Dave Mozealous

Flash on Non-PC Devices blog

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:14:00 +0000

Pretty interesting blog here by Bill Perry, a product evangelist for mobile devices at Adobe.

So far it seems that Flash and Flash lite haven't been widely adopted by mobile devices, but with Microsoft licensing Flash Lite for Windows Mobile, and with what Bill Perry says about adding some form of Flash to the iPhone, it will be interesting to see if this changes over the next couple of years.

Free Sound Effects

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:25:00 +0000

I have been working on two presentations lately, one on Zombies, and one on Scuba diving and I needed some sound effects for my presentation. I found The Free Sound Project which a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds.

I was able to find both Zombie sounds, and sounds from a scuba diver. Pretty cool site if you need some sound effects to liven up your training.

Adobe Presenter deletes Articulate Presenter project files??

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:02:00 +0000

Ok, spent the last day and a half chasing around this very nasty bug in Adobe Presenter 6.1 and felt compeled to blog about it.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the SWFs and FLVs that I had inserted via Articulate Presenter were magically getting deleted from my system. It turned out that the system I was using also had Adobe Presenter 6.1 installed on it. Even after removing Articulate Presenter, Adobe Presenter still continued to delete my non-Adobe Presenter project files.

See the steps and screen grabs below for a step-by-step account of what happens.

1. Install Articulate Presenter 5

2. Create a new PowerPoint presentation

3. Insert a SWF via Articulate Presenter

4. Notice this project folder is created

5. Notice the project folder contains the SWF I inserted

6. I uninstalled Articulate Presenter

7. Verified the SWF I inserted was still in the project folder

8. I installed Adobe Presenter

9. Hit Save in PowerPoint

10. AHHHHHH...Notice my SWF just disappeared from my Articulate Presenter project folder

In case you are wondering, this only seems to happen when you have Adobe Presenter on your system, and I am not really sure what versions of Adobe Presenter are affected.

So, if you have wondered why files seem to mysteriously get deleted from your system, you might want to check and make sure that Adobe Presenter did not delete them.

Note: I kid you not, this really happens, and I know a lot of potential customers of ours and Adobes might trial both products, so if you decided to purchase our software, I would strongly suggest uninstalling Adobe Presenter if you ever had it installed.

Odds and Ends

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:46:00 +0000

It has been awhile since I have posted. Caught a bit of the flu about 2 weeks ago and I am still recovering.

First things first. Check out this auction going on at eBay right now for a Zombie Survival kit. A friend sent this to me a couple of days ago, the kit is now selling for $280. I soo wish I had this in my office, but at $280 it is a bit steep. But can you really place a price on protection from Zombies?

Also, congratulations to Gabe on winning the first Articulate Miles Challenge. Gabe ran over 95 miles during the 30 days of the challenge. We had some late comers to the contest who ended up doing rather well (Magnus and Robert).

We also just yesterday started the second Articulate Miles Challenge and now feature 5 Articulate employees in the challenge. See how everyone is doing below. Good luck everyone.

Interview with Jonathan Ive

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:08:00 +0000

Feeling a little ill today, but wanted to post this video I stumbled across last night. It is an interview with Jonathan Ive designer of the iPhone, iPod and iMac.

The Dave vs Gabe - Articulate Miles Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:52:00 +0000

The 1st Annual Dave vs Gabe Articulate Miles Challenge has begun!!!

Gabe and I are both in the process of training for upcoming half marathons. I am running the La Jolla 1/2 Marathon on April 27th and Gabe (as well as Justin from Customer Support and Sarah from Sales) is running the Nashville 1/2 Marathon.

Gabe Anderson, the Director of Customer Support for Articulate, and I have a challenge going through Nike+! Gabe just bought the Nike+ kit and an iPod Nano to match mine and we setup a challenge to motivate us to keep up the training.

What is the challenge?
It is pretty simple. Who can run the most miles in the next 30 days.

Sounds great! How can I find out who is winning the challenge?
Check out the little widget below that updates with real time progress.

Can I join?
Sure, if you have a Nike+ Kit and a compatible iPod post a comment to this blog with your Nike+ username and I'll invite you to the challenge.

Good luck Gabe...you are going to need it!!! :-)

Optimal size for a presenter's photo

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:33:00 +0000

Ever notice how your presenter photo has some gray area below or above it? Prevent this from happening by using the perfectly sized photo.

The optimal zie for a presenter photo is 72x84. This will prevent any unwanted grey area above, below or on the side of a presenter photo.

