I've been skooled!

I am HUGE proponent of continued education...That is, education as it relates to my job and function in society....my calling in life has always been training....growing up, I could be found training my siblings to do as I want (I'm the eldest of 4...total A-type too...poor kids), training my dogs to obey, and training my horses to perform...as I entered the 'real world' beyond HS, I continued to gravitate towards training....training new hires on my fire fighting crew, helping with remediation in boot camp, training subordinates in the Marine Corps, and so on....it seems everything I have done in my life, I have eventually ended up training....it's no wonder I have made my choice of career Training Development....it just makes sense!


Of course there are always other perspectives on how a person gets to where they are and why....my husband believes I just like to boss people around...tell them what to do....I say he is a goober and is over simplifying my enormous capacity for encouraging others to do what it is that is in their best interest to be doing :) SO THERE!


Anyway, I just returned from four full days of professional development. ASTD offers a variety of courses for educators and others working to support education of all types....the classes I attended were the E-Learning and Advanced E-Learning Instructional Design programs....they were AMAZING! I expected traditional classroom instruction....that was not the case at all, and fitting considering the content was based on making your training more LEARNER-centric vs CONTENT-centric....we learned what our instructor set out to teach us, and SO MUCH MORE! The class was presented in an instructor led, open discussion forum type format....we were provided guidance, demonstration, and challenges, and we did the rest!


My fellow participants included business owners, CEO's, consultants, programmers, subject matter experts (SME's), writers (like me), project managers, graphic artists, and so on....because this 'training' was more knowledge based than process based, it was a learning experience that touched us all....


I will gladly and enthusiastically attend more of these type classes in the future...Hopefully I can go at least once a year to help stay on top of industry best-practices, tools, and technologies. This instruction truly challenged the way I have always gone about business, inspired me to look at development from another perspective, and also provided me affirmation for many of my own best practices based on my own experiences.


I can't be truly honest with you all unless I reveal the negative side of this experience as well though...it's not all sunshine and roses.....there WAS that horribly long, exhausting, endless, dreary drive up to DC each morning, and back home.....even though the last two days of class were a bit closer to me in Alexandria, I was still faced with much too much of this....


and this.....


There is always a down side....

Happy Trails....and TRAINING!
Leah