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Friday, December 17, 2010

New Training Tool coming from Australia.


News Flash! There is a new invasion taking place in the US. It involves the delivery of safety training videos to employees in a revolutionary new way.

OK, are you ready? Buckle up; let’s take a short ride down memory lane. Look where training has come from. During our time in the training profession, many of us, have gone from using 16mm movies with an old (wore out) clumsy projector. We have said things like, “Oops I just blew a bulb at the worst possible moment”. “Does anybody here know how to thread the film through this projector?” “Now I have to set up the speakers.” “Where is that screen? I swear it has 4 legs and runs off just when I need it the most.”

What a relief it was when VHS came along. We all welcomed the change because VHS was much more user friendly. At least you didn’t have to thread the machine and the TV was easier to find than a projector and screen. This medium worked real well until technology moved things up a notch and we all had to learn new phrases like: CBT, DVD, PowerPoint Presentations, and of course the internet. I know one thing, my 8 year old son was able to operate the equipment as soon as I opened the box, but me, I was still reading the instruction book.

Don’t get me wrong, once we caught up to technology and knew what we were doing, training with some of these tools made things a whole lot easier. Thank goodness.

Well, I have some more good news for you. VOCAM Group in Australia is invading the US with yet another new training method. It has already taken Australia, the UK and Canada by storm. Now it has come to our own back yard. With this new twist in technology, all we have to do is turn on our laptops and bring up a handy “Safety-TV player” that will play the videos for us without even using the internet for delivery.

Wow!

The best news is that it is a lot more cost effective. Without going into too much of the mechanics, I can tell you this, with this handy player, you can play Digital videos that you have already loaded onto your Laptop or Desktop computer without any fuss. You can print out quizzes to test for retention and document who took the training all from your player on your computer. Play the videos for individuals or for groups, it doesn’t matter.

At present VOCAM has 2 separate DVD’s that you insert into your DVD drive and you can load 55 digital videos right into the player in your computer. You will also be able to download each new Safety Training video title VOCAM produces right to your player as they are released. They are planning on producing 4 to 5 new training videos (specific to the US market) each year. You can even have your company Logo inserted into your player so everyone knows the training is your own.

You get all these benefits available for an affordable (very cost effective) annual Leasing fee. Who knows where training will go in the future. For now, this is beyond belief. We have certainly come a long ways, haven’t we!