This week’s app is “AppStart for iPad”, a really handy guide on how to find the best apps to get the most of out of your iPad. This week I was helping someone get setup with an iPad who had never used one before and I was reminded how useful a resource like this one can be to someone starting out.

The app’s approach is to break down the various “How do I do this?” elements that a new user might be interested in, and then give a list of the top apps that provide that type of functionality. Let’s say for example that you were just hired into a new job and you received a company-issued iPad (by the way, this is one of the fantastic perks we enjoy here at Bottom-Line Performance!). You really would like to get some sort of news reader app installed but you’re not sure where to start. With AppStart for iPad, you can just tap on the “Newsstand To Go” button and you’re provided with a list of options that the AppAdvice editors have ranked. You also get a small description, the price, and a link to the App Store to immediately download it.

While it’s true that a lot of this information can be found online, having it all combined in a single place that is available when you’re off-line is very helpful. Adding to the app’s appeal is its vintage aesthetic and the inclusion of helpful articles on common user issues like “The Lowdown on Printing – How to print with no strings attached”. More than just providing you with a list of apps to print with, the article breaks down the printing setup for an iPad whether you have an AirPrint compatible printer (tip: you’re better off if you do) or an older printer that may be supported by a third-party app.

When you’re a new iPad owner, the most daunting initial tasks after setup is figuring out exactly how to use the iPad to improve your access to information and overall workflow. This is a great way to help make that job easier for someone. Even if you’ve used the iPad extensively for over two years you’re likely to find the information helpful as a reference when you’re looking for a quick list of apps to perform a specific function.

AppStart for iPad – [FREE] (iPad Only)

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We are pleased to announce that our friend and colleague RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez) will be guest hosting our weekly #TalkTech chat this Thursday, May 17th at 3 pm EST. RJ is a former Senior Evangelist for Adobe who now spends his time as a Mobile Learning Analyst and consultant. His blog, The m-Learning Revolution Blog, is a highly regarded resource for the latest in mLearning news, trends, and analysis. He also actively shares mLearning information via his Facebook Page.

Our staff has had many a great conversation with RJ on Twitter and the relationship is yet another example of how powerful social media can be for connecting like-minded professionals within their fields. Be sure to follow RJ on Twitter and tune in at 3 pm on Thursday as he will post three articles and topics on Mobile Web Apps, the move to HTML5-based apps over native, and the rise of enterprise BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programs for us to discuss. Just use the #TalkTech hashtag to participate. More on this week’s topics:

1. The emergence of mobile web apps and what it means: The Age of Mobile Web Apps Dawns – .Net Magazine
2. New Trend? From Native Apps to HTML-5 based Apps: You’ll never believe how LinkedIn built its new iPad app (exclusive) - VentureBeat and Web journey complete, FT switching off iOS app — paidContent.

3. Enterprise Bring Your Own Device and what it means to mLearning: Learn more via the Youtube video Key Market Trends: Enterprise BYOD: IDC’s Steve Drake.

#TalkTech is a weekly chat on emerging trends in technology and how they relate to learning and design. We post the first topic at 3 pm and allow about ten minutes for open discussion, then do the same for the other two topics. Follow @BLPIndy on Twitter to stay up to date on #TalkTech and participate in the weekly chat.

As always, we will be posting a transcript of this week’s chat on Storify. We find it helpful to go back and reference the key points and ideas that participants have shared.

This week’s app is “SayHi Translate”, an extremely impressive “Pocket Interpreter” that will enable you to quickly translate phrases that you speak out loud into many different languages. Your conversation can also be translated the other way, with your communication partner’s response also being translated back into your primary language.

It may sound complicated, but it really isn’t. The app’s design is incredible, it’s hard to imagine it being any more simple to use. The design mimics a text-messaging conversation between two people (one blue, one green). The blue represents the Primary language chosen, and the green side represents the Secondary language. The application defaults to English and Spanish respectively, but you can set either to one of over 30 available languages in the settings menu. When you tap one of the supported languages and speak it, it automatically translates the text of what you said into the message window, and then speaks your phrase out loud and provides the text of the translation as well. This let’s you not only confirm what it is attempting to translate, but visually see the translation once it is completed. An entire conversation can be maintained within the app, and then selectively shared via email, text message, Twitter, or Facebook.

