The Best Free Training

Topic: Basic Business, Managerial, and Workplace Effectiveness Skills
Format: Collection of online courses by many different publishers (free registration required)
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

The LatitudeU website, which offers online courses from many different publishers, continues to expand its catalog of free and pay-per-course online courses.  One of our favorite LatitudeU publishers is Global Mindset, whose courses are short, no-nonsense, yet quite well designed.

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Topic: Organizing time, space, documents, and managing clutter
Format: Online class with quizzes and feedback. Also available as a single downloadable PDF file and 6-part podcast [free registration required]
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

This great free training item is filled with simple, specific, and practical steps you can follow to organize all that stuff that you’ve accumulated around the house and office.

It will help you break down that overwhelming mass of clutter into bite-sized chunks, deal with it by developing systems (rules) to handle each type of clutter, and figure out how to maintain your well-organized space.

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Topic: Time management, avoiding procrastination, efficiency, and organizing your work
Format: Fully downloadable 75-slide presentation and 53-page participant manual (text, graphics, worksheets, assignments)
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

This comprehensive time management course from Oak Training can be downloaded to your computer and used in two different ways:

• As the basis of a trainer-led group training session
• As an individual, self-directed learning experience

Whichever strategy you take, you’ll find this course to be filled with great information and lots of opportunity to practice and apply the principles to your own time management efforts!

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In Part 1 (my previous post) I shared some ways that Firefox and a few key add-ons can support your online learning by helping you get instant (or at least really fast!) answers to your questions — while allowing you to concentrate on your learning. In this post (Part 2 of 3), I’ll review some powerful tools you can use with Firefox to help you capture chunks of content, save them online, and share them with others.

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A web browser is like the dashboard of a car. It’s provides the controls that allow you to move around the internet. And what I’m discovering is that Internet Explorer is like my grandpa’s Oldsmobile sedan: It’s well-built, simple and functional. And the user experience is mostly automatic, with much of the technology behind it beyond the user’s control. In contrast, Firefox is more like a customized sports car: You start with the basic machine, then (at your discretion) you add all sorts of gauges and controls and other power goodies that allow you to have a fast, exciting drive over any type of terrain you choose. These power goodies take the form of features and “add-ons,” that can be downloaded from the Firefox website or the websites of developers. Wherever you get them, they can make your web browsing experience a really fun (and much more productive) ride!

In this post (Part 1 of 3) I’d like to share a couple of my favorite Firefox features and add-ons and show you how to use them to enhance your online learning and research.

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Topic: self help (how to achieve success)
Format: 23 minute MP3 download & 6-page PDF file
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

According to Wikipedia, Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People “…has sold over 15 million copies in 38 languages since first publication, which was marked by the release of a 15th anniversary edition in 2004.” If you’ve never studied this great classic or if you simply want a quick refresher, Brian Johnson’s PhilosphersNotes provides a great distillation of the “big ideas” in MP3 form and a supporting PDF file. (Continued in Comment.)

Topic: Time management, avoiding procrastination, delegation, job efficiency, organizing work, effective meetings
Format: Text descriptions, animations, interactive quizzes & practice, job aids (worksheets) [free registration required]
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

Are you overwhelmed by your “ToDo” list? This course provides strategies and tools to help you more efficiently handle your workload. It’s divided into seven lessons: Setting Priorities, Procrastination, Time efficiency, Job efficiency, Efficient meetings, Delegating, & Self-sufficiency. While the target audience is people in business organizations, with a little creativity you can make many of the tools and techniques work in your school, home, or home-based business. (Continued in Comment.)