Month: June 2018

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TECHSMITH CAMTASIA: Version 2018 Released (Training Available, Book Coming)

TechSmith recently announced the release of Camtasia 2018 and there’s much to cheer. Among the improvements in version 2018:
 
Enhanced Library & Subscription Service Offering Thousands More
 
TechSmith made huge strides in Camtasia 9 when it improved the free assets in the Library. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find dozens of additional resources available for use right away. There’s also a paid subscription to an assets library where you’ll have access to hundreds of thousands of additional royalty-free videos, intros, music, and more.
 
Themes
 
Camtasia has never had a way to quickly apply the look and feel of one object across a large project. In version 2018, Themes allow you to create, save, and apply styles with custom color and font preferences. 
 
Behaviors
 
TechSmith added a few new behaviors giving you even more object-animating power than ever.
 
Faster Rendering
 
One of the major complaints about Camtasia is how long it takes to Render (Share) a project when you’re finished with your production work. Camtasia 2018 promises 50% faster rendering speeds than version 9!
 
The Price of Progress
 
The upgrade price for Camtasia 2018 is $99.50. if you recently ordered the older version of Camtasia, no worries. According to TechSmith, “TechSmith has a 30-day grace period. If you purchased Camtasia 9 or 3 on or after May 18, 2018, you will receive an email from TechSmith with instructions of how to get your free upgrade to Camtasia 2018. If you’re under a maintenance program, you are also eligible for a free upgrade of Camtasia 2018.”
 
Need Camtasia Training?
 
We've got you covered with our live, online Camtasia classes.
 
"TechSmith Camtasia 2018 (for Mac and PC): The Essentials" Workbook
 
The book is nearly finished and should head to the beta team by Friday of this week. I expect it to be available on amazon.com in a few weeks.
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eLEARNING DEVELOPMENT: Polly Want a Voice?

by Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP

When it comes to audio in eLearning, my experience strongly suggests that adding voiceover audio to your project enhances the learner experience. Does this mean that you need to hire professional voiceover talent? Absolutely not. If you’ve got the budget, hiring professional talent is the best way to go. However, home-grown audio featuring you as the voiceover talent works great. I know, I know, you hate your voice. Most of us do! (Yikes, I mean we hate the sound of our own voice, not yours.) Rest-assured that your voice is far better than you think and, it’s perfectly appropriate for eLearning. Nevertheless, there are times when you simply don’t want to use your own voice, and you cannot afford to hire professional talent. In these instances, Text-to-Speech (TTS) is a wonder.
 
Some of the top eLearning development tools include TTS for free. But what if you don’t like the free voice choices or quality that come with your eLearning tools? Worse, what if your eLearning tool doesn’t include TTS at all? The good news is you can search the web and find vendors that create TTS. The price ranges from free to expensive. One of the best tools I’ve found is provided by Amazon: Polly.
 
 
Once you click the Get started with Amazon Polly button, you’ll need to either sign into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) portal or create a new account. Once logged into your AWS account, you'll find Amazon Polly grouped with Machine Learning.
 
 
Using Amazon Polly is as simple as typing your text, selecting a language, picking a voice, listening to the results and, if satisfied, downloading the file as an MP3. In this example, I wanted to see how well Polly handled a tongue-twister so I typed out a portion of the famous Peter Piper tongue-twister most of us learned as children. Then I selected Matthew as my voice. 
 
 
I listened to the audio and it sounded great (far better than I was expecting and, in my opinion, better than the Speech Agents that are included with Adobe Captivate and NeoSpeech).
 
The ultimate test was adding the voice to my eLearning tool so I tested Adobe Captivate and TechSmith Camtasia. The results? A+ for both. What about Articulate Storyline? A+++++ Why? While Adobe Captivate ships with NeoSpeech for its TTS (and the voice quality is okay), Storyline’s TTS feature uses Polly and it’s built-in. You will need to have internet access to use Polly in Storyline but you won’t have to login to the AWS site (a great time-saver).
 
Polly is great and I'd suggest giving the service a try. As mentioned, Polly is included for free with Storyline. But if your want to use Polly with Captivate or Camtasia (or with other tools like Presenter), here's a pricing chart you might find useful. (Note that thanks to the Free tier, you can create a signficant amount of TTS without having to pull out your credit card.)
 
 
If you'd like to hear how awesome Polly does with TTS, here's a short video clip for your listening pleasure.
 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Polly and TTS in general. Good? Bad? Which tools/vendors have you found that work the best? Please post your comments below.
 