In addition to providing a handy way for you to quickly communicate with someone that doesn’t speak your language, you can also use this app to practice your fluency and pronunciation with a foreign language you are trying to learn. By tapping on the Secondary button you can speak in that language and have it confirm with you what it heard, and then translate it back into your Primary chosen language. By using the tool this way, you can practice your speaking skills and work to perfect your intonation and clarity.

I absolutely love apps like this that provide multiple uses, are cleverly designed, and leverage the ability of my iOS devices in new and interesting ways. Throw in the fact that it’s a universal app that works on both the iPad and iPhone with a single purchase and this one is easy to recommend.

SayHi Translate – [.99] (Universal App)

Note: This app is currently on sale for .99 and will be $2.99 after a introductory period.

Follow Brandon on Twitter for more tips and tracks on all things App related. Got an app you want featured? Send him a tweet to have it considered!

Are Your Learners Disengaged?

It’s true: no one likes being forced to do anything. L&D professionals have the tough task of taking job related information and making it easy to learn while appeasing all the appropriate company stakeholders. Budgets are shrinking and the ubiquity of “rapid authoring tools” is making it more and more tempting to churn out eLearning in-house that is cost-effective and easy to produce. But if your learning solution is not designed with the learner’s human characteristics and preferences in mind, it will fail…no matter how consistent you made the corporate branding look.

Even when part of your course is brilliantly executed, if learner’s minds are not already primed to expect a positive experience, they will likely have already written the training off as worthless. Once the learner has judged that your training is not worthwhile, you have lost them. No matter how great a section of the training might be, they will not get value from it.

It’s always a challenge to make required training engaging while on a budget. We have tackled this challenge countless times through our projects and while we do not have one tried and true answer for you, we do have a few general tips to help you avoid some common problems.

Things that shut people down:

• Required training: Unfortunately, the mere mention of required training is enough to shut workers down while evoking painful memories of the painful courses of yesteryear taken in IE 6. Realize that you will have to overcome learners’ innate bias against the word “training” and make your solution even more engaging.
• To-do lists: We all have a long one. When training becomes another task in a list of items to be checked off for completion, learners will see no inherent value in the training other than being able to say they completed it. Position your training as something unique, different, and immediately useful.
• Courses written for content rather than user experience: In her excellent blog post “Designing Learning for the Ultimate Mobile Learner’s Experience,” Mayra Aixa Villar (@mayraaixavillar) explains how writing a course around learning objectives can ignore the actual experience learners will have while taking the course itself. Trying to fit a 50 page PDF into a 15 minute eLearning course is simply not going to work, so be prepared to streamline your content to highlight the essentials. “What do I want learners to be able to do differently after completing this course?”
• Stupid scenarios that seem entirely false but are politically correct: We know you don’t want to offend anyone, and we know you want to figure out a scenario that is broad enough to apply to situations across your organization. But if scenarios are not specific and realistic, learners will tune them out…and tune out the rest of your course. Don’t be afraid to push the boundaries a little bit.
• Refuse to make people uncomfortable: After all, it’s only when we are slightly uncomfortable or somehow on the edge of our seats that we are truly paying attention.
• Making everything the same throughout the training: It is always tempting to keep a course ordered and uniform throughout. In fact, it feels correct and appropriate to do so. But the Principle of Difference tells us that people will remember the item that stands out the most from the others. Taking a key section or point and making it different from the rest of the course will actually help learners remember better.
• Focusing on Telling….making it one size fits all: Situations will vary for your learners, especially if they work in different departments or divisions. No one’s experience is one size fits all, so you don’t make your training one size fits all, either. It may seem more efficient to push a course out that will “apply to everyone,” but the cost in lost productivity and money spent having to fix your mistake later will ultimately outweigh the upfront invest of creating a truly thoughtful, well implemented eLearning course.

While the cost of building generic training for the sake of efficiency may be low, this usually comes at the expense of effectiveness. More time and money spent up-front to avoid these common pit falls is the wise choice when focusing on the bottom line.

