Training from the BACK of the Room!

Every now and then I go on a YouTube search for new brain science videos. Sometimes I come across ones that I simply must post in this blog because of their usefulness in understanding how the human brain works. The following two short videos on the human brain’s capacity for memory-making are definitely in the “must-post-here-now” category!

To my blog readers: You already know that “Follow-Ups” are optional activities that help participants revisit what they’ve learned from a class or training. So I always post the Follow-Ups for the “Training from the BACK of the Room!” (TBR) classes I have facilitated, in this case, the Nashville, Tennessee classes that were held this week.

It doesn’t matter if you’re instructing small groups (under a dozen people), medium-size groups (1-3 dozen people), or large groups (three dozen or more). Nor does it matter if you’re presenting in a lecture hall or to an auditorium-size audience. And it really doesn’t matter what your topic is. You still need some quick, easy, and effective group management strategies.

Are you part of an Agile community of coaches and trainers? Do you want to improve your audience’s engagement, information retention, and overall learning outcomes, no matter what the topic or the duration of your presentation? Do you know what is hot these days among Agile aficionados?

If you attended my webinar on August 31st,  “Brain-Based Presenting: Getting the Brain to Pay Attention,” I’ve created another useful give-away for you. If you weren’t able to attend the webinar, read on for information about how you can access it for free.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you already know about “Warm-Ups.” And you already know about TBR (“Training from the BACK of the Room!”). And you may already be planning to attend the TBR class on October 3rd – 4th 2016 in Nashville, Tennessee.

You’ve attended my webinar “Brain-Based Presenting: Getting the Brain to Pay Attention” and now you’re ready to do some of the “Follow-Ups” – spaced practice activities that will help move what you learned into your long-term memory.

If you haven’t already signed up for my free “Brain-Based Presenting” webinar, sponsored by HRDQ, consider joining me, and an enthusiastic group of global trainers, on August 31st 2016 for an hour of exciting, brain-based learning.

I’ve had a number of inquiries about the “Training from the BACK of the Room” (TBR) Trainer Certification Course coming up on October 5th 2016, and held in Nashville, Tennessee. So I’m reposting this information if you (or any of your training colleagues) are interested in becoming a TBR Certified Trainer.

I am always surprised and delighted with the practical and helpful training aids created by many of the “Training from the BACK of the Room” (TBR) Certified Trainers. This “4Cs Design Checklist” – created by Christine Brautigam – is a training design jewel!

Carole Carter-Cleaver and Otsuka America have done it again! Along with the hugely popular “6 Trumps Guide,” Carole and team have created a free “6 Trumps Bookmark” for anyone who wishes to use these six brain science principles to teach and train.

Ed Buhain here (Sharon invited me to author this blog post): Have you ever attended a presentation on the hottest bleeding-edge technology and the presentation turned out to be less exciting than watching the paint grow (or the grass dry)? So why do so many technical talks consist of reading slides or pasting code blocks, and that’s it?

I am often asked, “What do you do about company-created slide decks that you have to use for a mandatory company training?” And, of course, many company slide decks are still text-heavy, template-bound, with lots of bulleted points and no images to break up the monotony.

Awhile back, I posted a wildly popular give-away –  “The 6 Trumps Guide” – on my website. I’ve now created a “6 Trumps Card Set” from the guide – a simple and fun little set of cards to give to each training participant and to use in a variety of train-the-trainer activities.

My blog readers already know that “Follow-Ups” are optional activities that help participants revisit what they’ve learned from a class or training. Here are the Follow-Ups for the London “Training from the BACK of the Room!” (TBR) classes held this past month of May 2016.

According to Agile Coach Luca Minudel, “SmHarter” is the fusion of two words: “Smart” (working and improving with intelligence and mastery), and “Heart” (using collaboration, purpose, passion, and creativity to delight customers and learners).

