As The Saying Goes

Is it really true, that old adage: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"?

Deep in thought this morning at my desk I was reevaluating my current work/life balance and wondering if, in fact this was true.

As an instructor, I cared very much that the content provided to my students was meaningful, timely and valuable. I tried to relate it with the real world and give as much opportunity for group discussion as could be allotted to our tight course timeline.

I facilitated many successful sales, telesales and customer relationship management courses over my many years of instructing. I read many books, listened to audio tapes and knew what to do in any given situation.

What I couldn't do was put everything I knew, had learned and successfully instructed, into practice. I was not a very good sales person, but I knew what made a good salesperson great and could share that information with others.

Many of the individuals in my training sessions have had very successful careers in sales and I've had many of them remain in contact with me. I received an email not long ago from someone in one of those sessions thanking me for the time I took to share my knowledge, my pain, my ideas, feedback and wisdom and for being frank when I told her at the end of the three days that she really wasn't cut out for sales and strongly suggested she think about other career opportunities. She (like me) knew what had to be done but just couldn't do it…so guess what?

She is now teaching sales management for a large multinational – taking many of the same approaches I did with her and mentoring new sales professionals in her company.

We talked for an hour about how we could take all those great exercises we did in class and translate them to an E-Learning environment, and it's got me thinking about it more and more…

Maybe, just maybe, that saying really is true. I can't so I'll help someone else do.

New E-Learning Network

For those that know me well, you know I have a passion for community, sharing, education and people!

I am pleased to let you know that I've been working very hard to bring all those things together via a FREE community for e-learning professionals from ALL areas of e-learning and instructional design including, content generation, testing, storyboards, graphics, animations, programs used, databases, and will bring you, my fellow e-learning pros, a new blog complete with some of my best friends in the e-learning spere, best practices, cheap solutions (I'm all about the pocketbook fitness challenge) and some networking and free online presentations and support from some of the biggest names out there – like Microsoft, Articulate (thanks Tom!!!) Trivantis, just to name a few. And to the ITPRO community of Greater Toronto – thank you for letting us piggy-back as a Special Interest Group!

My goal for this community is to create a place where e-learning pros can meet and greet, learn new skills, network and find people with expertise that perhaps you don't possess but need for a project, a place for free learning and sharing of ideas, best practices, and solutions as well as a place to engage yourself and your peers in a little friendly competition from time to time.

I invite you to visit the blog and if you are interested in posting an article please let me know – my contact info is in the May post…The online community will go live before the end of June (I hope) www.etrainnetwork.com – currently there is a placeholder there until my good friend Dominic at Rebel Networks gets me up and running. (thanks Dom for supporting the e-learning community). We already have our first item up on the blog-poll – asking about your dedication to Mobile Learning…so get heard and put your vote in.

It is also important for you to understand that while I had the idea for this community I couldn't do it without the great support of Microsoft Canada, Shannon, Jenn, Sheri and Ian, who being in Scotland truly makes this a GLOBAL community for e-learning professionals.

Thank you and I hope you find it as fun and enjoyable to participate as I have had putting it all together.

Discovering Camtasia Studio’s SmartFocus

It's been a number of years since I used Camtasia Studio 3 to create a cool recording of a virtual classroom learning session.

I was concerned that perhaps I had forgotten how to use it or maybe there were so many features they added since 2001 that maybe, just maybe I'd not be able to use it and I'd look a fool for having said, "ooooh – Camtasia Studio ROCKS".

The reality is, it does still rock, only this time, it rocks WAY MORE!

The one cool feature I found that I just love, especially since one of the projects I'm working on is a project to demo a new area of a company "portal", I needed to find a way to zoom in to areas on the screen capture so that I could show a close-up of the screen options.

SmartFocus is a new tool in Camtasia Studio that does just that. While you mouse is resting in an area on the screen, SmartFocus adds code to the record to zoom in to an area, then when the mouse is moved, it zooms back out. The cool thing is that you can edit the SmartFocus points if you want some but not all of the preselected, Camtasia assigned focus points. Unfortunately I was not able to attain permission from my company to use the item I created for this session, but maybe if I can find some time in my busy schedule I'll post the example.

I highly recommend that you try it! You get a 30 day trial – no restrictions on use like some programs. (My new big beef these days are those companies that let you try their stuff but you can't save what you spent hours working on!!!! It makes me not want to purchase their products for the frustration. But I do understand it is a business preservation act so … enough said! J)