Business owners and high-level managers suffer burn out all too commonly, because they simply work too hard too long.
For many it becomes a case of feeling that taking any time off would be a luxury, and there is simply too much work on the desk to afford such luxuries.
Studies show that taking time off is not a luxury, but a necessity to prevent health issues and burnout and actually increase productivity.

One effective way of reducing working stress and increasing productivity
is to take a ‘working sabbatical’.

Consider taking even just a single week ‘off work’ and going to a retreat holiday location.

This could be local, but is even better if you totally remove yourself geographically. During this sabbatical you can relax in a holiday environment, and yet spend time each day working on the creative and innovative sides of your business.

This concept allows you to put yourself in a different head space, which allows you to begin to think outside of the square and consider concepts you may never even be able to imagine whilst in your work environment.

Imagine sitting on a beach, or in a rainforest reworking your business plan, cash flow projections, new innovation concepts or company structure.

OK maybe you would rather be at this location and not be working at all, but how difficult are you finding working on your business whilst in the office, and are you even taking holidays? How many distractions of the day-to-day workings of your business just keep piling up in front of you causing stress preventing you from being creative and innovative?
Google give their staff 20% of their working time to creative development, whilst 3M give 15%. During this creative time out of the working day the Post-it Note and Scotch tape were invented – now how much business and profit did this generate?

These great POV glasses have swappable lenses - sunglass or indoors.

In fact, if you already wear glasses you may prefer to use them without any lens at all.

BITTS are importing these glasses and are happy to give you a quote (bulk order discounts apply)

Please email les [at] bitts4learning.com.au for enquiries.

Order now as shipments do not last!

A funny thing that was discussed at the recent AU POV conference was the label we are using for this emerging technology - POV.
Do we say ‘pov’, and have all the generation Z think we are poverty stricken or using cheap tricks?
Do we say P-O-V and feel like we may as well have just said Point of View?

The phrase that got bandied about in this discussion as an alternative was Wearable Computing.
Didn’t actually grab me at all I must say, though a photo I saw the other day of a keyboard built into a set of jeans would grab me as wearable computing!

As the BITTS / National Training / Australian Flexible Learning Framework Innovations 09 project takes off now there will be some information posted here to keep those that are following the progress of the project informed of it’s progress.

You can use the project wiki as a base point to follow along.

Even geeks still get together face-to-face sometimes for seminars, even though we love webinars. Last week saw one such collection at the inaugural AU POV conference in Wollongong.
Point-of-View (POV) technology is wearable video technology that is generating a lot of interest in the education sector.
There were some great presentations at this conference on subjects such as how different types of educational organisations are using the technology, government funded trials involving the technology, building custom versions of wearable technology and ethics and social implications.

How can wearable technology possibly be used in an educational context? How can it bring any value to a learner?

The great thing about the POV technology is contained in the name – point-of-view. One of the hardest things to do for educational instructors is to demonstrate something technical so that everyone can see, here and follow easily. If you have a group in a room, there are always some people that can’t see as well as others, or someone talks beside you and you miss something important, or you are away that day!

Imagine demonstrating something for a group – say how to correctly clean a paintbrush. You put on a pair of POV glasses and focus on completing the task, with narration. Now you have a video recording of the process that looks directly into the cleaning bucket rather than at you.

Learners can watch the recording, as many times as they wish to get the process right, and you don’t have to keep setting up a classroom to repeat a demonstration.
The technology comes in many forms – glasses, head bands, safety goggles, helmets and may be water resistant as in the technology used by Bondi Rescue which you have possibly even watched before.

Next week I’ll discuss how this technology is being used for assessment.

BITTS were successful in gaining an Innovations project this year funded by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework.
We are aiming to trial the use of POV glasses (glasses with inbuilt video camera and flash drive) for assessment within the warehousing industry.

Katrina is presenting at a conference on Friday 19 at Wollongong about the project.

BITTS are always committed to Innovations within education, looking for ways to customise training always so that it is totally relevant to the learner and the workplace.