Certification Frenzy

It seems like everybody wants to create a certification program for their training. Let's not make this the next meaningless corporate "buzzword."

A good place to start is a document published by the National Organization for Competency Analysis. This document clearly lists the defining features of Certification and Assessment-based Certificate Programs, with similarities and differences.

This provides a roadmap to help you decide what type of program you really need and the considerations required to develop it.

Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific.
-Wikipedia

Check out this article at MarketingProfs.com about some of the possibilities of Twitter.

Transcription Addiction

Have you ever spent hours upon boring hours transcribing SME content? Don't you wish there was some simple way to turn sound into script?

Well, slap your knee and call me your fairy godmother! You can transcribe MP3 and WAV recordings using Microsoft Word! (Actually, my co-worker, Rick Cook discovered how to do this - but I don't think he'd appreciate being called a "fairy godmother.")

Here's how to do it:

• Open Microsoft Word
• Under Tools, click Speech
• Right click the Language bar that appears
• Click Settings
• Choose Speech Recognition under Installed Services in the pop-up window
• Click the Properties button
• Click the Advanced Speech button
• Click the Audio Input button
• Click the Properties button in the Audio Input Window
• In the drop-down window, choose Stereo Mix (this changes the sound source from your microphone to the play-back of your recording)
• Play the recording

How's the quality? Mediocre. For example, "Tutorial" is transcribed as "Two Orials."

So, you shouldn't transcribe straight from your SME's lips: record and then transcribe, so you can refer back to make sense of the script. On the other hand, Word can complete the bulk of the transcription understandibly, and it's massively easier to Find and Replace or correct a transcription than it is to type it all by yourself.

If this doesn't work for you, there are internet transcription services where you can upload a sound file and have a Word copy emailed to you. I've used GMR, and they were timely and good.