Hilarious Photoshop tutorials

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:02:00 +0000

Donnie Hoyle has created some very hilarious Photoshop tutorials titled "You suck at Photoshop" that have become rather popular on the net lately. If you haven't seen them you should check out the one below.

Donnie's brand of self-deprecating humor is seriously funny. I have been trying to get better at Photoshop but always get bored stiff about 5 minutes into any tutorial I have started watching. Cheers to Donnie for making some classic training that I could watch for hours.

Some of the humor is a little over the top, and might not be all that work appropriate due to some explicit language, but really, it is very funny.

Get a professional looking presenter photo cheap

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:18:00 +0000

A while back I wrote a developer center article for Macromedia's Captivate (view it here). The profile pic I had taken of me for the article came out horrible and now I am stuck with that photo attached to the article. This was before I started using cartoon images for my profile pic.

Well, if you have run into the scenario where you need a high quality profile photo and don't want to end up in the same boat I did check out Pixoo.us. Pixoo will enhance your image by using Adobe® Photoshop® software and take your crummy looking profile pic and turn it into a professional looking photo for only $9.90.

Top 8 changes at Articulate

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:29:00 +0000

Last Wednesday (the 16th) marked my two year anniversary with Articulate and I wanted to take some time and reflect on some of the significant changes that have taken place at Articulate since I have worked here. The company has grown significantly since I began working here and some of changes I had some influence on, others I had next to none, but regardless it has been an exciting 2 years.

Here are the TOP 8 MOST significant changes that have taken place since I started working at Articulate.

Dave's Top 8 changes at Articulate in the past 2 years

Articulate has released Articulate Engage. Articulate Engage has enabled thousands of customers to create stunning interactive flash content without the having to know or learn flash. Articulate Engage was the first significant addition to Articulate's product line since Quizmaker.
Articulate has launched Articulate Online. With the goal of allowing users to easily and cost effectively deploy and track e-learning activity without the normal hassle of an Learning Management System has launched with great success. Articulate Online has quickly matured into a great alternative to the traditionally difficult to use, expensive to implement Learning Management Systems.
Articulate has launched the Articulate Forums. With the help of our customers and especially our MVPs the Articulate forums have rapidly become not only a great avenue of getting support, but also for establishing a community for e-Learning developers.
Articulate.com was completely redesigned. Check out the previous design of the site on the internet archive.
Tom Kuhlmann has launched the Rapid E-Learning Blog - now with over 15,000 readers.
Articulate Presenter has released three updates (5.1, 5.2 and 5.3) which includes Engage support, Articulate Online support, and Vista/Office 2k7 support respectively.
Articulate Quizmaker has released two updates (2.1, 2.2)
Mozealous.com has been redesigned 3 times (man I had some ugly initial designs). Check out these initial designs, initial design, cartoon design, and you are looking at the current design.

Also note, I am sporting a new avatar. Check out the new South Park Dave with beard. I have been growing a beard since December 31st so I decided it was time to update my avatar to reflect it.

Free PowerPoint Templates!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:29:00 +0000

I read Tom's post the other day, The Secret to Creating Your Own PowerPoint Templates for E-Learning, and was inspired to create a couple of PowerPoint templates of my own.

The Simpsons

The first PowerPoint template I created was a template created to look like The Simpson's TV. I was inspired to create this template because I was watching an episode of The Simpsons while reading Tom's blog.

Font used in the template is "Akbar" which is a font that mimics Matt Groening's handwriting. The font is embedded so you should be able to use it in the template provided.

Template probably isn't highly useful unless you are creating training or a presentation on The Simpsons, but it looks cool.

Download The Simpsons template

Note: It appears as though there were issues with using the font contained in this template. To use this font you can download and install the font from here:

Akbar Font

iMac Template

The next template I created was inspired by the new Apple iMacs. After reading Tom's blog I went to the mall to do some shopping and stopped in the Apple store. I was amazed at the new designs of the iMacs. The displays are unbelievable.

Font used in this template is Lucida Grande, which is a common mac font, and it too is embedded in the presentation for your use.

The iMac template also probably is not all that useful for training, unless you are Apple, but if you replace the Apple logo with your logo it could be used for non-Apple related training/presentations.

Download the iMac template

Yesterday was suckie

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:35:00 +0000

Let me first apologize for the downtime some Articulate Online users experienced yesterday. I realize this was a tremendous inconvenience for everyone effected and I am really sorry this happened.

