PDU credits.

You can take any of the following series for PDU credits. Project 2007 and Project Management from a People Perspective are the two new ones. Each of these courses include the ability to print out the necessary paperwork for your credits.

• Project Management Professional Certification 2005
• Project Management
• Effective Business Communication
• Fundamentals of Business Management
• Project 2007
• Project Management from a People Perspective
• Time Management Fundamentals
• Time Management for Maximum Productivity

Check out our Project Management certification information sheet for more details or drop a note in the comments if you have any questions.

Inspiration sites: Visualizing information

Today I'm just posting a couple of "cool site" links to check out. A well-designed graphic can pack tons more information than a dense paragraph of text, and a lot more people will take in that information when it's presented visually than wading through pure text.

The course designers at MindLeaders spend a lot of time building powerful graphics for our courses, and all of us could use inspiration when it's time to build a presentation or teach a topic. These are two of my favorite sites for that inspiration:

FlowingData compiles information graphics; the only theme to the information they're teaching is that it's being presented in spiffy charts, graphs, or infographics.

Columbus native Jessica Hagy of Indexed also produced a daily graphic o'info (usually snarky funny) and proves that we don't have to have a graphic design degree to teach with graphics.

Got any other favorite sites of neat ways to teach using visuals?

E-learning conversations on Twitter

Are you sick of hearing about Twitter yet? It seems like everyone's talking about it these days... and now I'm adding to it. Twitter is like a lobby in your favorite conference going on 24/7 all year long - there are constant conversations happening about the things you're most interested in, ready for you to listen to and participate in.

For those who are new to Twitter, it's sometimes called a "micro-blog." Like blogging, you post about whatever you'd like. Could be what you had for breakfast this morning, could be the latest great resource you found for your area of expertise. The trick is that each post must be 140 characters or less, so you must pack maximum information into the shortest sentence you can.

Most people, including me, when first hearing about Twitter, say variations of "Why would I want to do that?" The trick to Twitter is in who you "Follow." Once you have an account on Twitter (it's free), you choose people to "Follow." Those people's posts (called "tweets"), show up in a newest-to-oldest stream on your Twitter page.

Find people in your industry, in your hometown, in your favorite hobbies. Find the people who tweet more about the latest great resources than what they had for breakfast! Once you've found the right people, you'll have access to a constant flow of great tidbits of information.

Looking for people to follow in the e-learning field? Here's a list of great people on Twitter to get you started. Please add comments with your own handle or suggestions for more people to follow!

MindLeaders folks on Twitter:

•   Me (Beth Griese)
•   Mike Larsen
•   Philip Payne
•   ThirdForce

Industry analysts/leaders:

•   ASTD
•   Bersin & Associates
•   Brandon Hall Research
•   Elliott Masie
•   Josh Bersin

E-learning and learning leaders:

•   Cammy Bean
•   Cathy Moore
•   Janet Clarey
•   Tony Karrer
•   Wendy Wickham

 

A disclaimer: no offense meant to anyone I have not mentioned here! I am far from finding everyone in the learning field, and even of the ones I've found, I've only listed a few here in an attempt to make this list a good introduction, not overwhelming. If you're not on this list, please add a comment. I'd love to hear from more folks that I and others can add as we all keep wading deeper into the Twitter pool.

And one final note: We (particularly, I) are also working on a MindLeaders company Twitter account. I'll post an announcement when it's up and running.

New e-Learning courses released today

It's course release day at MindLeaders! Today's new arrivals are full Spanish translations of the Certified Professional Food Handler and Certified Professional Food Manager courses, plus new courses in the following topics:

• Innovation in the Workplace
• Problem Solving through Productive Thinking
• Lotus Notes 8.5

Full descriptions of these courses are available in our catalog. If you're a MindLeaders student, these are now available in you course listing.

More courses and tools to come. Please let me know any questions you may have!

New CompTIA Certifications

CompTIA is a busy bee! CompTIA's certifications are some of our most popular courses, especially A+, their certification for computer maintenenace and support.

CompTIA is in the midst of a lot of overhauling that's keeping our courseware team very busy. Here's the latest information on the CompTIA certification updates:

Security+	Update (SY0-201) released 10/14/08. The old test, SY0-101, will be available through 7/31/09.
Network+	2009 edition (N10-004) released 1/9/09. The old test, N10-003, will also be available through 7/31/09.
A+	Update scheduled for Q3, more details will be coming.

Our courseware developers are hard at work on all three of these updated tests. If you have any CompTIA-certified people in your organization, you might want to make sure they have the word about the brewing changes.

Expect the unexpected: Fire alarm at MindLeaders

So there I am today, working diligently and getting ready to attend a webinar, when the fire alarm goes off.

At MindLeaders, we used to work in a building where the fire alarm would go off every week or so for no good reason, so we're conditioned to respond to such an event in one way only: we all mill around in the hallways and ask each other "You think that's for real? Hmmm."

It took an announcement from our receptionist, Ruthie, telling everybody to get out, for us to actually evacuate.

Thank goodness the weather was mild enough today that it was no heavy burden for us to make jokes in the parking lot until the impressive number of firefighters (3 trucks!) could declare the building all clear. Rumor is that someone burned up a toaster oven in the offices above ours.

Only harm from the event: I missed my webinar. Oh, well. But it got me thinking about a couple of things:

• I'm a big believer that trainers are uniquely suited to helping build and communicate emergency procedures for your company. In the case of MindLeaders, today's lesson is that we ought to add a procedure that Ruthie will not only announce when a fire drill is expected, she will also announce when a fire alarm is unexpected.
  
  Stay on the lookout for ways that you can help your company be prepared. It's good karma that comes back to you manyfold: you're not just keeping people safe, you're proving the value of the training group and building valuable networks with Human Resources and other highly-connected teams in your organization.

• The unexpected make people sit up and take notice. It's one of the core principles in the book Made to Stick, which I highly recommend for trainers and presenters. A change in the routine makes us look around with new eyes.
  
  I'm not suggesting pulling any fire alarms in your next training session, but as I see in our courses every day, changing things up is the way to keep people's attention.

May your day be free of fires, but full of unexpected lessons!