2011 – Page 9 – The Logical Blog

July 6, 2011

mLearning: The Time is Now

by AJ George

mLearning students The push for mobile learning (mLearning) has been a surprisingly long one. Last year we talked about how mLearning wasn't quite ready, but we threw out some technical tips in case you were ready to dive in. Almost a year later we noted that the Horizon Report slated adoption of mLearning for one year or less. And now a recent T+D magazine features the article: "At Last: M-Learning Going Mainstream."

It looks like the future of mLearning is officially now.

From the T+D article:

"We were surprised at the slower pace of adoption," says Janet Clarey, senior analyst for Bersin & Associates. "However, after nearly 10 years of predicting that m-learning will go mainstream, we're finally seeing enough momentum now that it really is going mainstream, and it's driven by the consumer market."

The article says that a Pew Internet & American Life Project study from July 2010 found that 55% of US mobile web users go online daily, up from 24% the year before. There appears to be little evidence of adoption slowing down anytime soon, so it looks like if you've been itching to get started with mobile learning, the time is now. But be aware that mLearning, even if it is the right time, may not be right for everyone. Before jumping in, consider these points from Jason Bickle's eLearning Devcon 2011 session, Design Approaches for Adapting Content for mLearning.

Do you have…

an eLearning strategy that includes other forms of content?
an audience that needs mobile information?
a standard delivery platform?
the need to track interactions from mobile platforms?
content suited for mobile delivery?
a mobile content manager?
a mobile web developer?

If you find yourself with a lot of no's, it may not matter if mLearning has officially come into its own… it still may not be quite right for you. mLearning is, after all, just a buzzword unless you have the proper context for it in your learning.

In what may be another boon for mLearning, last week Google released a beta tool called Swiffy, a free Flash to HTML5 converter. My first thought about Swiffy was that it would solve a LOT of the problems I hear with SWF content not playing on Apple devices like the iPad. I tried Swiffy on some of my Captivate-published SWFs and I'm sorry to report that none of them converted using the Swiffy beta. Until Swiffy will convert Captivate SWFs, it appears that Swiffy will have limited use. However, I do think Swiffy will evolve and it won't be long before more elaborate Flash content (such as SWFs created with Captivate) will be easily converted to HTML5. Fingers crossed!

(Note: You must use a WebKit browser like Chrome or Safari for Swiffy to work at all.)

We aren't the only ones buzzing about mLearning. Check out these other recent Coming of Age articles floating around the eLearning community:

More from ELDC 2011:

eLearning: Putting it Into Context

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

July 6, 2011

Adobe Captivate 5.5: The Pros of Contrast

by Kevin Siegel

I fell in love with Captivate 5 the moment I started the program. The user interface (UI) was a vast improvement over every legacy versions of the program. Looking back on my experience with Captivate 5, I have few complaints. Honestly, Captivate 5 is really, really good and there's not much to gripe about.

That being said, I do have a few pet peeves in Captivate 5. For instance, what's up with the color contrast (or should I say the lack of contrast)? If you take a look at the Timeline of any slide, you'll see that the contrast between objects on the Timeline leaves plenty to be desired.

Check out the image below. If you're like me, the color contrast between one object on the Timeline isn't very good at all. For instance, the difference between the pale green color used for interactive objects (the Button and the Text Entry Box) and the light blue (used for captions and animations) are too similar. If your display's contrast is off just a bit, it will be difficult for you to tell one object group from the other. And in the image below, the click box object (fourth down the list) is selected. However, the contrast between the gray list at the left and the only slightly darker gray highlight color makes it somewhat difficult to see which of the Timeline objects is actually selected.

Captivate 5 Timeline Colors

So along comes Captivate 5.5 and now there's one less pet peeve in the world. As you can see in the image below, Adobe overhauled the Timeline colors. Now you can clearly see the interactive objects (dark green) from the static objects (blue). With a simple glance at the left side of the Timeline, you'll know that the click box object is selected. Nice job Adobe!

Captivate 5.5 Timeline colors

If you have Captivate pet peeves, let me know. I'm happy to share them here with other skills and drills readers.

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5 or 5.5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

June 29, 2011

eLearning: Putting it Into Context

by AJ George

Another eLearning Devcon has come and gone, and if you missed it you missed a great conference with great speakers…as well as gorgeous weather and scenery in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I attended many sessions (from mLearning, to 508 compliance, to HTML5, etc), but it seemed to me that it all came back to one topic, and that was putting learning into context so that learners could understand and easily retrieve the learned knowledge later so that it could be implemented.

