Training and Fruit Loops

I really should stop waiting until after class to do my posting because I never end up posting about what I start with. I had planned to post about the free Photoshop that is now being offered, but when I was exploring LearningTown, I came across this article that I just had to comment on.

The article was titled "Organizational Training and Fruit Loops." I've included a link to the article below.

The article discusses how training / eLearning should be designed exclusively with the end user in mind. The gist of the Fruit Loops argument (without retyping it all here) was that most companies say that unless you make training mandatory, people won't want to do it. But if you apply that reasoning to Fruit Loops what would happen if you made eating Fruit Loops mandatory? I laughed at that one. It's so true though...why do people eat Fruit Loops?...it's because they're colorful and they taste good...

As a teacher, I daily find myself on the receiving end of the mindless stares of my students regardless of what feats of acrobatics I've chosen for that day to try to entertain them. Yes...I did say entertain. When I was in high school (and I went to Catholic school with nuns trained by the gestapo) we sat there with our hands folded eyes front giving our teachers our undivided attention...but what about our learners today?...as teachers today we are competing with the Internet, games, iPods, psp, cell phones, just to name a few.

It made me think about a memo we got about a year ago outlining the district's new video policy. The one line that always sticks out in my mind is "We are here to educate, not entertain." We say that on one hand and then on the other, we are giving the kids all of this stuff (technology) to try to motivate them.

I really think that if we want kids to learn, we need to give them Fruit Loops. (As the article says), they meet nutritional (educational) standards and people want to eat them. If not, we're just giving them Bran Flakes and honestly...would you choose Bran Flakes if you had a choice?????

Sidenote...how many of you read this post because it had "Fruit Loops" in the title !!

Article Link:
http://digitalinteractivegroup.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/organizational-training-and-fruit-loops/