This is where the rubber meets the road in any training project. The few times I slacked on the needs assessment, my training missed the mark, leading to more revisions down the line. Such a waste of time and money! Without a needs assessment, SMEs may struggle to align their expertise with the actual learning needs of the audience. This can lead to frustration, as their input might not be fully utilized or may be misdirected toward less critical areas.

Personally, I always utilize SMEs’ expertise when conducting a needs assessment. Not only do they have deep knowledge of and experience with the subject matter being addressed (get it? Because they’re subject matter experts?), they’re often pretty clued into the organization’s goals and probably have valuable data that you can use to help identify potential areas for improvement among your target audience. ​

Alright, let's dive into the final stretch: the crucial role SMEs play in the final stretch of your training program: evaluating and iterating for continuous improvement. Their insider knowledge helps us gauge what’s working and what needs tweaking. At my organization, for instance, SMEs have access to databases and analytical tools that help to reveal whether employees are doing what we set out to teach them. Armed with SMEs’ feedback, we adjust our approach—whether it’s refining content delivery methods or tweaking learning objectives—to ensure our training hits the mark every time.
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Remember, SMEs aren't just advisors–they're catalysts for your training content’s evolution. By leveraging their expertise in evaluating and iterating your training initiatives, you ensure ongoing improvement that drives real impact and enhances the overall learning experience.

Above, I mentioned that we needed to add modules to the page. As of Spring 2018, I migrated all modules from our learning management system, Adobe Captivate Prime, to the grant website. I will go into the details behind this decision in another post, but here's the short explanation: hosting the modules on our site allows for sustainability and ease of access that the LMS does not provide in the long-term. I look forward to exploring more ways in which the website can be used as a repository for learning resources related to grant objectives. 

When I was shopping around for e-learning authoring software, it came down to a contest between Adobe Captivate 9 and Articulate Storyline - two of the e-learning industry’s leading applications. While I was impressed with Articulate, I decided to go with Captivate because it integrates pretty seamlessly with other Adobe applications. I can edit audio with Audition, edit vector graphics with Illustrator, and upload learning modules directly to Captivate Prime, Adobe’s learning management system (LMS). ​

​My first impression of this software was that it’s essentially PowerPoint on steroids (though one could say the same about Articulate). You can create reusable themes, customizable slideshows, and embed various forms of media. What makes Captivate so...captivating (sorry) is its interactive features. Buttons, variables, boolean logic, and much more allow you to create unique learning experiences that you can’t get out of a PowerPoint presentation. Features like hot spot interactions, heat maps, and software simulations make courses engaging for learners.

Captivate is capable of exporting projects to different outputs. One can publish projects to video, PDF, Flash, and HTML5. These days, HTML5 output is outrunning that of Flash because it’s mobile-responsive and, in my experience, seems to be less buggy. In fact, Captivate has mobile-responsive templates that allow you to customize the look of your project based on different screen sizes. A word of caution here: you constantly have to move objects around to fit each screen size when using this template or your graphics are going to look weird. That can be frustrating, but might be worth the headache if you want your projects to work well with different screen formats. ​

At Global Kids, I learned a lot about how to help middle and high schoolers in NYC to engage in design thinking and assist them in discovering creative uses of technology, including video game design, image editing, and podcasting. My goal was for the kids to become active producers of media and technology rather than just passive consumers of it. I even spent over 150 hours leading professional development workshops for K-12 educators who were interested in working with their students to make multimedia projects about a given topic. 
 
Since joining NYU, I’ve taken on the role of multimedia producer. I’m contracted by Meyers to design online educational materials that will be used by adult learners in clinical settings and collaborate with Nursing professors to create interactive online learning modules. The learners are nurse practitioners will do these modules as part of the HRSA grant-funded Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Preceptor Development Program (PC-NP-PDP). Read more about HRSA here.  I also get to work with the College of Nursing’s web development team to design the website for the project, so look out for that later this month! So far, instructional design has given me room to be a little creative and interact with subject matter experts (SMEs) to create some really interesting learning content.

Given what I’ve learned so far, I could write entire articles about tips and tricks for working with faculty, using Adobe Captivate 9, and shopping around for an LMS (I will probably write one in the near future). In early April, I launched the first set of learning modules that I mentioned earlier and sent instructions for using the LMS to the learners. I’m both excited and a little nervous to see how the content is received and I hope my LMS instructions are clear enough, because if they aren’t, the content may not be received at all (insert nervous face emoji here). Nonetheless, I’m confident in the quality of the content the faculty has put together. ​

After an all too short lived month travelling through South Africa as a presenter at the EdTech Summit Africa, I’m back in the United States. Sigh. Travelling is too much fun! Since publishing my previous blog post, the EdTech Summit team and I completed the second half of our journey which took us through Swaziland, Durban, East London, Cape Town, and Pretoria (actually, some of the team continued to Ghana, but I had to return to the States for work obligations) with each location presenting a new set of unique challenges and triumphs. We successfully continued to work through more internet outages and overcame frustrations that sometimes come with training workshop participants who arrive with little-to-no technical proficiency. For now, I’ll reflect on highlights from the rest of the Summit circuit.