At about 5:30 AM PST time yesterday I began to receive lots of emails, phone calls, and instant messages that Articulate Online was down. Over the next several hours I was frantically trying to figure out what caused the outage, who was affected, and how long it would take to fix. The problem that occurred caught us completely by surprise, but I wanted to take some time to explain what happened and how we will prevent this from happening in the future.

In case you do not know, I am the Quality Assurance Project Lead for Articulate Online, and it is my responsibility to get things Articulate Online up and running in such events.

So what did happen yesterday?

Early yesterday morning our datacenter brought a new server online that had a conflicting MAC/IP address with our primary Articulate Online IP. This caused traffic that was being routed to us to never make it past the network switch.

We noticed this issue very early in the morning and quickly contacted our datacenter to have the problem resolved. Unfortunately it took our datacenter much longer to identify the problem than we could have imagined, and once it was identified it took them much longer than anticipated to fix the problem.

We have used that datacenter in the past, and in the past have been satisfied with their level of service, but the problems yesterday forced us to lose some confidence in their ability to quickly and effectively handle these issues. I spent several hours on the phone with our datacenter yesterday, and I am truly disappointed it took as long to fix as it did.

So what took so long to fix the problem?

When the issue was originally identified we assumed it would only take about 20 minutes to address the problem and we became increasingly frustrated that it was taking as long as it was. The problem was originally diagnosed by our datacenter as a problem with a network driver on one of our servers, but after updating the driver there was no change. After it was identified that the driver was not at fault it took our datacenter a considerable amount of time to identify the correct issue with the MAC/IP address conflict, and to find the server that caused that issue. After the server was identified and taken offline it took our datacenter even more time to bring back our server back online.

We had contemplated during the downtime switching to our backup systems as well as redirecting any traffic at the DNS level to a status page to inform our customers what was going on. We decided initially against making any changes at the DNS level to reroute any traffic to a status page because DNS changes can often take hours to take effect, so downtime would only be exacerbated by making such a change. We also decided against doing a failover to our mirrored systems because we only thought we were 20 minutes away from the problem being fixed and that it would require a longer period of time to get the mirrored systems running and would have also required some DNS/IP changes that would have taken time.

When it became apparent that the fix was going to take longer than anticipated we did start updating our DNS server to redirect traffic that was going to Articulate Online to a status page that would give updates as to Articulate Online status. However, just as we were beginning to get the status pages up the problem was addressed.

In retrospect, we could have handled this better on our end in regards to failing over to our backup system in a more timely manner. We are working on improving our own internal process to make our resorting to our backup an easier and quicker process.

What is being done to ensure this will not happen again?

Making sure that this does not happen again is a priority for us. We have had several meetings to discuss what can be done to prevent something similar from happening in the future.

Here are the steps that we are going to take over the next month to prevent this from happening again:

1.New datacenter - We are currently working on migrating our existing servers to a datacenter that provides a more reliable infrastructure and support system. Rackspace is a Tier 1 datacenter and is widely recognized as one of the best datacenters. We are committed to migrating to the new datacenter within the next 30 days.

2.Improved communication – We just today created a new site (http://heartbeat.articulate.com/) that will give real time status updates of the health of Articulate Online and our other resources. We have also included a RSS feed for the page so that you can subscribe to it to see any changes to the health of AO.

3.Improved failover process – I just had a couple hour meeting with internal employees of Articulate where we discussed ideas for how we can improve the failover process. In the upcoming weeks we are going to make some changes to our failover process to make it easier and quicker to switch to our backup systems.

Once again, I am really sorry for yesterday, it was really awful for all parties involved. If you have any feedback to give, I would be more than happy to listen, and feel free to post any comments that you may have.

There is also a forum thread where we describe what took place yesterday, and covers this all in less technical detail:
Articulate Online back online. Downtime explained.

-Dave

Adding Sony, that makes it 4 of 4

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:36:00 +0000

I posted last month an article (Amazon's MP3 store is better than Apple's) about how 3 of the 4 major record labels now distribute DRM-free music via Amazon's MP3 store. Well, Amazon just announced that they have reached an agreement with Sony BMG to distribute its catalog via there store, which now makes 4 of the 4 major record labels to reach such an agreement.

In July of 2007 iTunes surpassed Amazon to become the 3rd largest distributor of music in terms of sales, but that statistic includes physical CD sales. It will be interesting to see how this changes over the next year now that Amazon offers a bigger catalog for DRM-free music in downloadable MP3 format.

