Keep up with Training Trends - Use Email Alerts
Sometimes we training folks are like the cobblers with no shoes. We’re so busy helping others learn that we forget to keep our own skill set up to date!
We’re lucky to have great professional organizations like ASTD and ISPI to support the profession. But let’s be honest, attending even the local meetings can sometimes be hard if I know I’ll have to work late to catch up from the work missed by being at the seminar. I attended the CIASTD monthly meeting today and it was the first one I had been to in a while. I really enjoyed connecting with the other attendees, and kicked myself for not attending more often. (A shameless plug - BLP is the platinum sponsor of the annual CIASTD fall conference on November 5. Sign-up today; it will be great!)
An easier way for me to get just-in-time updates and training is through email alerts. Alerts are different than RSS feeds (I’m sure you’re already subscribing to the LOL feed!) Alerts send me a summary email of blogs, websites, or videos that are posted about the topics I care about.
I don’t have to already know that there’s a great blog on e-learning out there; my search engine will go out and find it for me. How great is that?!? I’m a Google girl, but I’m sure that Yahoo and other engines will do the same thing for. Here are instructions for how to set up alerts using your Google account.
One of my alerts scans blogs for “e-learning”. I get a summary email every day and can quickly see if anything looks interesting. This week I read some great posts that I would not have had time to go out and find on my own, like this post from Cathy Moore. The alerts let me poke my head in on the conversations others are having, and decide which ones I want to engage in.
So take a moment this week to set up an alert on a training topic you care about; you might be suprised what you find! Then think about, “How could my organization use RSS feeds and alerts to keep up with changes in our field?”
Tags: CIASTD, e-learning, email alerts, RSS feeds