mLearning – Page 21 – The Logical Blog

April 19, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4: Creating Printable PDFs

by Kevin Siegel

If you've spent any time within the
Publish dialog box of Captivate 4, you have probably noticed that there
is a PDF option. Selecting this option will create a PDF version of your
project without the need to use Adobe Acrobat… cool. Because Acrobat Reader 9
includes the Flash Player, anyone who has Reader 9 on their system will
be able to open the PDF and watch or interact with your eLearning
lesson. Cooler!

However, the PDF document you publish with Captivate will
behave a little differently than PDFs you create from a print document.
If your Captivate lesson contained 50 slides, the resulting PDF you
Publish with Captivate won't contain 50 PDF document pages. Instead, the
PDF will contain a single video. Customer's will be able to watch the
video easily enough and use the Captivate playbar to move through the
lesson. However, printing the PDF becomes a challenge. Customer's will
only be able to print the slides contained in the PDF one slide at a time… they'll need to
pause the lesson and print. There is no way to print all of the slides
at one time (even if they select the Print All option in the Print
dialog box, only
one slide will print). Ouch!

You can get around this limitation
easily enough however by adding a widget to the Captivate project prior
to publishing. Here's how to do it.

Back in the Captivate project, open a slide for editing (if
you want the print icon to appear on every slide, you should insert the
widget on the first slide).
Choose Insert > Widget.
Open
PrintSlides.swf from the
Captivate Widget folder (the PrintSlides.swf comes free with Captivate 4
and is typically found in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate
4\Gallery\Widgets).
Position the widget
on your slide wherever you'd like.
Ensure the widget is
in front of all other slide objects by choosing Edit > Order > Bring to Front
(this step is a requirement of the widget… if the widget isn't in
front of other objects, customers might not be able to click it while in
the PDF).
If you'd like the Widget to appear on all of
the slides, show the Properties of the Widget and, on the Options tab,
Display for Timing to Rest of project.
Publish the project
(File > Publish) and ensure
the Export PDF Option is
selected.
Open the PDF that
you published.
Click the printer icon you see on the
slide.
A dialog box will
appear. All you'll need to do now is select the slides you want to print
and click the Print button.

***

Join me in May for training on Adobe Captivate. I'm teaching
two classes (Beginner and Advanced). Click here for details on
the Beginner class. Click here for details on
the Advanced class.

***

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/kevin_siegel.

April 14, 2010

Writing & Grammar Workshop: Acronyms Happen

by Jennie Ruby

Nearly every piece
of technical writing has acronyms. Yet they can be a barrier to a reader who is
trying to absorb technical information or to a learner who is encountering new
terms for the first time. Of course most editors know to spell out an acronym
on first use and introduce the acronym in parentheses. For example, below is a paragraph similar to the
paragraph you are reading now, but using acronyms:

The use of acronyms (UOA) can
be a problem for readers of technical writing (RTW) and LENTs (learners
encountering new terms for the first time). LENTs may have a hard time
understanding the terms themselves and be very confused by UOA. Even advanced
RTW can forget quickly how to understand the UOA by memorizing what the A's
meant, and try to refresh their memory by scanning the document to locate the
first UOA. Thus even carefully defined A's and responsible UOA can still be a
problem.

What can we do to help the
reader? First, consider not using acronyms but spelling out words and phrases
even if they are repetitive. Limit the use of acronyms to technical terms for
which knowing the acronym is important in its own right. For example, in web
design the abbreviation CSS is used more often than the name it stands for,
Cascading Style Sheets. The reader needs to know that acronym as part of
understanding the topic.

Second, consider providing a
separate list of acronyms as a glossary. The reader can then refer to one
common source for all of your acronyms, rather than paging back through your
text trying to locate the parentheses where you first defined each one.

Third, use the same method
to define every acronym. In the sample paragraph above, I defined LENTs
backward, giving the acronym first, and then its definition in parentheses. The
reader will have a harder time locating the acronym when it is defined this
way.

Fourth, don't assume that if
you have introduced a long acronym, the reader will understand you if you then
use a small part of that acronym alone, as I did in the example with A's,
meaning acronyms, which was defined only as part of UOA.

Fifth, do use a small s to make an acronym plural, like this:
ATMs. If the acronym would look like another word with the s, add an apostrophe
like this: A's.

Sixth, when you introduce
the acronym, make sure it is not a possessive or a plural. If necessary, reword
the sentence: instead of "Internet Explorer's (IE's) browser window is…" try
"The browser window of Internet Explorer (IE) is…"

Note: Acronym actually means an abbreviation that
uses first letters of words and that is pronounced as a word, like NASA, versus
an initialism, which is any
abbreviation made up of first letters, like USS. However, Webster's lists
initialism as a secondary meaning of acronym, probably because so many people
lump them together, as I have chosen to do in this article.

***

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.

Jennie teaches two classes popular online classes: Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts.

