Old School Learning Tools

1. Articulate Studio ‘09. Hands down, the best eLearning toolset on the market  How about that for a completely unbiased opinion from the QA Manager for 3 out of the 4 tools in the suite?  Honestly, I do think it is the best eLearning toolset on the market or I wouldn’t work at Articulate.  We offer great support, and make products that are so easy to learn even your grandma could use them.
2. Wordpress. It is impossible to ignore what blogs have done for eLearning, and how can my list be complete without including the BEST Blogging software.  Wordpress.
3. Twitter. This choice might turn some heads…you might be thinking, how does constant updates from Ashton Kutcher and Shaq facilitate learning?  Good question…it depends on how you use Twitter.  If you only follow the tweeps like Shaq or Ashton Kutcher you probably aren’t going to gain much from it, and you probably don’t have a whole lot of friends (Ok, I admit it, I follow Shaq).  However, if you use Twitter to connect, share, and ask advice from other professionals in your industry it can be an invaluable tool.  Find a blog that you like, and subscribe to his/her Twitter feed, you will be smarter for it.
4. Screenr.  Screenr is a tool for creating instant screencasts for Twitter.  Although this is a very new tool, it is easy to see the impact this is going to have on people making software demos and screencasts.  Screenr has eliminated the barriers to entry for anyone looking to create demos and screencasts.
   
5. Wikipedia. Originally I was going to list this as Wiki’s in general, but then figured I should probably suggest a specific vendor.  Problem is I don’t know enough about the different Wiki vendors to say which one is the best.  I don’t really think I need to explain this selection, it kinda speaks for itself.
   
6. Articulate Online. Another tool from the great guys at Articulate.  I know listing two products from the same company (or 3 I guess, technically) is a no-no, but this had to make my list.  The reason…Articulate Online has made distributing and tracking eLearning training easy.  One problem with traditional Learning Management Systems is that it is often difficult to deploy content to them, and then distribute content once it is on the LMS.  Articulate Online has changed that with one click publishing and easy deployment links.
7. Moodle.  Yes, Moodle, the Open Source LMS.  Why does this make my list…so many people are using it to distribute and track training.  It is free and reasonably good, which means it works for a lot of people.
   
8. Google Search. I am reading an eBook on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), because it came free with the purchase of my Wordpress theme, and in the book it mentions that 90-98% of Google’s revenue comes from ad-words placed on Google’s site.  So why does that matter?  Well, Google stops making boat loads of cash if people stop using their search, and people will stop using their search if they stop finding what they are looking for.  So cool, now you get the Google business model, but what hell does this have to do with learning and being a good learning tool?  Simple, it allows you to easily and quickly find the information you are looking for.  My dog @winstonpotacho has recently been diagnosed with an elevated lymphocyte count, and the only reason I know what the implications are of a high lymphocyte count is that I was able to find the information by googling for it.  I now know just as much about leukemia in dogs as just about anyone.  In the time before Google I would have no idea what it meant to have an elevated lymphocyte count.  On the positive side of not knowing though, I probably would have slept more than 4 hours a night the last 2 weeks.

Like my list?  Don’t like my list?  Want to submit your own list?  You should let the Center for Learning and Performance technologies know here.

Last Tuesday we released Articulate Studio ‘09 to the world after about 2 years of development, and I am certain once you try it you will find that it was well worth the wait.

It has taken me over a week to blog about this because honestly it takes you, as a QA person, about a week to get your stress level back down from a 10 to a 3 following a release.  We started the beta of Studio ‘09 back in May, and you won’t believe how many hours the entire Articulate team has worked in the last year to get these products out there.

We added some really cool new features to the product that were some of the more popular feature requests over the past several years.  Here are some of those features:

Articulate Presenter ‘09

• Direct FLV support on a slide (no more using my complicated workaround)
• Notes formatting
• A project file for easy project sharing
• A usable Audio Editor
• Improved image conversion
• Improved support for native PowerPoint shapes (basically everything should look better)
• Branching support

Articulate Quizmaker ‘09

• Slide view authoring environment modeled like PowerPoint so that you can make your quiz slides look exactly as you want them to
• A visual timeline to arrange objects and have them appear at certain times
• A free form drawing tool for hotspot questions
• Question grouping and locking (lock questions in place)
• Branching support

Articulate Engage ‘09

• Branching support to link from one step to another
• A color scheme editor to easily edit your color schemes
• Ability to create a summary slide

So those are some of the highlights of the more commonly requested features in the new studio, but that is not all.  We have also released the Articulate Video Encoder as part of Articulate Studio ‘09.  The video encoder allows anyone to easily convert almost any video format to FLV for use in any of their eLearning content.  It also allows you to easily record from your webcam and automatically convert it to FLV format.