The AO prototype

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:24:00 +0000

Alright all you Articulate Online users. .. Here is the Articulate Online that never was.

This is one of the original, prototype designs for Articulate Online and it was what Articulate Online almost looked like.

This is actually the second design of Articulate Online, the first one was so ugly that it will never see the light of day.

Things that really stick out about this design:

1. Has a real alien feel (alien as in UFO and little green men)
2. Articulate Online logo is really, really small
3. Very dark and drab
4. Bad use of screen real estate

We tried really hard to make the screen width be viewable without horizontal scrolling at desktop resolutions of 800x600 with this design, so this design is really narrow. This is a common mistake of many websites, they design for 800x600 and very few people still run resolutions that small, and the people that do, probably are not going to be buying our software.

We also use a considerable amount of real estate for the notes on the right, when this stuff is likely never going to be read, and adds nothing to the value of the program.

Initially we went with a design approach where each page was dedicated to a different function. The page above was all about access, controlling who could and who couldn't access your content. We had a separate page for inviting users, setting permissions, and another page for collecting guestbook information. It is not apparent in this design how you get to those other features.

Compare the design above, with the design to the left. Notice how clean, and easy this feels?

The colors are much brighter, and don't make you feel as though you are watching an episode of the X-files.

We also consolidated everything you would want to do on a single page. Everything you would want to do with this content is right there. You can quickly and easily run reports, assign permissions, setup the guestbook, and invite users. Everything that you had to do in several busy pages in the old design were put on a single clean page. We fit more in on a single page, but made it a lot easier.

The old design was hard and dark, and the new design is light and "cheery". The initial design was done in February, and the later design was done in summer, maybe that influenced the designers.

It is pretty interesting looking back at this and seeing how the design changed so much.

SCORM 2004 4th Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:45:00 +0000

The SCORM 2004 3rd edition was just released within the last year (I think) and the SCORM technical writing group has announced plans for SCORM 2004 4th edition.

Mike Rustici of scorm.com blogs about it here. He has some interesting things to say about the update, and how he feels it is necessary for progress. Also contains some interesting comments on a possible upcoming SCORM 2.0, which is in his words, "a radical update and restructuring to take advantage of how technology has evolved over since the original inception of SCORM and its underlying specifications nearly a decade ago."

Mike Rustici is THE guy to talk to when it comes to SCORM/LMS integration, so his post makes for an interesting read.

Interesting article on eLearning

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:06:00 +0000

Check out this article at Yahoo that discusses among other things eLearning, and MITs OpenCourseWare initiative which is enabling some serious distance learning:

Internet opens elite colleges to all.

Amazon's MP3 store is better than Apple's

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:55:00 +0000

So I read the article 3 down, 1 to go: Warner Music Group drops DRM last night and decided to check it out. I have been really happy with the ease of ordering music from Apple's iTunes in the past, they really pioneered selling music on the web, and have made purchasing music and transferring it to my iPod dead simple.

What compelled me to check out Amazon's MP3 service?

The main reason I was interested in it is that music purchased from Amazon is DRM-Free. For those that don't know, DRM means Digital Rights Management, which "is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices." - wikipedia. Since the music I purchase is DRM free it means I can easily copy it to any device I own, including my laptop, my iPod, my new iPhone, or my desktop without any limitations, which is nice because I have so many devices.

The real significance of the announcement mentioned in the article is that "EMI, Universal, and Warner now offer their catalogues in DRM-free digital formats," on Amazon.com, which constitutes 3 of the major music labels to come to such an agreement.

The thing that bothers me so much about the DRM that Apple/iTunes uses is that it is way to restrictive, and way to difficult to backup. So far I have purchased 3 movies, and 1 season pass for a TV show, and of all those videos that I have purchased I can't get them on all the devices that I want and own because I downloaded them to different computers. If I purchased them, shouldn't I have the freedom to put them on any device that I choose? This also pisses me off about my DVDs...I have about 100 DVDs, but I can't easily transfer them to my computer, iPod, or iPhone without jumping through a bunch of hoops.

Well, enough on the DRM-Free aspect of Amazon's service, there are some other benefits too, such as price. So far I have purchased two albums from Amazon, and both were only $8.99, which is cheaper than iTunes standard $9.99 per album for music.

