Is training dead? Part 1

Is training dead? That’s the question I’ll be asking in my keynote at the Irish Computer Society’s National IT Training Conference in Dublin on 30th April.

Is it dead? No, of course not. It’s just evolving.

That, though, provokes some questions: what’s it evolving from? What’s it evolving into? And what’s causing the change?

Over the next few weeks I’ll be using my blog to reflect on these issues as I formulate my presentation, summing up my thinking on a topic that has been at the front of mind for the past several years.

Here are some questions, conundrums and paradoxes that I’ll aim to be dealing with:

• Is all training the same? How does brain surgery training differ from holiday Spanish classes?
• Is all learning the same? Why is learning your second language different from learning your first? How is learning to swim different from learning to walk?
• What are the limits of learning technologies?
• Is the ADDIE model of content production dead?
• Just what is the role of the training department in the age of Google?
• Did we ever really have an industrial model for training?

That’s not an outline of the talk, by the way, just some thoughts that my preparations have provoked in me. Throw in some jokes, a couple of 2×2 grids and then you have a presentation.

If you’re attending the conference, or even if you’re not, I would be delighted to hear your thoughts on the topic. Either drop a comment here, or mail me at donaldt [at] learningtechnologies {dot} co {uk}.