Sometimes someone can take a lot of information and synthesize it into something elegant, simple, and easy to learn from. Agile Coach and Consultant Emily Webber did just that …

A “Very-Cool-Thing” happened at the “Training from the BACK of the Room!” (TBR) class in Orlando, Florida, April 14th – 15th 2016. Participant Vic Bonacci hosted a podcast with eight other trainers there. Here’s what happened …

“Follow-Ups” are optional activities that help you revisit, remember, and use what you’ve learned from a class or workshop. Brain scientists call this “spaced practice.” Follow-Ups help you move content into long-term memory and help you master concepts and use them in practical ways.

Bryan Paul Kelly is a friend of mine and a fabulous writer of great content for anyone who wants to get – and keep – the attention of adult learners. Here is how to get a free copy of Bryan’s book “12 Simple Steps to Stunning Slides: A Guide For Non-Designers Based On Brain Science Research.”

You just finished a customer service training for a small group of your company’s employees. They listened attentively the whole time your were talking. Now you stop and ask, “Do you understand?” They nod their heads. You continue, “Do you have any questions?” They shake their heads. “Good,” you think. “They’ve got it.”

Actively engaging an audience during an F2F (face-to-face) presentation, speech, or training is not as difficult as you might think. All that matters is your commitment to do three simple things.

If you attended the Training 2016 Conference P01 Certificate Program (held in Orlando February 12th – 14th 2016), these quick and easy follow-up activities will help you remember and apply what you learned. If you didn’t attend this training program, the activities will still help you improve your own instructional skills.

Want an instructional design and delivery model that is easy to use? That is applicable to all the topics you teach? That is based on current brain science about how humans learn best? Here it is: the 4Cs Map.

Brain scientists call it “priming” – getting your brain ready to learn. I call them “Warm-Ups” – short, quick, optional activities that will introduce you to some of the concepts covered in the 3-day Pre-Conference P01 Certificate Program at the Training 2016 Conference & Expo being held in Orlando, Florida in February 2016.

If you would like to become a Certified Trainer and present “Training from the BACK of the Room!” in your own countries and for your own clients and customers, extra Certification Course days have been added to the Orlando FL and London UK classes this spring. Read on for more information about these dynamic, practical, and useful train-the-trainer programs.  

If you want to create meaningful conversations about topic-related issues, in a face-to-face learning environment, veteran law enforcement officer and trainer Nick Zingo has just the thing for you: “Café Conversations.”

In my book, “Using Brain Science to Make Training Stick,” I gave my friend and professional colleague, Beverly Woolery, credit for helping to create “The 6 Trumps Workshop” that is a value-added part of the book. Beverly took the workshop to a more advanced level and created her own longer variation of it. Then she generously sent it my way – for you!

Need some quick, topic-related opening and closing activities for your 2016 training programs – ones that can be used with any topic and any group of learners? Here are four strategies that will energize learners while actively engaging them in making connections and drawing conclusions.

Sharon here, letting you know that, after the New Year holiday, I will begin a 2016 series of posts with lots of practical and useful information about brain-based training, teaching, and learning. Meanwhile, with the New Year just around the corner, I decided to post this article which I paraphrased from “The Guardian“ with 10 tips that are simple and delightfully easy to do.

Sometimes, in the middle of the hectic holiday season, with global newspapers full of fear, I search for (or create) articles or slide presentations that give me hope. Such are the following 3 items in this post – gifts of hope for you and me for this holiday season and 2016.

An “RSA Short” (tagline: “Espresso for the Mind”) is a short (obviously) animated video created by RSAnimate that covers one specific concept. In this video, Sir Kenneth Robinson speaks about the importance of flourishing and how both education and organizations impact this essential human need. His unforgettable ending to this RSA Short makes it well worth the two minutes it takes to view it.

Sometimes the simplest ideas make the most sense. If you have children (or you have friends with children), here are some simple tips to help your children learn. These tips will also help them become happier and more successful both at school and at home.

