We had to replace our oven a few months ago. Not a choice, really, the old one gave up, and I am a mad baker so cannot live without an oven. The new oven is a marvel. We didn’t spend top dollar, but just being modern it has touchscreen and some cool features. An air… Read More Bake, 180, Done: Why Rolling Out AI Isn’t Rolling Out Software
I have a very particular way of gardening.The weather has to be good. I need to have a good chunk of time, not a scrap of it, a proper block. And I need the energy. All three need to line up. Then I make a coffee, put my gloves on, and head out the back… Read More Designing learning for fluctuating capacity
I went to a webinar last week with my glasses on and coffee ready. That detail matters, because it tells you exactly where my head was.I’d read the post advertising it. The facilitator was talked up, the topic was one I care about, and I really felt it was going to be useful and interesting.So… Read More Access is not interaction: why so much “engaging” learning leaves us flat
I wear bifocals all day, every day. They are, quite literally, the thing that lets me see clearly. And yet at least once a day, I take them off for some perfectly sensible reason – cooking something steamy, wiping my eyes, no idea really – and a few minutes later I genuinely could not tell… Read More What Hope Do We Have? Some Thinking on Learning, Technology Adoption, and the Science of Forgetting
There’s a particular kind of optimism that comes with assigning someone a self-paced online course. From an organisational perspective it feels considerate. People can do it in their own time. There’s no scheduling pressure, no room to book, no calendar clash to navigate. It’s flexible, accessible, and respects people’s autonomy. And yet, if you’ve ever… Read More Self-paced doesn’t mean lower effort: the cognitive load of online learning
There’s a conversation happening in many AI training sessions that I think is missing something important. It usually goes like this: here’s a framework, here are the parts, here’s an example, now you try. And the framework is genuinely useful. I wrote about why I use two of them and when to switch between them. Structures like… Read More Prompting as a cognitive skill, not a technical one
I was at the Digital Workplace Conference in Melbourne last week and kept hearing people talk about Skills in Copilot Cowork. It stopped me in my tracks. Not because the concept was unfamiliar, but because I’ve spent the last couple of months exploring and building Skills in Claude. And suddenly the same word was being… Read More Same word. Two very different things. My confusion with ‘Skills’ in AI
Last month I wrote about my first experiences with Claude. I ended that post promising month two would get more interesting. Oh, it did. This month I set myself a comparison activity. I’d already built a personal coaching companion as a Skill in Claude, just as a side project. A test case. Now I wanted… Read More Month two with Claude (and Copilot): the day I built a coach as a Copilot Agent
Organisations aren’t short on technology. We have collaboration platforms, analytics tools, automation, AI copilots, and more “productivity” features than most people know what to do with. Yet despite the constant investment, many teams still default to old habits, shadow systems, or partial use of the tools designed to help them work better. This isn’t a… Read More Why Employee Engagement Is the Missing Link in Technology Adoption
The Technology Acceptance Model, or TAM, is basically a way to figure out why people decide to use (or not use) new technology at work. It was created back in 1989 by Davis, and it boils down to two big questions: “Will this help me do my job better?” (that’s perceived usefulness) and “Is this… Read More What is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and how could it help you?