I think the thing that shocks people the most when they try out the new Studio ‘09 is what Articulate Quizmaker has become.  Quizmaker was rebuilt from the ground up, and is truely now the easiest to use and most powerful quiz creation tool on the market.  We still offer you the ability to easily and rapidly create great looking quizzes as we have always done, but added the flexibility to customize your quizzes in almost anyway imagineable.  If you have not done so, check out some of the sample content created with the new Quizmaker ‘09:

http://www.articulate.com/products/quizmaker-demos.php

I am certain you will be blown away.

We have also made some big changes to our website (www.articulate.com), and we are still in the process of working on revamping our documentation.  So we still got many great things to come.

Well, I am very stoked that these products are now out there, and now that they are released I should have more time to devote to blogging, so hopefully you will start to see more of me.

Alright, have fun everyone!

Do you use FLV video in your Presentations, Engage interactions, or in any Flash content for that matter, and get feedback from users that either the video plays poorly (is choppy), or takes a significant amount of time to display?

This can happen if you use FLV video that is optimized for high-bandwidth situations, but your users are operating in a low-bandwidth environment, such as dial-up modem, or slow DSL connection. Most of the programs that create FLV video allow you to specify a compression setting for the video, where you can specify the output FLV in terms of the target bandwidth rate of the end viewer. It is a good idea to compress your FLV to a level that matches your target audiences bandwidth (for example, you wouldn’t want to create an FLV that is optimized for a high-bandwidth situation if your targeted viewers are all using a 56k modem to view your presentation or interaction).

Some of the popular FLV creation programs are:

Sorenson Squeeze

Sorenson allows you to select any number of predefined compression settings, that are labeled rather intelligently based on target bandwidth rate. For example, they have a 56k_Dial_Up predefined setting that is a good compression settings if your users will be viewing the FLV over a 56k modem.

Below I have created a sample movie that shows you how you can apply a compression setting in Sorenson Squeeze.

Flash Video Encoder

Flash Video Encoder has options that are similar to Sorenson Squeeze, but they call it “Quality” in Flash Video Encoder. So lower “Quality” video will be more compressed. Unfortunately they only have quality settings that go down to 150 kbps, which is a compression setting that is targeted for a faster connection than a 56k modem.

Flash Video Encorder is included with Flash Professional, but the available options for quality settings are much more limited than Sorenson’s options for compression settings.

Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash

The Sothink Video Encoder allows you to specify “Profiles” (shown below) that allow you to target your output FLV for various bandwidth speeds. The available profiles range from 56 Kbps to 2.1 Mbps.

Note: Video compression is “lossy“, meaning the more it is compressed, the lower the quality. Click here for more info on video compression.

In the presentation linked below I show you how you can create your own custom color schemes for use in Engage. It is a short presentation (7:07) that should walk you through the basics of creating your own color schemes.

Launch Presentation (7:07)

Also, I have created 3 new custom color schemes that you can download here. The colors are:

• Fata Romana
• Off 2 Africa
• Grunge school

To install the color schemes unzip the 3 attached zip files into the following folder:
C:\Program Files\Articulate\Articulate Engage\schemes

After unzipping the files close and restart Engage and you should see the new schemes.

The color schemes I created were inspired by http://beta.dailycolorscheme.com/ (cool site).

For those of you who haven’t heard…Articulate announced it’s new product Articulate Engage today. For anyone who has come to my blog looking for advice on how to add Flash Video (FLV) to a slide, Engage now allows you to easily add slide level FLV without a bunch of complicated work arounds or having to know Flash. You can find out more about Engage here.

To see an example of how you can add FLV video to a slide in Articulate Presenter click the presentation image below.