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.
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ARTICULATE STORYLINE: Dial-Up Interactivity with Custom Dials

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

With Articulate Storyline, adding a high-level of interactivity is pretty easy if you begin with some of the built-in Interactive Objects. Take dials for instance. If you visit the Storyline 360 Insert tab on the Ribbon, Interactive Objects area, you'll find Button, Slider, Dial, Hotspot, Input, and Marker. If you click the Dial tool, you'll find three built-in Dials that are totally drag-and-drop ready. (You won't need to add any Triggers to the object to allow learners to drag the dial.)
 
 
The first image below shows one of the default dials that was added to a Storyline slide. The second image is an animated GIF that demonstrates how a learner can interact with the dial. (I've included a link to a video of the interaction if the animated gif does not play in your email application. Click the second image below to see the video.)
 
 
Dials are cool, but wouldn't it be better if you could make any image or shape a dial (essentially create your own interactive object) without the need for programming? It turns out that custom dials in Storyline are a snap. In the image below, I've added an image to a Storyline slide. It's a simple character that can be added via Insert > Characters.
 
 
To convert an object to a dial, ensure that the object is selected and choose Insert > Interactive Objects > Convert to Dial.
 
 
The selected image is instantly converted to an interactive dial.
 
 
I added a few more shapes and some text to my slide, implemented a few states (the smiley face you see is actually three states: Normal, Tired, and Sad), added a few Triggers, and the results appear in the animated GIF below. (Please don't judge the example below on appearance or silliness, I quickly threw it together as a proof of concept for you… plus I'm no designer. With a little TLC from a designer, there's no limits to the awesomeness you can create.)
 
 
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If you'd like to learn more about Storyline, Triggers, States, and Interactive objects, check out our live, online Articulate Storyline classes.
 
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.
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TEACHING ONLINE: Instructors Take Note!

by Jennie Ruby, COTP

That’s right: note taking. It’s not just for students, anymore! 
 
Of course we are used to thinking of note-taking as a student activity. And it certainly still is. In one of my online classes just this week, one of my students said, “Hold on, hold on! I’ve got to get this down!” before she would go on with answering a question I had asked her. Then she answered my question, and no doubt wrote that down as well! But she and the other participants were not the only ones taking notes in my class. I was taking notes, too.
 
Starting during the participant introductions at the beginning of my online classes, I begin to take hand-written notes. I make sure to have a well-spaced roster of my participants, with plenty of room to write. During their introductions, I note key facts about them, such as where they are calling in from, what kinds of topics they work with, and what organization they work for. 
 
Taking these notes by hand helps me learn about my students. My goal in online classes is to get to know my students at least as well as I get to know participants in face-to-face classrooms—or maybe even better!
 
Recent research by Pam Mueller of Princeton University, along with Daniel Oppenheimer now at UCLA, shows that hand-written notes may help us learn things better. That’s important for students, and in my classes I sometimes mention this fact to learners. Now, the type of information that hand-written notes helps the most with is conceptual knowledge, rather than just plain facts. Notes typed on a laptop seem to be just as effective for learning rote facts and details. 
 
But I hand write my “class” notes anyway—notes about my class participants, not about my content—and I notice a dramatic improvement in my ability to remember who my students are and where they are coming from. I feel like I truly get to know them.
 
Once I know my students, I can help them with learning the content of the class by actively using examples that relate to their experience. For example, if I know one of my learners for eLearning software is going to be creating training videos for active-duty nurses, I might mention a few ways to engage learners without audio voiceover. Why? Because the nurses may be trying to absorb the eLearning while working at a station in a busy ward, where they can’t use earphones!
 
I teach online courses by myself in a room full of computers, monitors, and microphones. I may not see another human being all day. But at the end of the day, I do not feel as if I spent the day alone. I feel the same as if I had spent the day getting to know, and then working with, a room full of people.
 
Here are some of the things I take notes about:
  • Where participants are calling in from
  • What topics they work with (finance, healthcare, manufacturing, etc.)
  • What role they play (instructional designer, training manager, instructor)
  • Contributions/comments they make about the class
  • Questions they ask that I promised to cover later
And in my software classes, I create a column for checkmarks, where I note whether each student has had a turn to share their computer screen. 
 
In the online classroom, we need every possible tool we can use to get to know, engage with, and create learning experiences with our participants. Try note-taking in your next online class!
 
Join me in July when I team with Kevin Siegel and AJ Walther for ICCOTP's Online Training Professional certification course.
 
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Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP, is a veteran eLearning developer, trainer, and author. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer and Certified Online Training Professional. She teaches both classroom and online courses, and has authored courseware, published training books, and developed content for countless eLearning projects. She is also a publishing professional with more than 30 years of experience in writing, editing, print publishing, and eLearning.