Brain in Business

Hi

Can anyone help? I need some idea of brain friendly ways to do IT training. I am running a train the trainer programme and the participants are mainly IT people. I could do with some ideas to use and also pass on

Thank you

Helen

Hi Helen,
Just up my street.

In the meantime the thing that I think makes a difference to IT trainers is demonstrating to them how you can brain friendly IT training. I think very few IT trainers have encountered anything other than 'sit at a pc all day' training so it's only when you explicitly demonstrate an IT concept/ process etc using brain friendly that it clicks for them.

When we run How to be a Brain Friendly Trainer, or its ancestor that you joined, it's doing the 'Browsing the Web' exercise that particularly helps to cement the learning.

So why not work with them to redesign a real session they have to deliver and make it as interactive, physical, creative as you can. My tendency would be to be really opposite from what they are used to and stretch their boundaries.
How about: get everyone to describe an IT training session from beginning to end, and then reverse every one of the descriptions.
e.g. 'sit at computer terminals' reverses to something like 'stand, no computers in room'
And then taking the session outcomes see how you could achieve the same outcomes using the reverse descriptions.
I'll look forward to other ideas.
Warm regards,
Stella

Hi Helen

I remember some years ago when I was running a Train the Trainer programme, one of the participants ran an IT session on emailing. He had everyone up and holding on to a length of string. He demonstrated with an envelope (representing an email message) how it travelled from one person's pc to another. It was very memorable and very helpful.

On another occasion, another participant wanted to train people in the use of menus. He likened it to using a menu from a Chinese takeaway - no 67 egg fried rice, no 36 chicken chow mein, etc. He actually handed out menus to the group of learners and then introduced the idea of selecting from menus on a pc. Again very memorable.

Hope this helps!

Jan