Product reviews for The Trainer's Toolkit

Let's face it - at some stage most of us will either have attended or facilitated a training event which we are not quite sure has gone the way we had planned or hoped. Left with information to process, our heads are full of detail we are not quite sure what to do with.

Here then is a resource to help turn those mixed-up ingredients into something tangible. The authors show how to use various techniques based on the concept of brain-friendly learning to put into practice some of the new insights and theories learnt.

It is a veritable how-to book packed with ideas of how to make training both effective and efficient. Topics covered range from the basics of how to set up and equip a learning environment to the softer issues of how learning is received and processed by the human brain.

The book does cover some old ground such as Tuckman's 1965 utterings of the forming, storming. norming and performing stages a group go through when developing. This however does not Leave the reader with the feeling of having just read something which has been dressed up but rather that the concept can be fun and useful if used in the right context.

This resource provides an array of activities for the trainer or facilitator in business, education or group situations. It acts as a type of blueprint for accelerated learning methods based on a number of principles such as keeping the content simple but realistic while making the flow of information easy to follow. The other vita[ principle upon which the learning methodology is based is to take account of the environment in which people are applying what they have learnt and make the learning experience akin to that.

To me, as a training and HR practitioner, the book is a neat balance between theory and practice. It is a useful tool for anyone wanting to put together anything from as basic a training course as they need to training the trainer in how to be more effective in what they do.

The authors have opted for a simple formula to underpin what is behind brain-friendly learning. It is described as a I movement rather than a method' which is borne out by the range of facilitative exercises eluded to throughout the text. These range from the old brain-storming favourite of getting people to generate ideas to the more in-depth tools of understanding how people learn.

This is where the detail of the book could lose the uninitiated. The theory becomes a little heavy at times talking, for example, about the types of learning people undergo such as explicit and implicit. The detail is important however to understand the concept of what accelerated [earning is all about which is, after all, the main thrust of what the authors are trying to explain.

There are numerous learning models provided which underpin a range of training approaches with a concise guide to training design along with toots that can be used and adapted to help create new training events or upgrade existing ones.

For the more curious reader there is an entertaining section describing how the brain works with a range of factoids provided - did you know for example your brain weighs about three pounds and is no bigger than a grapefruit? On a more serious note these facts and how the brain processes information in order to learn are vital to understanding how brain-friendly Learning can be put to the best possible use.

The simplicity of Hare's and Reynolds' work appears, at times, to be almost surreal. It quickly becomes apparent though to the reader that a Lot of what is being explained is not in fact some complicated theory but rather under-standing what we all do day in and day out - using our brains on a practical level.



All in all for what is essentially a text book, the content is fun. It is light hearted and tr-eats the concept of brain-friendly [earning and development as something to be enjoyed rather than dreaded. It might just make the lives of trainers that Little bit easier in trying to convey messages which, after a[[, are more often than not plain, simple common sense.