Once the Summit at Limkokwing concluded, we drove seven hours to Durban and held a Summit the next morning at Inanda Seminary School just 20 miles (about 30 km) away. Inanda is a beautiful independent Christian boarding school for girls founded in 1834 by American missionaries. The school’s staff was extremely accommodating and the facilities were exceptional. For me, the most significant outcome of this Summit was connecting with a few educators who were interested in game design for learning and who were already participating in some of the very few game design and maker space initiatives in South Africa, such as Make Games SA and The Maker Space Durban. After a successful Summit in Inanda, the next 72 hours would be quite a doozie (I hate that word, but it’s fitting) given the amount of travel time and lack of sleep between Summits packed into such a short period of time.

We immediately got back onto our little nineteen-seat bus which had taken us through the country from the very beginning in Johannesburg and began the long nine hour drive to East London. We arrived to the hotel at 2:30am and got about three hours of sleep in our beds before leaving at 6:00am to begin our next Summit at Stirling Primary located just up the road from the hotel. After consuming a potentially excessive volume of caffeinated liquids, we got to Stirling where we again had the privilege of working with more very accommodating staff and access to awesome facilities. I particularly loved the layout of the computer lab I used as it was set up in a way that the teacher can see the screens of every student from his or her desk.

From Stirling, we packed up the Summit materials and our personal belongings and set out on the fourteen hour trip to Cape Town. Everybody was quite exhausted at this point since we’d barely slept and little escape from each other since we’d spent so much time sitting shoulder to shoulder on a bus for nearly 20 hours within a 72 hour period. Nevertheless, we arrived to Cape Town safely the next morning around 7:00am thanks to our patient and skillful driver, Daniel. After being dropped off at our AirBnB lodging, we were free to bathe and enjoy the beautiful day (and finally go our separate ways for a bit).

​The next morning, we held a Summit at LEAP Science and Math School Langa Campus located in the Langa township of Cape Town, one of the oldest townships in the area that was designated for black South Africans during Apartheid under the Urban Areas Act. This school is particularly near and dear to the hearts of EdTech, not only because they are a partner organization, but because some of the presenters had taught at Leap.In fact, Kevin Baloyi, our youngest presenter, and someoneI became particularly close with during the trip, is a teacher in training at Leap. While Leap’s facilities were not as up-to-date as those of Stirling and technical hiccups were more prevalent, all workshop objectives were met and teachers left more knowledgeable with strategies for integrating tech and multimedia into their classes that they can bring to their schools. From there, we hung out in the Township and enjoyed a delicious homemade dinner at Lelapa Restaurant located right around the corner from Leap.

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​For the next four days, the Summit crew and I enjoyed Cape Town at our leisure before continuing to Pretoria, where we would hold our last Summit in South Africa. Some of us spent time with family and friends while others and I did some sight seeing, hiking, wine tasting, and lots of eating. My colleagues Anusheh, Karen, Thandekile, and I were up before dawn to hike Table Mountain’s strenuous yet breathtaking Plaateklif Gorge to see the sunrise as we ascended.

On Saturday, August 30th, the last EdTech Summit of 2016 in South Africa was held at University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi Campus (remember, there was one more in Ghana at iSpace in Accra). By now, the team and I were pros at setting up registration, putting up signs, and preparing rooms and devices. I again had the pleasure of engaging with educators who wanted to learn how to incorporate game design into their classes as a way to engage their students in computational and critical thinking. One guy who works for Project Isizwe told me that he was planning on starting a podcast where he and his guests would discuss education technology. I hope to hear from him soon so I can post a link!

I feel extremely fortunate for having been able to work with South African educators while simultaneously learning about their country’s history, landscape, and diverse cultures. It was profoundly rewarding to be able to share my knowledge and skills with those who need them. What’s more is that they challenged me to be patient and clear in my demonstrations and to see to it that they left my workshop knowing and being able to do more than they had before entering. Of course, it would be remiss of me not to emphasize what a pleasure it was to work alongside the presenters of the EdTech Summit, especially our fearless leader, Karen “K2” Page. Every person brought their own unique set of abilities and ideas to the table and, moreover, a willingness to share their craft with one another.

I look forward to learning about what EdTech Summit Africa has in store for the future and hope that I can continue to be involved in some way. For now, I must focus my efforts on skill-sharing at the 2016 Scratch Conference at MITin Boston from where I am writing this piece. Maybe I’ll bring the resources I gain here to future EdTech Summits? Thanks again to K2 and shout out to the rest of the presenters for making the experience so incredible! See below for more info on the EdTech Africa Summit:

​EdTech Summit:
Website: www.edtechSummitafrica.com
Blog: edtechSummitafrica.tumblr.com
Twitter: @EdtechSummitsA
Facebook: EdTech Summit Africa
Instagram: edtechSummitafrica
Hashtag: #ETSA16

Greetings from Mpumalanga, South Africa! It’s been about two and half weeks since I left New York to embark on a month-long trip through the country to present at the EdTech Summit Africa conference and what a trip it’s been. After spending five fun-filled days of leisure and adventure in Cape Town, I met up with the rest of the EdTech team in Johannesburg where we held our first two summits at Dainfern College (here in South Africa, college sometimes refers to a high school) and Wits University. There, I had the pleasure of running a Scratch workshop for South African educators who were eager and enthusiastic about learning techniques and strategies for incorporating technology and digital media into their classes.

