Mike Wills crams a lot of diverse information into his site at members.netscapeonline.co.uk/learningservices/. Mike Wills Learning Services aims to cover 'all aspects of individual and organisational development', and it certainly manages to bring together some useful background information and pointers for anyone interested in learning theory and practice. There's a section on 'Gurus' containing a useful brief biography and reading list for some of the better-known names in learning, and Mike has brought together a selection of quotes which could be used to illustrate training sessions - most of which are attributed. Mike has also thrown in a few observations of his own. There's also a useful page of weblinks to other sites with learning and training content. The best thing on the site however is the selection of ice-breakers which are freely available to use.
Although most of the content on this site is clearly relevant to a reader with an interest in training and development, some sections are a little baffling. This month's Resource of the month, which states that it features a different training or organisational tool each month, flags up a document detailing the phases of the moon. TrainingZONE is still struggling to find the relevance in this, but would be pleased to be enlightened. The calendar is obviously one of Mike's personal interests - there's another article on establishing the dates of Easter
and an item on working out the day of the week. Equally baffling is the game of German hangman - the instructions for the game are in German but the words you guess are in English. There are some revision notes on the site which could be handy for anyone else beginning to learn the language - Mike is currently doing so - which include some informative worksheets.
A couple of technical comments - the site makes good use of anchors to jump between sections on the page, but this can be a little confusing as the sections appear to indicate links to other pages rather than sections of the same page. We also couldn't read the whole main menu on the right hand side of the screen on our 1024 x 768 display - there was obviously some information there, but we couldn't quite see it! The majority of the site is clearly readable in standard black text on a white background, but the section on Managing the Training Process, a book written by Mike, suddenly appears on a bright turquoise background, which is a bit of a shock to the system.
This would be a promising site if Mike clearly identified his personal interests in a separate section to prevent confusion with the learning materials. It's technically advanced, although it could benefit from a little less complexity. Mike has also launched an update newsletter which you can subscribe to if you're interested in finding out about additions to the site.
