Speaking of Performance Improvement...

So I just upgraded to one of Apple's new 27" iMacs. The i7-"cored" model I picked up has been sitting on my desk now for five days, and I've just managed to get most of it set up amidst my studies, work, and personal life. I can't wait to see how this thing works as a development machine. I've been using a self-assembled PC for the last four or so years and it finally wore out its welcome. This is my first true foray into Apple-dom at home or at work, and my next big goal is to get Windows into Bootcamp so I can run my copy of Adobe's CS4 Master Collection. Anybody know if it's possible to switch a Windows license to a Mac one? (tongue firmly in cheek)

I know Chris over at eQuixotic moved over to Mac some time ago and hasn't looked back, so I hope to follow that lead. Time to try any Mac-ready copy of development software I can find...

mLearning: What The Future May Look Like

I attended the Greater Arizona eLearning (GAZeL) Association's recent meeting at Arizona State University's SkySong here in Scottsdale, and was treated to a great presentation and talk on the current state of mlearning (mobile learning). Brad Boute of (r)elearning blog and Ann Boland of OHE Associates presented, and it was a very instructive and eye-opening couple hours full of facts and debate among the attendees.

Raising Eyebrows

I had worked on an mlearning project with a previous employer in the early "aughts". Porting portions of the certification training classes we were developing seemed to be very a very powerful thing on its face, especially for our audience that was comprised generally tech-savvy novices looking to become IT experts. Alas, smartphones 5-7 years ago were nothing like what they are now, and had very little if any Flash support or extensive media capability. Ultimately the project didn't get off the ground and it didn't make money, thus the business felt existing forms of learning were more viable. And temporally speaking, they were mostly right. But after attending last Thursday's event, I was more convinced than ever that mlearning will be a fixture in training designs in the future.

Perhaps the most striking thing I took away from the event was the possibility that is latent and waiting to be taken advantage of for conducting truly untethered learning both in formal and informal ways. Brad and Ann spoke a lot about how prolific the use of cell phones is around the world, even moreso than computers. The fact that so much of the world's population, 60%, already lives within range of a cell tower, and that that number is expected to reach 90% in a few years, was something I wasn't aware of. I was aware that other countries like Britain tend to be ahead of the US in the proliferation of newer and greater wireless technologies, but I did not know that so many countries, even poorer nations, have access to greater cell phone technology than computer technology. Brad and Ann stressed that these markets are ripe for mlearning to take hold and improve education in ways previously unheard of, in part based on the ways in which people in these nations were using their cell phones and services in ways that couldn't have been predicted by even the cell phone companies themselves. The example provided of individuals using cell minutes as a micro-currency was fascinating. Today's very capable pocket devices like Blackberrys, WinMo phones, and the iPhone and its application library, certainly open a lot of doors that even laptops and their current fashionable netbook alternative cannot open.

After laying out what is known and where the global market and technological features are projected to lead, the discussion evolved into a debate about what we in the US could do in the classroom and in the workplace. What hurdles there might be to the promulgation of mlearning? Taking public schools and colleges into consideration, mlearning has a lot of costs to work out, primarily related to carrier contracts. Other hurdles include the different ways in which many phones display the same content, and in the interfaces that differ from carrier to carrier even for the same phone model. These technical problems have significant bearing on what an mlearning designer can do at present, but there are platforms that can be used to strut some fairly heavy media. As a smartphone user, the browsers are still far less reliable and capable than a typical desktop browser, but it is amazing that there are phones that can view full, real webpages anywhere, from your pocket. However, learning could also take place in the context of an application as opposed to the more classical browser-oriented elearning mode. There are other design challenges, but it was a great exchange of viewpoints from teachers, executives, and professionals of different levels, experiences, and contexts.

The possible future of mlearning and its potential effect on how learning takes place, leads to an interesting question: Will Elearning 3.0 have mlearning as a major fixture? Obviously, we're years from knowing, as Elearning 2.0 tools are still coming online. But I can't help but think now that the increasing "untethering" of our computing power will be the catalyst for the next major evolution in instruction. What are your thoughts about mlearning? Do you have experience with it? If so, what hurdles do you deal with at present, and how have you overcome these, if you have?

Review: Adobe Captivate 4.0

Well, as I hinted all the way back in February, I wanted to review Adobe's latest rev of the now training-staple Captivate elearning development application. Now that I am not in the midst of a course project nor traveling, I have the opportunity to appropriately review Captivate as I have been itching to do. I was very happy when Captivate 3.0 broke cover last year, and I am glad 4.0 follows on so closely after, as it includes plenty of features to warrant its efficacy as a purchase over 3.0. Captivate 4.0 is not a minor step up; it is a much more robust piece of development software than even 3.0 was over 2.0.