April 5, 2010

Adobe Captivate: Train the Text to Speech Agents

by Kevin Siegel

During my beginner Captivate classes, I always teach students how to use Captivate's Text to Speech feature. I always look forward to teaching that particular feature because it honestly gets everyone in the room pumped up. And why not? Text to Speech is an easy-to-use utility that will instantly convert written text into audio files. All you have to do is type a slide note, select the note, click Text-to-Speech, select a "speech agent," and click Generate Audio.

If you've spent any time with Captivate's Text to Speech utility, you have probably discovered that the pronunciation of the spoken words isn't always perfect. Unfortunately, if you don't like it, there isn't a pronunciation editor in Captivate that will help, so you're stuck. Bummer! The end! Have a nice day.

Oh, you were looking for solutions here? In that case, read on.

Believe it or not, there is actually a pronunciation editor for the Text to Speech utility, but it's not part of the Captivate interface and you aren't likely to stumble upon it accidentally.

If you have installed Captivate and the Text to Speech Utility, you'll typically find the tool in the following location:

Program [Captivate Installation Folder]\VT\Kate or Paul (depending on the agent you selected when you recorded)\M16\bin

There is an application hiding in the BIN folder called UserDicEng.exe.

UserDicEng.exe

Open UserDicENG.exe and the English User Dictionary Editor will open.

To change the pronunciation of a particular word:

Open the userdict_eng.csv dictionary file
(Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 4\VT\agent\M16\data-common\userdict\)
Click Add word
Type the original word into the Source field
Type the correct word into the Target field using the correct pronunciation (using the letters or the Pronunciation Symbols)
You can always click Read to hear the pronunciation of the new, target word.
Click OK
When satisfied, click the File Save button
Click the Close button
The new pronunciation will be used by your Speech Agent within Captivate the next time you convert text to speech.

March 23, 2010

mLearning: Some Technical Tips

by AJ George

mLearning: Some Technical Tips Back in February I discussed the growing adoption of mobile learning as a viable means for eLearning and communicating ideas. Now I'd like to take a brief look at a few technical aspects to keep in mind when developing mLearning.

Keep file sizes relatively small. A typical mLearning lesson should be no more than 2-3 megabytes.
Be mindful of how many images you use and their sizes. Large images take longer to load and should only be used if they are actually enhancing the information you are presenting.
Minimize the use of audio. Not only does audio make file sizes larger, but it will often be a wasted addition. Think about where your learner will be accessing this learning. An airport? A metro line? A doctor's waiting room? None of these places are conducive for learning with the sound turned on.
While PDAs can usually play stereo sound, often mobile phones can only play mono sound, so when you do create sound files, consider creating a mono version specifically for mLearning.
Limit lengthy text to avoid scrolling. Instead provide links to further information.
Ensure that you stick to high contrast text that can be easily seen on a mobile device. My personal preference is for dark text on a light background, but light text on a dark background can also be perfectly readable. Take into consideration that mobile users might access your learning outside. Will they be able to read it on a sunny day?
Mobile devices like the iPad and the iPhone have screens that can be flipped and viewed horizontally or vertically, so design your mLearning with easily adjustable aspect ratios.

It should be noted that these tips are all generally speaking. For instance, your mLearning topic may be better, if not completely dependent upon a heavy use of audio. Just keep your audience in mind and stick to the old "less is more" mantra when catering to on-the-go learners.

***

About the author: AJ George, a cum laude graduate of Towson University, is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the just-released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

February 3, 2010

mLearning: A Lesson in Real Estate

A principle real estate theory: buy property in a less valuable, but up and coming neighborhood at a cheap price and reap the benefits down the road when everyone else catches on to the area's value. Relatively common knowledge that should perhaps be applied to the mLearning craze?

According to T+D's January issue, despite the buzz around mLearning, programs delivered on mobile learning devices are still the least frequently used of the eLearning practices, which seems to signal that there's been much ado about nothing. Basically businesses are looking at these mobile technologies and saying, "Wow, that's great. But we're still not gonna use it."

But not so fast.

According to The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE's 2010 Horizon Report, mobile computing is slated for universal adoption in a year or less. Some educational institutions have already implemented mobile learning as par for the course. Purdue University's Hotseat encourages students to participate in open source discussions both in and out of the classroom as well as enables class participation in lecture halls, etc via mobile device.

At Abilene Christian University, all 2009 incoming freshmen were issued an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch for personal as well as academic use. Students are able to participate in impromptu quizzes, ask questions and use a dictionary wiki in class to enrich their learning experience.

The latest from Gartner predicts that by 2013, web-enabled phones will exceed PCs worldwide, 1.83 billion to 1.78 billion. And, not long after that, in 2015, phones will be the most popular method of Web browsing.

Complete mobile takeover isn't here yet. But, without a doubt, it's coming.

Moral of the story: now's the time to get a firm hold of mLearning before the new three-story shopping mall pops up down the street from the new Super Walmart and you have to fight for parking in your own neighborhood.

***

About the author: AJ George, a cum laude graduate of Towson University, is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the soon-to-be released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.