In The Spotlight – Original Text
We are back! It has been a long time since we’ve updated this site, and we have some changes coming soon. We’ll be adding content on corporate training, and enhancing the section on observational research. We’ll also add some content on product and service design and innovation. Stay tuned. Contact us for more information.
Add a Comment No CommentsIn The Spotlight – Kids and Money
Funderstanding’s research report is available for sale. The report, Kids and Money, will give you insight into the relationship kids have with money. It is targeted to any company whose products are either directly purchased by kids or whose product sales are influenced by kids. Contact us for more information.
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Starting with Your Learning Management System
You manage a training function and you have decided to utilize a learning management system (LMS). Great choice. Now you need to figure out where to start. Regardless of whether you are using a home-grown system made in Excel or a database, or if you are using a commercial program, the initial steps are straight forward. Thinking through those steps should help you better understand the value of the LMS. A recommended approach might be:
Add a Comment Show CommentsYour Source for Information on Education, Training, and Design.
Funderstanding is a team of education, training, and product development specialists. We hope this site will help you learn more and find ideas. A few things you might investigate include:
- Design process
- Observational research techniques
- Observational research, and its use to drive product innovation
Roller Coaster Fun!
Design your own roller coaster! We’ve created a simulation that makes it a lot of fun to play roller coaster games with. And you may learn something too.
Funderstanding 2.0 Needs Your Help!
I’d like to start by thanking everyone for visiting our little website. Since our launch 12 years ago, we’ve served primarily as a source of information on education. We’ve developed a nice stream of traffic for which we are most grateful and this stream stayed steady through our relatively dark period, where we did little to update or even maintain the site. Well, the dark period is over.
Introducing Funderstanding 2.0. We want to bring this website into the era of social media. What better topic to get social over than education, learning, and personal and organizational growth? Come to us and see our content but stick around for the community we hope will develop around it. And stay tuned as we add more and more content to the site.
Please help us get the new site up and running! To help us, please leave comments on pages that are of interest to you. And please get some conversations going in our very lonely forum! We promise to pay attention and offer as much help and support as we can. And Contact us with all comments and suggestions.
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Poetry and Constructivism, and Better Learning
A reader from India posted a question on our Constructivism page, asking how constructivism would be applied to a poetry class. Let’s imagine that a teacher were interested in teaching students the poetry of Shakespeare. Constructivism would challenge the teacher to:
- assure the students draw from their experience to relate to the poem
- keep a larger context, where they don’t just break down the poem into small pieces but keep the ‘whole’ in mind
- somehow, someway learners get involved in constructing their own poems and through them, find a way to relate to the poems being taught
Emotional Intelligence and the 3 Magic Words
Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is all about apply intelligence to your emotions. A person with a high EQ is able to better navigate social situations, for example, than one with a lower EQ. Maintaining a high EQ becomes more difficult when it comes to dealing with difficult conversations. To maintain a high EQ, one needs to listen and not talk. Knowing the secret of the 3 Magic Words will help. (I can’t remember the source where I first read about this – if you can help, let me know!)
The 3 Magic Words are “help me understand.” These 3 words have the power to turn a difficult conversation into a much less difficult one. They might not seem so powerful now. But think about it, and try it out, and you’ll find their magic. Read the rest
Add a Comment Show CommentsA New Section on Learning Management Systems (LMS)
We have just added a new section to the site where we will begin to add content on Learning Management Systems (LMS). If you aren’t familiar with LMS’s take a look. These systems provide organizations with the ability to better manage the learning process. This includes the ability to track who has learned what and should allow monitoring of results and even follow-up discussions. In the coming weeks we’ll add posts that cover the topic in greater detail. Our goal will be to start with LMS’s and evolve to the point we consider means and methods for measuring and assuring effective learning. These topics are particularly important in the corporate training departments of Corporate America. Please take a look at the new page and let us know if there is more you want us to address.
Sustainability and Kids, In the Classroom
Today’s kids are much more aware of the environment and the impact they have on it than their parents. The current generation of elementary and middle schoolers had never known life without Earth Day, curbside recycling programs or a range of other awareness efforts.
Yet there is always room to learn more. As a teacher, how can you incorporate sustainability into the classroom? Sustainability and kids go well together. Below are some examples of successes at teaching sustainability as well as resources you can turn to for your own students. Read the rest
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