When it comes to learning, the issue these days is not so much that we don't have the technology or the know-how to make some really cool stuff. The issue is how to use that technology in meaningful ways to create actual learning–not just flashy, technology-packed modules of fluff.

In Jason Bickle's session Design Approaches for Adapting Content for mLearning, Bickle started out with a warning: Don't go mobile just because it's the next thing to do. Make sure it makes sense in the context of your organization (more on that here).

Other presenters had differing ideas for using new technology in eLearning.

In his session Using Photographic Techniques in Your eLearning Courses, Trond Kristiansen touched on some interesting uses of photos (to create stop-motion video, time-lapse photos and 360 degree tours of places and objects) which really got me thinking about all the practical uses of these techniques, if put in the right context. There are lots of learning situations where these methods would be overkill, but in the ones where it is not (like the medical field), the possibilities are exciting (more on that in a future article).

In Gary Robinson's session Can eLearning Interfere With The Human Learning Process? Robinson advised us to make sure that our learning courses aided learners in the following: selection process, organization process, integration and trigger retrieval. In other words, you should present content so that with minimal effort on the learner's part, it is clear exactly what information is pertinent and the information is organized in small enough chunks for digestion. Additionally, each topic should be integrated so that it's clear why all of the information is together. The lesson then needs to be presented in a manner that will help the learner retrieve the information at a later date.

Robinson gave a great example of trigger retrieval in the form of eLearning that relied on a baseball diamond game to test learner knowledge on the average age of depression on-set. It may have been a fun game to test learning, but since baseball had nothing to do with the content, was it helping the overall learning process?

Robinson made the point that brains can have weird triggers. Instead of drilling home the point about age of depression on-set, adding the baseball game to the lesson might cause the brain to relate the information to baseball.

Robinson suggested an alternative approach: simply use stock photos of people of different ages so that the learner associates the information with images of people of the corresponding ages.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you seen (or created) impressive eLearning that really tied everything together and allowed learners to easily pull information from their knowledge banks later? Have you seen some things that looked cool but really didn't enhance the learning at all? I'd love to hear your success (and horror) stories. Leave them in the comments below.

More from ELDC 2011:

mLearning: The Time is Now

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

June 28, 2011

Adobe Captivate 5.5: Quizzes To Write Home About

by Kevin Siegel

You've always been able to create quizzes with Captivate. Of course, over the years the quiz features have gotten better and better. However, if you've spent any time with the quiz feature in Captivate 5, you are probably a bit disappointed with how bad some of the text formatting features are. For instance, when you add a multiple choice question slide, something simple like aligning the text horizontally is a real challenge.

You'll be happy to hear that all is well in the new Adobe Captivate 5.5… and then some. I've spent some time playing with question slides and it appears that the text formatting issues that plagued Captivate 5 are a thing of the past. Nice! But since that particular fix was to be expected, you will be happy to hear that there are more quiz enhancements in Captivate 5.5.

For instance, when your learners take a quiz published with Captivate 5.5, the answers now include some cool rollover effects that provide some nice feedback just before the learner selects an answer.

When learners review a Captivate 5.5 quiz, another great new feature will reveal itself. Take a look at the image below and notice that the feedback given to a learner is much improved… a red X appears on any slide that was answered incorrectly and a check mark appears next to the correct answer. (A green check mark appears if the question was answered correctly.)

Improved quiz results

Improved interactivity as learners answer questions and better feedback during the review process are both nice new features. However, neither feature is worthy of writing that letter home. What would get me to start writing that letter? For starters, it would really be nice if there was something that actually made the process of creating a Captivate quiz a bit less painful. And I love it if I was able to create better-looking question slides out of the box. Which brings me to my favorite Captivate 5.5 feature. Check out the image below:

Quiz Template

Adobe is now providing quiz templates… and they really look nice. When you visit the Quiz menu in Captivate 5.5, you'll find a new menu item at the bottom of the menu: Download Quiz Templates. Choosing Download Quiz Templates will take you to the Captivate 5.5 Quiz Templates page on the web. There are currently six templates on the site (and a promise for more).

The templates are cptx files that have been zipped for easy download. Once you've downloaded the zip to your computer, unzip the file and open the project with Captivate 5.5.

You'll find multiple question slides in the project that you can edit and use as your own. There's a master slide that will ensure new slides will be consistent with those already in the project. In addition, all of the object styles have been set. If you're happy with how the template looks, all you have to do is insert new question slides and type the questions and answers. You can't get more turn-key than that! Better-looking quizzes… and faster? Nice! I'd write more but I've got to dash off to the post office and mail that letter home.

