FrogOJT Systems
A New Approach to On the Job Training , employing digitized video for structured OJT.
510-236 1865 /cell 510-219 4255
the address et seq in the interesting logo above is wrong; so is the phone number. Things change, but those things which are embedded in logos or cast in concrete or chiseled in stone, do not necessarily change with them.
go right to Sample Videos
Want to read the updated white paper on FrogOJT2004?
Want to read about ReInvesting your company's firm-specific human capital?
Want to read about Outsourcing the most critical component of your Training Department? Or about your own undervalued intangible assets?
Want to read a May 2000 esssay called Training, Naval Training, and What's Next? and the followup called Marine Training?
Want to read a May 1999 Wall Street Journal article about American OJT at Westinghouse?
Want to read a December 1999 esssay about the WSJ article, called Kaizen and Digital Video Structured OJT?
Want to see a video of how to speak Japanese, suitable (humorously) for the airline industry?
June 1999, updated 2002 -- New sample videos -- How to play the safety position in football plus some other videos that are available on the FrogOJTWeb sample CD-ROM. Surgery, Biology, lots of different productive, fun, or enlightening human endeavors, all Quicktime.
July 1999 -- Want to read about measuring cognition during FrogOJT Rapid Skill Acquisition?
July 1999 -- Want to read The Philosophy of Quicktime? or Cognition, Recognition, and Recall , Bridging the Gap between Matter and Symbol II (November 1999)? or Digital Joe? And be sure not to miss Visual Reasoning Revisited: More on Cognition, Recognition, and Recall
September 1999 -- Improve your golf swing with FrogOJT digital video technology. Note the exhaustive use of Quicktime text track technology here.
September 1999 -- Public Works OJT with FrogOJT digital video technology. A safety oriented on the job training video: Tailgate Training.
Sept 2000 -- How to pull the pin on a fire extinguisher. How to put out a fire (coming soon).
Sept 2002 -- Learning via Digital Video . Experimental work that validates the use of Quicktime videos for OJT.
March 2004 Japanese Nihongo de versions of FrogOJT monogatari (origin and explanation of FrogOJT)
O/ 510-843-6227 FAX 510 843 6280 H/ 510-620-0512/Pgr 510-425-2933
Stratus Capital Incorporated, through it's Frog's Rentacomputer subsidiary, has been a part of the Information Age since it started. At first, in the early Eighties, the machines we rented were just green screens with letters and numbers on them from left to right. Now, the machines are much more like the human paradigm, thinking and displaying and communicating in pictures. When you think of where something is, or how to do something, or what to say next, you flash images in your brain at lightning speed and then you act. You don't mentally thumb through pages of text.
FrogOJT Systems is changing the way workers learn their work. Less text, more pictures; a digitized video interface for structured on-the-job training.
US firms usually engage in formal training, mostly in scheduled classroom-type settings; and in non-structured, or haphazard, OJT, mostly in production settings, during work hours. The primary training resource, if one is available, is detailed training guides.
Usually, in on the job training, a trainer teaches the worker how to perform the task, by demonstration and explanation. Then the worker acquires skill and reliability by performing the task. Both classical and contemporary research in perception and learning have indicated that humans (and other organisms, even the octopus [if you go to this link "octopus" please ask your Netscape or equivalent to Find the word heresy]) can acquire knowledge by mere observation. The stumbling block, and a major determinant of cost, in OJT is that the number of observations is limited by the number of repetitions the trainer has time, patience, or inclination to perform.
What we do is this: A trainer's movements are videotaped and digitized and then compressed into a Quicktime®movie. The trainee is given access to a computer which has the movie loaded onto its hard drive or accessible via the Web. The trainee is given the freedom to watch the movie -- the movie of just the figure-eight style movements to finish off fiber optic cable, for example -- as many times as desired, as many times as are necessary to imprint that particular skill. The trainee then tries to perform the task in the field. The trainee may return to that digitized video as many times as desired.
We always seek to discover the essence of powerful video presentation for the imparting of skills in order to develop and produce the training interface. , We always seek to analyze how to effectively use this interface in structured OJT so that the interface is produced and then implemented in a cost effective manner in the workplace.
If there are specific principles for the production of effective digitized video presentations, we shall discover them and codify them from the repeated acquisition of such materials across varying fields of work, beginning with generally accepted US production techniques and the generally high production values of US broadcast video, and evolving techniques for digitization and post production of Quicktime®movies.
Why not just use video? The exhibition medium to be developed here is different qualitatively from simple video training materials. These digitized videos can be played on the computer (a laptop, even), "rewound", and played again, instantly. To do this on a VCR is too cumbersome to be practical. Digitized training videos are short. They are concise and unadorned. They are nonlinear. A trainee can inspect them a few frames at a time, or a single frame at a time, or at 30 frames per second for the lifelike appearance essential to learning a task.
The video on this page is Robert Stickel punching oblongs in aluminum stock. He's a master of sheet metal fabrication.
Other videos on this site feature André Lacroix showing you how to perform the wrist shot and the slap shot in ice hockey; he'll also show you how to skate. Monsieur Lacroix is an industrial strength WHA/NHL hockey player and a renowned coach. Currently available: Hockey Fundamentals, on VHS and CD-ROM, with André Lacroix. Every rink needs this setup if you want your teams to compete effectively. FrogOJT investigated skill acquisition thru the medium of digitized video at André's rink in Oakland, California. We installed a Macintosh in the scorekeeper's box. Players would watch a live demo by André, then watch a digitized video over and over, then get a bit of advice from André, watch a few more times, and voila -- skill!
Want to read some exegetical details about Digitized Video Structured OJT? Read our government app.
Want to read a typical letter to a FrogOJT Client?
Want to read some background from the literature about on the job training?