There is also an added benefit of increased quality of the music purchased form Amazon over iTunes. The majority of music purchased through iTunes has a bit rate of 128kbps, where as Amazon's music is all 320kbps (Correction, it is 256kbps or higher). For those that don't know...higher bit rate means higher quality. From what I am told the human ear can't notice any sound quality difference at a bit rate over 192kbps, but it can distinguish the difference for anything less than that. So Amazon's music should have a noticeable quality upgrade over Apple's.

So to sum everything up, Amazon's mp3 store is better than iTunes because:

It is DRM free
It is cheaper than iTunes
It is better quality

The only time I can see going back to purchase any music from iTunes is if Amazon doesn't sell it. Try it out if you are the type that buys music online. I don't think you will be disappointed.

I'm Back!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:35:00 +0000

I am back! It has been a long time since I posted last. Have been really busy at Articulate working on some pretty big stuff and haven't had much of a chance to give any updates here.

Thanks Mike for posting your comment and inspiring me to post again.

We completed the MS 150 back in October on a couple of cold and rainy days. The second day wasn't too bad, but for about half of the ride on the first day it was raining or drizzling making the ride a little miserable. But hey, the ride was for a good cause, and we helped raise over $22,000 as an 8 man team! It really is incredible. I personally have raised over $2500 for the event, which puts me just outside of the top 150 fund raisers in the event. If I make it into the top 150 fund raisers I get a special jersey next year and entrance into the club 150 tent, which I am sure is pretty sweet. Today is the last day for fund raising, so I think at the end of the day I think I am just going to have to sneak in a donation to myself in order to get me over the top.

The picture above was taken of Ajay, Mark Firger, and I as we were about to cross the finish line on the second day. The picture on the left is of day one as we were about to start riding through Camp Pendleton. The event was a amazing and something that I won't soon forget. The ride itself was more difficult than I imagined, and I learned that you don't "grow into" a bike that is too big for you. By the end of the first day (roughly 108 miles) my back and neck were so soar that anything but lying down, and drinking excessive amounts of beer caused intense pain.

I really appreciate all the support that everyone gave me. The people that I work with at Articulate, and many readers of this blog were more than generous in their support. My original goal was to raise $2000, and I really didn't expect to get anywhere near that goal. But our team got really competitive when it came to fund raising, and it really inspired me.

Thanks again to all those that donated.

Look forward to more blog posting coming up in '08!

An MS 150 Update

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:51:00 +0000

Last month I posted about my upcoming bike ride in the MS 150, and I had several comments from people asking that I send a status update, so here it is.

So far we have raised over $17,000 in donations by our team of 8, and I am only a couple hundred short of my goal of personally raising $2000.

As a team, most of us have been training together pretty regularly in preparation for the ride. We usually go out once a weekend and try to do a longer ride in the 60-70 mile range. I am feeling confident that everyone will be able to finish the ride.

We did have one hiccup last week however. One of our riders (Mark Wineman) was out riding when a truck did a left turn right in front of him as he was going 30 mph down the road. A short trip to the hospital, and a new bike later he is ready to ride again. You can see the aftermath of what happened to his bike on the left.

I really want to thank all those that donated. It really is a tremendous help, and with your support we have raised over $17,000 in donations.

I'll make sure that I post photos of the event after the ride.

If you are still interested in donating it isn't too late. You can donate using the link below:

DONATE TODAY

Free eLearning Courses

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:56:00 +0000

Check out this list of Free Education Courses online.

It is a list of free videos from Berkley courses.

Topics from Berkley include:

Computers
Biology
Health
Engineering
Math
Other various courses

The page also has several great resources on the left hand side of the page including links to other educational videos, links to learn foreign languages and so on.

This is a great resource.

Quizmaker results to a database

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:48:00 +0000

I spent a couple of hours the other day looking at, and trying out the instruction in this forum post by Joep on the Articulate Community forums and I must say, it is pretty impressive what he has done.

Joe has created a C# web application that will capture results from Articulate Quizmaker quizzes and store them in a SQL database.

See the original post here:
Quiz to database, instructions and code

Below I have listed some initial impressions.

Positives:

Probably more reliable than sending results via email (because of technical limitations of browsers and email clients)
If you have a free Windows Server with IIS the cost is only the time it takes to setup

Drawbacks:

Requires a Windows Server with IIS
Pretty technically challenging to setup (not for novice non-IT people)
Requires modification to the quizmaker.html file after each publish
Only works in IE (at least it didn't work for me in Firefox, but if you are using a Windows Server with IIS you probably likely in an environment that requires IE)
Doesn't match the feature set you will get from Articulate Online or an LMS

It is pretty cool what Joe has done, and although I would recommend going with a more complete solution such as Articulate Online for capturing quiz results, Joe's method does provide users with very limited budgets an alternative to emailing quiz results as a method for capturing quiz results.