Note: When you upgrade legacy projects that contain quizzes to Captivate 5.5, the enhanced learner feedback I mentioned above will automatically be added. (There aren't any special hoops you'll have to jump through to gain the new features.)

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5 or 5.5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

June 24, 2011

PowerPoint 2010: What’s the Difference Between Duplicate and Copy?

by AJ George

Recently I was asked about the difference between the duplicate and copy commands, since they seemingly do the same thing.

Duplicate (Ctrl-D) will automatically copy and paste whatever slide you select and place it right below the original slide. It will be identical in every way to the previous slide.

Copy, (Ctrl-C) will save a copy of the slide to your clipboard so that it can be pasted (Ctrl-V) elsewhere in the presentation.

Choosing duplicate is a time saver because it negates having to manually paste the slide by doing it automatically for you. However, if you would like to put the duplicate slide somewhere in the presentation other than right after its original, you will want to use the Copy and Paste technique.

You will also want to use the Copy command if you would like to paste the slide into another application (like Microsoft Word, for example).

Very important! Keep in mind that if you copy the slide and then paste it into another PowerPoint presentation, the pasted slide will take on the slide theme and formatting of whatever slide is immediately before it, even if it is different from the original's theme.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

June 24, 2011

Writing & Grammar: Apostrophes and Possession

by Jennie Ruby

Lately I've been hearing a lot of people use expressions like Jennie and I's house. The most alarming use, perhaps, was in a sentence very much like this one: "All of the editing and proofing is handled by Jennie and I's department." When the head of the editing department struggles with a grammatical issue, you know it is a bad one.

As I discussed last week, having a person's name and a personal pronoun in the same sentence seems to make our normal ear for grammar go out the window. Surely no head of an editing department would ever say "I's department." So the solution to this problem is just about the same as the solution I offered last week: leave the other person's name out, choose your correct pronoun, and then add the other person back in: "Jennie and my department.*"

However, that is not quite where the grammar books leave us [my source is The Gregg Reference Manual]. We need to also make sure that it is clear that Jennie also has ownership of the department.

Separate possession with two names:

Jane's and Sam's cars are in the parking lot.

[They own separate cars.]

Joint possession with two names:

Jane and Sam's car is in the parking lot.

[They co-own one car. Think of this as taking the phrase Jane and Sam and adding an apostrophe-s to it.]

Joint possession with one name and one pronoun:

Jane's and his car is in the parking lot.

[They co-own one car, but since the pronoun "his" doesn't really apply to Jane, you have to add an apostrophe s to her name to make it clear that she is also one of the owners.]

Separate possession with one name and one pronoun:

Jane's and his cars are in the parking lot.

[Notice that this looks the same as joint possession, but the use of plural for cars makes it clear that they each have a separate car.]

So the right way to say the problem sentence we started with?

All of the editing and proofing is handled by Jennie's and my department.

Note: The asterisk (*) indicates an example illustrating incorrect grammar or usage.

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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

June 21, 2011

PowerPoint 2010: Adding Animation to SmartArt

by AJ George

PowerPoint's SmartArt allows you to visually communicate information. You can create SmartArt graphics that are lists, process diagrams and organizational charts.

Adding SmartArt is simple… all you need to do is click the SmartArt command on the Insert Ribbon. While adding animation to the SmartArt is just as simple, some of the features are a bit hidden.

To add animation to SmartArt:

Ensure the SmartArt graphic is selected (has a thick border around the entire thing).
Choose Animations > Add Animation and then choose any animation you would like.

Simple enough, but what if you want the individual elements of the graphics to animate separately?

If the Animation Pane is not already visible, choose Animations > Animation Pane.
The effect you added should be listed on the Animation Pane.
Click the arrow next to the animation to display the drop-down menu and choose Effect Options.
Select the SmartArt Animation tab.
From the Group graphic drop-down menu, choose how you would like the image to be grouped for the animation.

Notice that for all options except As One Object you are able to reverse the order of the animation. While you can have the elements appear in order, or in reverse order, you can not apply animation effects out of order.

What if you want elements of your SmartArt animation to appear out of order? Or what if you want to apply animations that are grayed out (unavailable) for SmartArt? In these cases, you will need to convert the SmartArt graphic elements to shapes and apply the animations separately.