In addition to giving you with a virtual museum to explore, the app also provides other clever features to help you get the most out of your experience. “Art Like This” let’s you immediately bring up similar pieces to your current selection, expanding your awareness of other works and artists that you might have otherwise not easily found. “Art Near Me” is a location based feature that helps alert you to what pieces are near your current location, giving you options to consider for making a day-trip to your local museum to see something first hand. You’ll likely be amazed by the number of pieces that are within a couple miles of your location! These features are part of the reason that the New York Times reported that for art on your iPad, Art Authority for the iPad has no rival.

In addition to increasing your personal cultural awareness and art appreciation, the arts have role to play in sparking our creativity and informing our designs. I’d like to share two quotes with you that I think speak to this better than I could:

“In my own philanthropy and business endeavors, I have seen the critical role that the arts play in stimulating creativity and in developing vital communities….the arts have a crucial impact on our economy and are an important catalyst for learning, discovery, and achievement in our country.”
–Paul G. Allen, Co-Founder, Microsoft

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have lots of dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solution without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
–Steve Jobs

So maybe you haven’t made time in quite a while to visit a museum or perhaps that Bachelor of the Arts degree could use a refresher. An app like this one lets you use the most cutting edge technology of today to bring some of history’s best works to you.

Art Authority for iPad- [$4.99 (Currently on sale half-price)]

Follow Brandon on Twitter for more tips and tracks on all things App related. Got an app you want featured? Send him a tweet to have it considered!

If you are reading this, you already know mobile learning is a hot topic. You also know that incorporating social media into mobile learning is even more of a buzz term. With the price of an iPad 2 now dropped to just $400, the prospect of implementing a smart phone or tablet-based solution across your organization is probably looking more and more attractive. But how do you know what is actually practical, and what are some examples of how mobile learning is already being used?

While we all love using our fancy phones and tablets, let’s not forget to learn a lesson from the past. With the introduction of video in 1980s, evangelists proclaimed that “The future of learning is here!” and everyone would be learning exclusively from video. When eLearning appeared in the 1990s, it too was proclaimed the final solution to performance issues. We now know that video and eLearning are viable and useful, but not the be all, end all. We should look at mobile with the same set of eyes…it’s exciting, but we need to be pragmatic if we hope to implement successful solutions within an organization.

While tablets and phones are both often called “mobile,” we cannot lump them in the same category all the time. They offer vastly different experiences. It’s true that both devices are easy to carry with you, but the small screen of the phone should cause you to ask some tough questions before using it to deliver learning. “Will this content be easily consumed and retained in this format?” “How will my design that looks good on the iPad look on the iPhone?” There is no one right answer.

Perhaps the greatest danger of all is the temptation to simply recreate our beloved “click next to continue” courses on mobile devices. In his recent blog post Mobile Learning Should Be More Than Converting Desktop eLearning to HTML5, mLearning analyst RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez) stresses the importance of creating a unique mobile learning experience, and we could not agree with him more. Think about the sales reps going through your course in the evening on their smart phone or an overworked employee grabbing 5 minutes to “do mobile learning” on a tablet in a coffee shop. How will they need that information delivered to them?

Need some examples of how mobile learning is already being used? We gathered three from the educational, consumer, and enterprise world for you to consider.

1. iPhoneography and Twitter from a Mobile Device: Infinite Thinking Machine, a YouTube series on mobile learning, is full of examples of how mobile is already being used effectively for education.  Lisa Highfill, a 5th grade teacher in California, has her class thinking mobile and social in ways that would make most Learning and Development departments green with envy. She uses a “flipped classroom” approach with students watching video and interactive lectures at home, then coming to class to share and discuss. Most interesting of all, Highfill has created a class Twitter account (because 5th graders probably don’t need their own Twitter, do they?) and let’s students “tweet their learning using the art of iPhoneography and reflective thinking in 140 characters at a time.” What’s the value? Students can bring a field trip or classroom experience to life by taking a photograph, synthesizing their thoughts, and tweeting it out for their peers to see.

While Highfill’s approach is obviously fostering engagement among her 5th graders, will your corporate crowd embrace a mobile learning solution like this? What would it be used for? Imagine a new employee orientation procedure where participants use their smartphones to explore the environment and Tweet photos and comments of things they see or questions they have. It would be easy for the L&D department to respond to what they post and fill in the gaps. This formof exploratory, conversational learning via mobile phone could certainly take many other forms as well.