Here is a simple Thanksgiving slide presentation – with a few unexpected things to be thankful for! Wishing you and your families and friends a Happy Thanksgiving (in the USA) and a Day of Thanks (everywhere else!).

I know trainers who have totally let go of PowerPoint in face-to-face instruction – they don’t use ANY slides at all! They have recreated their content delivery strategies so that the focus is entirely on the learner and not on a slide screen. How? Read on to find out …

I can’t help it: I find these great articles on how the human brain learns – information that hasn’t been easily available until fairly recently – and I just have to post them here so that you can feel as excited as I have about these “brain-based learning” discoveries!

In the last class I facilitated, “Training from the BACK of the Room,” the participants talked about scattering “corn-seeds” throughout their training worlds – taking the content they learned and teaching it to others (think: mustard seed parable).

For the past fifteen years, the intersection between education/training and cognitive neuroscience has become stronger as brain scientists now have ways to monitor and record what effective teachers and trainer have known for a long time: how the human brain learns best.

On this website, you have, at your fingertips, dozens of slide presentations (“Slides About PowerPoint”) that give you hundreds of ways to create awesome slide decks, without boring your audiences to death. Here is my latest discovery – a slide presentation that is so fantastic that I had to create a new blog post just for it.

“Follow-Ups” are optional activities that help you revisit, remember, and use what you’ve learned from a class or workshop. Brain scientists call this “spaced practice.” Follow-Ups help you move content into long-term memory and help you master concepts and use them in practical ways.

I’ve posted Warm-Ups before – those pre-program activities that brain scientists call “priming.”  Warm-Ups are short, quick, optional activities that informally introduce learners to concepts that will be formally covered in traditional instruction in the near future.

Maybe you’ve never heard of the global, 2-day train-the-trainer program titled “Training from the BACK of the Room!” (from the book by the same name). Or perhaps you’ve considered attending the class but you’re not sure if it applies to what you do as a trainer, teacher, or classroom instructor.

You’ve just been told: “The adult learners you’re going to be instructing are a tough group – very serious-minded and not at all willing to participate in activities. They just want the information given to them via a lecture, without any fluff.” What do you do?

Here are seven great suggestions for learning anything faster. The first one will probably surprise you. The sixth is essential. And the seventh explains something you’ve probably experienced many times without realizing it: “The Dip.”

My job – as an author, adult instructor, and small business owner –  requires that I sit for long hours in front of a computer doing the behind-the-scenes stuff that forms the foundation of my books, training programs, and business. I hurt – I mean REALLY hurt – at the end of a computer workday.

Questioning strategies get short-changed in today’s content-driven, answer-focused, adult training world. And while adults often need to learn information critical to their job success, they also need practice in asking questions that lead to breakthroughs in thinking, creativity, and problem-solving.

While school bells are ringing for kids in countries around the world this month, a record number of adults are taking to classrooms (both in real time and online) as well – to learn new skills, improve work performance, or expand their own knowledge.

Her name is Sue Anne Dunlevie, and she is a prolific writer and blogger who gives away tons of practical, useful content FOR FREE! Her blog is not only about how to create a successful blog, but about how to create inspiring content, period!

The questions usually appear at the end of a train-the-trainer program that I’ve facilitated: “How can I do what you do? How do I begin creating my own (speaking, training, consulting) business? How do I become an independent, professional trainer or speaker?” Here are a few suggestions “from the field.”

You’ve just completed a train-the-trainer day with lots of great information to use and new instructional strategies to experiment with. So how do you keep from falling back into traditional, lecture-based methods of instruction?

There is a simple but profoundly important question to ask yourself whenever you teach, train, or present information to others: “Who’s doing the most talking, moving, or writing?” If the answer is YOU, then YOU are doing the most learning!

Once in awhile I come across something so inspirational and life-changing that I just have to share it with everyone. This short, powerful video is one of those things. 

I love brain stuff! Especially the brain stuff that helps me become better at what I do, both personally as well as professionally. So when I found this little presentation gem about the brain, I thought it merited its own blog post.