Ensure the SmartArt graphic is selected.
Without clicking on any of the individual elements of the graphic, right-click and choose Convert to Shapes.
With the graphic selected, right-click on any of the individual elements and select Group > Ungroup (or select Drawing Tools > Format > Group > Ungroup from the ribbon).

With the graphic converted to shapes and then ungrouped you should now be able to apply any animation effect you like and have the individual pieces of the graphic animate in any order.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

June 21, 2011

Adobe Captivate 5.5: Only The Shadow Knows!

by Kevin Siegel

While some of the new features in Adobe Captivate 5.5 (such as the ability to free rotate and publish to Apple mobile devices) have gotten all the fanfare since Adobe released the new software, one new feature has sat on the sideline, overshadowed by the others: Shadow. But don't let this understated feature fool you… it's awesome.

Using the Shadow feature couldn't be easier. All you need to do is select or draw an object and then visit the Shadow group on the Properties panel.

By default, the shadow feature is disabled. Click the Enable check box and a shadow will instantly be added to the selected object. At this point, you can select from any one of nine shadow Presets.

The Shadow Group found in Captivate 5.5.

Not happy with the appearance of the default shadows offered by the presets? No worries. You can change just about all of the shadow's properties including its color, angle and how far the shadow falls from the object (the Distance field shown in the image above).

An object with a shadow in Adobe Captivate 5.5.

Next week: The enhanced quiz features.

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

June 19, 2011

Writing & Grammar: What Should Editors Change?

by Jennie Ruby

First, a point of clarification re last week's contest: we had more than two dozen entries, not just several. Second, an excellent question was raised on the blog: how much re-writing can be allowed on something like this before the meaning is changed?When I set up the contest, I did have in mind just ridding the existing text of redundancies. That is exactly what the majority of contestants did, and I categorized those entries as "editing." The other entries were complete rewrites; in other words, they were substantive edits. I rewarded those entries because they went above correcting the text and attempted to address the needs of readers in new and creative ways. However, that kind of editorial rewrite is not always welcome.

The distinction between substantive editing and copyediting is important in any kind of publishing or editing work, and it goes straight to the question of your level of authority over the text.

If you are the writer of a text, you typically have complete authority over it. That means you can do anything you want: delete words, delete entire sentences, shorten or lengthen sentences, change word choices, change the tone, make it say something entirely different from the original version, change the overall length, and so on.

If you are editing someone else's writing, your level of authority differs with the situation. Magazine or newsletter editors whose main goal is to serve the needs of their readers may have complete authority over the text writers submit for publication. Academic copyeditors, on the other hand, have little authority over the content, organization, and meaning, but have a great deal of authority over the mechanical details, such as how to define acronyms on first use, whether to italicize or underline book titles mentioned in text, whether to spell out numbers, and the like.

Level of authority is something to clarify with your supervisor, with the writer of the text, or with the client who hires you as an editor. Pinpointing your level of authority may involve factors such as whether you are the boss of the person who wrote the text, whether you are lower or higher in the organizational hierarchy than the writer, whether you are an authority on the content, and what stage of production the material is in. If the material is in its final production stages and the deadline is tomorrow, you will minimize your editorial changes regardless of your authority level.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the contest. It was great fun to see person after person nail all of the redundancies. We'll do another one soon.

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June 15, 2011

Adobe Captivate 5.5: At Long Last… Publish Support for Apple Mobile Devices

by Kevin Siegel

Anyone who created eLearning lessons using any version of Adobe Captivate older than version 5 is painfully aware that Captivate does not offer publishing options for any of the Apple mobile devices (iPhone, iPad or iPod). It's been a real issue for developers who love Captivate, but are required to create content for the Apple devices, and are therefore forced to use other tools such as Camtasia.

The new Adobe Captivate 5.5 eliminates the issue. You can now record new Captivate videos specifically for Apple devices, and you can re-publish existing content so that it will run on Apple devices.

To create an eLearning video for Apple devices, begin the recording process as you normally would (File > Record new project). If you choose Custom Size from the Set Capture Area to area, you'll be happy to see that the iPad, iPod and iPhone are all available in the drop-down menu.

Preset sizes for the Apple devices.

When the time comes to publish, simply choose File > Publish just like you always did. Only this time, when you select Media from the options at the left, you'll find MP4 Video available in the Select Type drop-down menu. MP4 is the video format used for publishing to Apple devices and YouTube.

MP4 option.

Once you've selected MP4 as the Type, a Presets drop-down menu will provide access to YouTube and the Apple devices. All you'll need to do at this point is select the appropriate target and publish.

Video presets

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.