2. Using Snapguide to Create How-To Guides for the Workplace: Have you checked out Snapguide yet? If not, you should. Snapguide is an elegant app for individuals to find, create, and share how-to guides created using the iPhone. Guides can include text, photos and video and allow users to make comments, ask questions, and share.  Once again, the possibilities of an application like this delivering on-demand performance support are endless. While Snapguide is a consumer-focused solution and guides are public, a similar type of application would have a high degree of usefulness in an enterprise setting.

3. On-demand support and retention of knowledge via quiz-style learning games on the iPad: Mobile learning is already being used by real companies to deliver real performance support. The trick is to make a game mechanic that feels fresh and new (yes, that means no Jeopardy). Our Knowledge Guru game, a Web App playable on desktop or iPad, is a quiz style learning game that uses the principles of repetition and spaced learning to help users master content quickly. We recently partnered with Dow Agroscience in their initiative to educate sales reps on their latest product. Dow provided sales reps with iPads preloaded with Knowledge Guru and the reps played the game at their leisure to reinforce their product knowledge. We’ve received terrific feedback thus far from Dow, citing a high level of engagement from the reps. There is no doubt that mobile learning delivered on the iPad is attractive and practical. Whether you choose to use Knowledge Guru or another quiz-style game to support learning, you can expect a high success rate.

Are you using mobile learning in your organization? If not, how do you plan to implement it in the future?

This week’s app is “Pocket”, an really cool way for you to store various content that you find on-line and want to read or watch later. Perhaps the best way to think of Pocket is to imagine it as a DVR for the internet. Let’s say you were reading Steve Boller’s great post “Trainers: Is Gladwell’s 10,000 Rule a Hoax? ” and didn’t have time to finish it. With Pocket, you would just save it for later and finish it when you had time, across any of your devices or computers.

Now your first thought might be “I can just bookmark a link in my browser”, and of course that’s true. However a browser bookmark typically stays tied to that browser and that computer, you likely aren’t setup to have it automatically populated out to each of your devices. Also, when your app syncs on a given device, it also stores the data locally so you don’t have to have a constant internet connection to read what’s in your Pocket. There are other apps out there like Instapaper that provide similar services, however with it’s recent redesign, Pocket (formerly “Read it Later”) has absolutely raised the bar in design and functionality. Extending the value of Pocket, many of the most popular Apps for content consumption like FlipBoard, Zite, Twitter, and more provide methods for saving your content directly into your Pocket account.

While some have expressed concern about the negative impact that technology and the internet in particular has had on long-form reading, there have been indications that the iPad is providing some relief to this trend. Apps like Pocket can help you save meaningful content for later and get the most out of your digital tools. When viewing your content you can sort it by image, video, or text and you can even apply tags to your content to help with later sorting and retrieval.

So what will you keep in your Pocket? Do you think apps like this can help sustain long-form content in a byte-size world?

Pocket – [FREE] (Universal App)

Follow Brandon on Twitter for more tips and tracks on all things App related. Got an app you want featured? Send him a tweet to have it considered!

Click here to view the embedded video.

We are never at loss for creative energy at BLP. Even in the midst of client projects and marketing efforts, our talented staff finds ways to pursue artistic endeavors and build their skills in new and exciting ways. As Sharon Boller, president of BLP says, “Giving back is such an important part of our company culture, it’s great when we can blend skill-building for ourselves and our clients with ways we can impact the community where we work and live.”

Today, BLP employee Steve Boller (who is also a singer/songwriter), has released his newest single, “Choose to Hope.” It’s about making the choice to love and give back, even when it isn’t easy. We think you’ll love it.

But it is about more than just the song. Steve is donating 100% of the proceeds from song downloads to Dayspring Center, one of our main charitable partners. The temporary homeless shelter serves families in Indianapolis by providing them the ways and means to lift themselves out of homelessness.

Nick Shelton, Sr. Multimedia Developer at BLP, directed, and produced the greenscreen music video and animated the whole thing using AfterEffects. The final product is amazing, and we think it really showcases our expertise in video as well. In fact, the skills we are showcasing in this project show the incredible potential of AfterEffects and greenscreen video and how they might be used as part of a multimedia learning experience. Believe it or not, the entire video was filmed with our HD video camera in front of a green screen in our office parking lot!