​Since leaving Johannesburg for Mpumalanga about a week ago, we’ve held two more summits at a primary school and a secondary school whose educational resources stand in contrast to one another. Babati Primary, located in the rural outskirts of Mpumalanga, was our first stop and does not have internet, or any technology for that matter, apart from two projectors with VGA inputs that can be connected to a laptop. Therefore, we brought the technology to the school, spending the morning setting up wi-fi hotspots in each of the four rooms used for workshops, enduring spotty and slow connectivity throughout the day, and adapting our activities for tablet use. This was particularly challenging for me because my workshop focuses on Scratch, which can only be used on a desktop computer, so before my 11:00am workshop I feverishly worked to install Scratch Jr., a tablet app that I barely have any experience using, on seven iPads for my participants to use. While I (full disclosure) semi-improvised the Scratch Jr. portion of the lesson , all learning objectives were met and my participants expressed gratuity for having been able to learn to use the app.

The next day, we ran the summit at Penryn College, a private high school, near the town of Nespuit. Unlike Babati, Penryn is fortunate enough to have multiple wi-fi networks, modern classrooms, and a computer lab with up-to-date desktop PCs. Actually, up-to-date doesn’t even begin to describe this computer lab. It had bins of legos for robotics, lego WeDo kits, a smart board, and a few other tech tools that most schools in NYC would be lucky to have. Luckily, technology was on my side and I didn’t run into any hang-ups, which allowed for a relatively smooth session.

The educators who attend the summit demonstrate profound interest and passion for learning new tools and strategies. Many of them drive long distances, some from three hours away, and come with absolutely no technological skill, such that they have never used a computer before, let alone have an e-mail address or know how to connect their cell phone to a wi-fi network. Most of them don’t even have a single computer or internet access at their schools. Nonetheless, a significant amount of learning happens at every session. Some educators come not ever having touched a mouse, clicked on a desktop icon, or typed a single word on a keyboard but leave having learned to do all of those things. I personally assisted about ten attendees in setting up Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook accounts and showed them how to click on things and type.
This kind of instructing might sound monotonous and elementary to the technologically experienced and I admit that my patience as an educator was tested in a few instances, but for me these were teachable moments. I learned not to make assumptions about participants’ technological aptitude and to ask questions in order to gauge their level of comfort with the technology before giving instructions. What’s more is that it is my responsibility as an instructor to make the learners feel comfortable using the technology and encourage them to explore the tools while assuring them that it’s alright to make mistakes. How else does one learn problem-solving skills if not by correcting mistakes? At first, I was frustrated about having to teach such rudimentary computer use like clicking and typing, but now I look forward to working with educators who lack those skills because they come to the summit knowing next to nothing about using technology, let alone using it in their classroom, and leave the summit having gained basic abilities and confidence they previously lacked.
Yesterday, the EdTech team and I celebrated Nelson Mandela Day, an international day in which South Africans honor the beloved president by committing 67 minutes of their day to doing some community service. We joined up with Frank Maghinyane High School students for a community clean-up in an area of rural Mpumalanga near Kruger National Park. The United Nations named July 18th, Mandela’s birthday, an international day in which the 67 minutes of service signifies the 67 years that Mandela dedicated to making the world a better place.

The next EdTech Summit will be held on Wednesday, July 20th at the University of Limkokwing. For more information about the summit, check out the website and follow on social media:
Website: www.edtechsummitafrica.com
Blog: edtechsummitafrica.tumblr.com
Twitter: @EdtechsummitsA
Facebook: EdTech Summit Africa
Instagram: edtechsummitafrica
Hashtag: #ETSA16

​The aim of every project was to make some sort of social impact in the local or global community. “Badges” were awarded to those whose projects demonstrated most social impact, most innovative, point of view, and most entertaining. Winners include Baruch Campus High School’s VakWay, a prototype of a vacuum cleaner that vacuums subway tracks, ScriptEd’s Styling with the Stars in which users must “dress up” a presidential candidate using a digital tool, and Mouse Design League’s Panda’s Box, a specialized wallet made for disabled persons. Of course, I have to give a special shout out to Global Kids’ Ears Wide Open , a radio podcast produced by middle schoolers from School of Human Rights about combating racism in their school (click here to listen), that won the badge for most social impact! I also need to give another shout out to Global Kids’ #GirlsMatter, a website created by middle schoolers at IS 109 that encourages female empowerment, who won honorable mention!