Not all learning takes place at the desk or even in the workplace.

To experience the lighter – and tastier – side of learning, CERTPOINT Systems recently hosted “The CERTPOINT Cooking Experience” at the Epicurean School of Culinary Arts in Anaheim, CA. A range of CERTPOINT clients came along to hone their cooking skills.

It was all part of their personal development efforts, of course.

A professional chef guided participants through various Italian recipes, as they worked at nine different cooking stations creating everything from scratch. And I mean everything: Dough for the pizza, croutons for the Caesar salad, even the Vanilla Bean ice cream as a topping for the Chocolate soufflé. Kudos to the team that tenderized the chicken for the Chicken Piccata.

The culmination: Eating it all as we sat listening to “L’italiano “ by Toto Cutugno, and being pleasantly surprised that everything tasted so good. We complimented the chef instructor on her ability to guide the team through this complex process. She smiled, and graciously revealed that the secret to a good meal was “top quality ingredients”.

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The bad news? Realizing I would be grounded for at least six days in Europe, so missing my son’s debut as the lead in Beauty and the Beast. The not so bad news? Although I am 4,000 miles from New York, I am stuck in beautiful Paris!

This trip was different. It was to be a short business trip – a few days of meeting clients before heading back to CERTPOINT’s New York headquarters. For the first time, I left my laptop at home. Instead, I decided to give my brand new iPad a road test.

And as my only device for running a global firm on, that iPad has had plenty of testing over the past few days.

The verdict?

The iPad passed with flying colors.  Although I wish it had this feature and that feature, the bottom line is this: the iPad is a game changer. I believe it will change the concept of personal computing for ever – making the standard laptop a dinosaur.

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Right now things are changing fast in the world of learning technologies. At a time when learning and development departments are increasingly told to do more with less, that could sound like bad news. When you are focused on working harder and improving efficiency, you have less time for planning and contemplating the big picture.

To take some of the load off for you, at CERTPOINT Systems we’ve identified what we think are the three key learning technologies issues that should be on your radar, three areas where L&D must prove itself over the next 12-18 months:

• Social learning
• Mobile technology
• Budgets, value and alignment

Are these threats or potential opportunities for L&D? Our free white paper suggests practical ways to make the most of these trends within your organisation. In fact, at a time when L&D is under more pressure than ever before, the potential offered by exploiting these trends is huge.

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