Maybe creating a better website is not your goal. Maybe you just want to know more about the brain and what it pays attention to, whether looking at a website, a slide presentation, a handout, or any visual display of information.

Sometimes it’s the most obvious thing that you might need a gentle reminder about, especially when the pace of your workday feels frenetic and leaves you exhausted at the day’s end. So when I came across this informative slide presentation, I thought you might find it interesting and helpful. Grab one or two ideas and try them out – and enjoy!

While this short slide presentation speaks to parents with school-age children, I found the 5 tips to be great for adults, as well. When we, as adults, find ways to beat summer “brain drain,” we also energize and refresh our own thinking and learning skills. Happy summer all!

Ever heard of “RSA Shorts?” How about “Espresso for the Mind?” One of the first “fast-draw” companies, RSAnimate, makes these delightful, short, fast-paced presentations that brilliantly capture one question or concept in an entertaining and visually interesting way.

In this fabulous new video by “Smarter Every Day,”  you’ll see a “hands-on” demonstration (literally!) of neuroplasticity, and how your brain hardwires anything it learns to the point that it is very challenging for you to unlearn it. You’ll also see what happens when you unlearn something, then try to relearn it. This great brain experiment uses a tool we’re all familiar with: a bicycle!

One of the stress-inducing issues I have with instructing others in large, face-to-face groups, is remembering names. And, from the conversations I’ve had with many other trainers, teachers, and instructors, it seems I’m not alone – many of us have a hard time remembering names. What to do?

What is is about travel (especially to countries other than our own) that makes the human brain sit up and pay attention? What happens inside the brain to make it change itself, rewiring neurons and making new synaptic connections?

Knowing the Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) is all well and good, but what do you DO with that information when you’re instructing others? Let’s find out.

Bloom’s Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain (a fancy term for six critical thinking skills) has been around for a very long time and is still taught as part of educational pedagogy in most colleges and universities across the USA. Although many educators and trainers are familiar with Bloom’s, the percentage of them that deliberately design courses and programs using Bloom’s is probably quite small. Why?

Once in awhile, you come across a slide presentation that says, in a couple of simple icons, what most folks take hundreds of words  – or years – to say. The ongoing debate about “heart versus head” or “emotion versus logic” in education and training today is captured in this simple slide presentation:

Extroverts LOVE interacting with dozens of people during a class or training. They relish the exchange of information and energy. However, even the most passionate trainer who happens to be an introvert often feels overwhelmed just THINKING about the upcoming interactions. I know because I’m an introvert at heart.

Just about the time I thought I had written enough about the power of images in helping the human brain to learn more and to remember information longer, I came across this fabulous slide presentation that truly proves a picture is worth a thousand words:

Perhaps you remember the series of books for kids titled “Choose Your Own Adventure” (if not, and if you have kids, check out these cool adventure stories on Amazon). Branching stories are the adult versions: structured, self-paced, scenario-based learning experiences.

We all have “gremlins” – bad habits that keep us company, even when we’re determined to transform them into more benign companions. One of mine is procrastination, that time-stealer that can make or break both business deals and personal relationships. Here’s a short-but-great video on how to manage this gremlin.

For the ATD Sacramento Super Session participants of either the “Got a Minute?” March 19th workshop or the “Using Brain Science to Make Training Stick” March 20th class, here are 5 specific “Follow-Ups” you can do to make sure you remember and use what you learned during the Super Session:

You’ve just attended a great train-the-trainer workshop (perhaps it was one of the two sessions sponsored by ATD Sacramento last week!), and the excitement there has been replaced by the busyness of your daily life. Here are 5 ways to hold onto what you learned:

Take a moment right now to roll your neck, stretch your arms above your head, lean back in your chair, and take a few deep breaths. I’ll pause writing and do this quick Body Break with you … There now, you probably feel a bit more alert, and perhaps curious, as well.