No matter what creative talents and abilities your staff possesses, chances are there are plenty of innovative ways you can leverage them to build more skills within your organization, or even to support your charitable initiatives. While Steve will obviously benefit musically from having such a fantastic video, BLP has also benefited from the opportunity to fine-tune and showcase our video creation skills. It’s exciting to think about how a video of this caliber could be integrated into a higher end learning solution to really drive value and engagement. Does your staff have any talents that you could integrate into your business in innovative ways?

Want to watch the video, hear the song, and give back? Just follow the links:

Watch the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjm4Ys5AjWI&&hd=1

Download the song and “Pay What You Want” to make a larger donation: http://choosetohope.org

Or, Download the song on iTunes

However, the puzzles that you create aren’t for playing in the app or even on your device. Instead the app provides you with the ability to export your puzzles as PDF, PNG, or JPG images that you can then print out or include as part of other material. You aren’t just restricted to exporting the puzzles either, the app also allows you to generate a version with hints or a full answer key as well. You can specify the grid-size of your puzzles and dictate the order of the content and the directions that your entries are displayed within the puzzle.

Our fantastic learning experts at Bottom-Line Performance have talked in depth about the fundamentals of gamification in learning, and one could argue that traditional puzzles like word search or crossword apply the some of these techniques in a fundamental way that has helped them stay relevant for over 100 years. Do you think your next training event would benefit from using an app like this one to create a customized puzzle with your content?

Care to try your hand at my technology-influenced crossword (hints provided!)? I will gift a copy of the app to the first person that provides the correct answers in the comments, think you can solve it??

Make My Own Puzzles – [.99 (Limited time)] (Universal App)

Follow Brandon on Twitter for more tips and tracks on all things App related. Got an app you want featured? Send him a tweet to have it considered!

In the age of “awareness level training” and “click next to continue” courses designed to check a box or meet regulatory requirements, we risk missing out on opportunities to really let learning happen. Awareness may be necessary, but it’s just the beginning. If your training program begins and ends with “awareness,” you’re missing the boat.

 Malcolm Gladwell did an excellent job of showing us that it takes 10,000 hours to be a master at virtually any discipline. If companies want to distill “training” into 5 and 10 minute sound bytes, what does that say about the overall competence of their workforce?

We seem to forget that awareness is just the beginning of the learning process. Yes, it’s important: I cannot take an action until I am aware of the need to do so. But in order to invest my time and energy into taking that action, I will need to be motivated and really believe that the action has value to me and to my company. Training is not learning, and the course you are going to make me take is only the beginning of my discovery process. If we treat it like the end-all, I’m never actually going to learn anything. No wonder many workers feel alienated by the Learning and Development department.

Awareness has its time and place….but we need to make a distinction between training and communication. Training should be used when you need to teach someone how to do something. It needs to be specific, actionable, and measurable. Communication should be used to convey a message or make someone aware of something. For example, an effective chain of company communication might make your learners aware that they need training and reach them in such a way that they become intrinsically motivated to do what is necessary to learn that skill. The training that you then provide will serve as a starting point and guide for their learning, but learners are still going to have to take responsibility for their own skill-building. The brain doesn’t have any hands for us to hold…it has to do the heavy lifting all by its lonesome.

It’s also important to keep in mind that everyone does not need the same level of awareness all the time. Even if a piece of information or procedure seems integral to everyone in your company, chances are people only need to use or reference it at most for a small part of their day. Or maybe only a certain segment of people need to use it at all. It is perfectly adequate and appropriate to make your learners aware of safety documents and procedures, but if the roll-out is not timed right and months go by between awareness training and the time when knowledge recall is needed, your outcome will be less than ideal. Design training around your desired outcome, not the content you think you need to include.

Remember that awareness is more about motivation than information. Pique your learners’ interests, make them aware of the problem, and give them the resources they need to go out and learn what they need to learn. Then, get out of the way and let it happen, supporting the process as needed. It may take 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in a field, but chances are you can measurably improve your results by making some small steps in the right direction.