Nature of the Review

I was able to give Captivate 4.0 a good test run while working last quarter's final project deliverables. The following is not meant to be an exhaustive review of every feature, nor is it intended to simply echo the high-profile items Adobe outlines on its website. What I want to convey in this review is a general report on the software and the quality of my experience using it on a project.

Interface

Captivate 4.0's interface is largely identical to that of prior versions, with the addition of a few new buttons and other assorted switches. The first improvement you'll find is the addition of several new options for starting a blank project, importing PowerPoint slides, or starting with a template. Some of these are in version 3.0, but they have been improved and added to here.

As with Flash CS4, Adobe has oriented Captivate's timeline to the bottom underneath the work area by default. I think Adobe is making this move to draw an ergonomic connection between the various timeline workflow programs in their lineup (Premiere, Flash, etc.). The timeline can be moved easily if required, though.

In the work interface with a project open, the new Send for Review button is a nice touch for those important peer-checks of work or SME reviews. This feature has been appended to the old Publish dialog, and has most of the settings of the other deliverable types. Adobe's website has a short video about this process and the use of Adobe AIR apps that can allow users without Captivate to add review comments to development files. I did not have a chance to test this hands-on this time around, but will certainly apply it in the future.

Adobe also makes available buttons that access deeper functionality without having to find them in dialogs. The Edit PPT button was particularly helpful, and allows you the option of exporting a flash movie of a single slide if you so choose. The view dropdown is also added for easy switching between storyboard, edit, and branch view without using menus. Overall, if you like Captivate's interface as it is, then you will like 4.0; if you dislike the interface, at least take solace in the fact that the interface is incrementally improved.

Content Creation and Editing

Last quarter's course project had me bringing in some Microsoft PowerPoint slides my client sent. Captivate 4.0's compatibility with Microsoft's latest .PPTX file type certainly helped extend the options available to me for developing the training content (I have Office 2007), and I was happy to see that while the PPT slide import process still takes a long time, it is quicker than in the past. If you wish to edit a slide from an imported PowerPoint file, Captivate will now open up a PowerPoint shell (not the whole application) long enough for you to edit the slide(s) or presentation. This is a nice way to modify your original without having to re-import anything or everything back into your Captivate project from scratch. Very good thinking here.

My project included Level 1 and 2 assessments at the end of the elearning portion, and Captivate continues to perform well here. I would however mention some difficulty in getting the quiz and survey to behave in the same presentation together. The results page for the quiz kept assuming control of the survey, thus throwing off the numbers and variable names, and making it likely that my reports would not be accurate reflections of student inputs. Perhaps I was incorrectly configuring my assessments, and that two can coexist in the same project; I fixed the problem via a bit of a bandaged fix in the end, but the automatic assumption of control by the quiz was one thing I wasn't able to resolve completely to my satisfaction. This is by no means a harsh criticism of Captivate's otherwise robust assessment and reporting capabilities however. They function quite well overall, and remain one of the cornerstones of the application.

What's the Most Important New Feature?

It would scarcely be possible to apply all of 4.0's new features in a single project, and I must confess my own was not quite of a design that warranted use of all the bells and whistles. For a quick synapsis of the new features, Adobe's Captivate 4.0 page highlights the big ones. I definitely made use of the new TOC aggregator feature that can be activated as a publishing option for a project. This option, found under Project > Skin Editor in the TOC tab, allows you to add an Adobe Presenter-style panel with slide titles and other info. The panel can be made visible or hidden, and makes for a nice compact tool for your end users.

The text-to-speech facility is also a major boon for us instructional designers that do not have audio talent available, and who may not have time to record our own narration. Adobe allows you to download voice packs that can then be chosen within Captivate. Then, just choose the slide, add the text to be read, and you're done. This is a very welcome feature that accomplishes a lot of work in a pinch, and it's very easy to switch voices quickly, though each slide with TTS must be reprocessed if a voice is changed. But you could mix things up and have a female voice on some slides, and a male voice on others. Very flexible.

It's not ideal of course, as TTS systems (including this one) often mispronounce words and misinterpret various constructions of text (aside from the robotic delivery), but the application is certainly better for this addition.

What About Stability?

I must admit that in the past, Captivate 2.0 and 3.0, while great for developing materials for my training interventions, were memory sponges and destroyers of CPUs far and wide. Additionally, I felt that those prior versions were quite buggy and inconsistent in their performance and behavior on systems of limited capability. The good news is that Captivate 4.0 is a significant improvement in this area. The new version made due much more readily with the hardware resources on my aged and aging PC. But the bad news is that Captivate is still a major soak on hardware resources, and it is best to have few other applications open while working in this latest Captivate. The combination of PowerPoint and Captivate open on my desktop PC was often too much for the machine to handle smoothly, so my workflow was broken up some by the constant fight for resources. I freely submit that my PC is long in the tooth so to speak, but Captivate as an application feels heavy in regular use, and I can't help thinking that it would function so much more efficiently if rebuilt from square one. It's more efficient now than ever, but that's not saying much, especially when compared to strong competitors like Camtasia and Articulate.