Good work Joe!

Free stock photos

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 05:36:00 +0000

If you ever need to spice up your presentations with photos, but are lacking good stock photography, and don't want to pay an arm and a leg for photos, check out stock.xchng.

Stock.xchng is a site that distributes FREE stock photography. This is a pretty good resource for anyone looking for stock photos for presentations or web design.

Check it out at:
http://www.sxc.hu/

Most of the photos do have some limitations on what they can be used for, but most of the limitations are pretty minor (like notifying the creator if used publicly).

I need your help

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:29:00 +0000

Today I am blogging because I need your help!

This fall, I am riding over 150 miles in the 25th annual MS Bike Tour, a fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and I need your help. On October 13 & 14th, 2007 over 2000 cyclists will raise over two million dollars and ride together along Southern California’s coast to bring the dream of conquering MS closer to reality. The money raised from this event will fund continuing research to discover the cause and cure for multiple sclerosis. Equally important, it will help pay for a multitude of support services, critical to those whose lives has been touched by MS.

I will be riding in the event with two of my good friends, Ajay Madiah and Mark Firger.

Mark Firger’s mom (Linda) has been diagnosed with MS, and this ride will benefit will help Linda, and people like Linda win the battle against MS.

Ajay Madiah (pic on right) is one of my best friends and in January was diagnosed with cancer. Ajay has since won the battle against cancer, and has joined me in the battle against MS!

Ajay Madiah and Mark Firger are the reason I am riding in this event, and hope to raise over $2000 in the fight against MS.

I have become active in the fight against MS, and I will riding over 150 miles on my bike. You can join me in my fight against MS...YOU CAN SPONSOR ME. Your support, no matter what the amount, will benefit the hundreds of thousands fighting the MS battle.

Will you please consider helping me? You can donate online by clicking the link below.

Donate Here!

Also note, any donation is tax deductible, and I truly appreciate any donation that you can give.

iQuiz for the iPod as a training tool

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:31:00 +0000

One of the things I am most interested in when it comes to eLearning is eLearning content that is developed for portable devices such as the iPod. I was pretty excited when I saw that iTunes launched iTunes University.

Well, a new game has been developed by Apple called iQuiz, which is a trivia game for the iPod. It allows you to play downloaded "trivia packs" on the iPod.

So you can create these "trivia packs" for your learners so that they can take your quizzes on their iPods. Cool, huh?

What I like about it:

The UI - The games look and feel is cool. Really feels like you are playing a game. The animations are really slick as well.
Ability to create timed quizzes
3 strikes your out - Some of the quizzes have a "loose" value. A loose value is the number of wrong answers that result in losing the game

Unfortunately there are a couple of things that prevent this from becoming a really effective tool for deploying eLearning material:

No way to capture results - This makes it an ineffective tool at it as tool for assessing student retention of information. It would be nice if users could take the quiz, and then have the results uploaded to a database or LMS when the user synchronized their iPod.
No way to provide custom feedback - Only default feedback is displayed (correct/incorrect). So it is difficult to use quizzes as an effective tool.
End user must have iQuiz installed - Which means any user who wants to take your quizzes will have to have iQuiz installed.
Installing the quizzes is not intuitive - Quizzes need to be copied to the \My Music\iTunes\iPod Games\iQuiz folder, and there is no ability to manage your quizzes in iTunes.

So basically the game is more about trivia than it is quizzing. But anyways, I think the program is interesting, and in a follow-up blog post I will post instructions for how you can create quizzes (trivia packs) for iQuiz, and instructions on how you can copy the quizzes to your iPod.

Learn more about the iPod in Education.

iQuiz for the iPod.

Doofdaddy launches his blog

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:12:00 +0000

On Friday Tom Kuhlmann (otherwise known as Doofdaddy), launched his blog on Rapid eLearning.

This is a great resource for anyone interested in developing any type of eLearning material. One of the most compelling aspects of the blog is that he focuses on eLearning without being biased to Articulate tools. So in other words, the blog isn't a marketing tool for Articulate.

If you get a chance, take a look at the blog, and subscribe to it. By subscribing to the blog you get access to Tom's 46-page eBook on developing Rapid eLearning.

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/