Reliability of 4.0 was also markedly improved over my experiences with prior versions. I could leave the software open for long periods of time while away, and I could work for hours with relative smoothness of program operation. Here I must also point out though, that 4.0 still suffers from some bugs, many of which I have been seeing since 2.0. Perhaps I am the only one that experiences performance issues with Captivate, but after having used versions of the software on a couple different laptops, and my home desktop PC that has copious hard drive space, two gigs of RAM, and a video card more than up to the task, Captivate 4.0 runs more slowly and more tediously than I had hoped. In particular I sometimes experienced a bug whereby a freshly loaded Captivate sensed that a prior session was still in operation, and thus refused to capture the screen due to the prior instance's still-running capture engine. Other bugs involved copying the contents of one file to another with two instances of the program open. It is probably not advised to run multiple Captivate instances simultaneously, but this makes moving and copying content over easier. Using the project merge feature wasn't quite what I needed either. Still other cases involved the configuration of various publish settings that for some reason did not take in the final exported deliverable. In my opinion, there are still many ways in which Captivate can be improved, particularly from an operations standpoint.

What's the Verdict?

There is little question that Captivate is a welcome (and timely) improvement on 3.0, and that it is a must-have upgrade for any training department. The vastly increased flexibility with button actions is one such reason. I have enjoyed the great number of new features Adobe has included, and Captivate is likely to be my primary elearning development environment going forward (though Articulate is quite strong as a competitor).

If there's only one thing I wish Adobe added to 4.0 (aside from a serious bump in resource efficiency and several bug fixes), it's the ability to have more than one Captivate file open in the same instance of the application. I'm not sure why this hasn't already been rectified, but it seems to be a pretty big gaffe in this day and age, even if the program has evolved a lot from its RoboDemo days. In the end, I definitely recommend upgrading to Captivate 4.0, as its added capabilities more than make up for the cost.

Was this review helpful? Let me know in the comments!

Oh To Be a Kid Again!

While querying the almighty Google this afternoon for the relative position of my blog in its listings (I'm not even in the first 10 pages yet...must modify strategy), I found this gem from 2005. I certainly wish I had such an instructive experience when I was a child, but this raises my confidence in the proliferation of technology to classrooms at every level. Teaching children these technology skills while also teaching them science and math and history will surely do nothing but aid their individual abilities to express themselves in this information age.

My only lasting hope is that the teachers are working the basics of design and interfaces into their art classes at these levels, so we're not treated to a bunch of high school graduates that simply communicate through black text on white PowerPoint slides.

But enough of that. I have to console myself for a few minutes over how old and dinosaurish I feel at the moment. =)

Siftables: The Future of Interactive Learning?

I received a Tweet from Clive Shepherd of Clive On Learning this morning, and I must say the video he linked is very compelling. It's a demonstration of a new interactive interface that utilizes microcomputers within small block-sized instruments - called "Siftables" - with small LCD screens, and each block interacts and is aware of other blocks through wireless communication. This is definitely a new way of looking at learning and work, and adding in a level of interactivity that heretofore has not been possible, or cheap.

It's obvious from this demonstration that a lot of work went into the design of Siftables. The transferability of the technology between disciplines, and the inclusion of human gesturing into their functionality is remarkable. Looking at this from the perspective of a (prospective) parent, this is exactly the kind of "toy" I would want my child to have for education in their formative years. It also provides a world of possibilities for parents to interact with their children's learning.

Impressive stuff, and I will definitely follow this one.

Why Wikis? An example...

Tony Karrer has an instructive posting about wikis. He writes about how often wikis are ill-considered as an elearning tool, primarily due to fears surrounding the insertion of errant or low-quality information by individuals who have little or no expertise. In fact, The Wired Campus has an opinion piece that makes very salient points about new learning technologies such as wikis, and the as-yet unquantified impact on academic leadership. Tony is correct to point out the crowdsourcing nature of wikis. I would also emphasize the power to correct that which is incorrect, a central feature of the wiki system. Some may argue that a post-counterpost struggle may ensue, with wiki modifiers possibly being at odds with wiki admins, and either party insisting they have the correct information. But Tony is again correct to point out that just as the information can be corrected, so too can the perspective and the information others have.

A while back I wasn't so sure of the wiki idea myself. But while at a friends house we were discussing Wikipedia on his big screen TV (computers displaying in 50 inches...greatness), and he demonstrated for me the correction system. He found an historical article, and made a change that made a particular statement incorrect. Within probably 30 seconds after posting and see the new statement in official form, it had been corrected back to the original form. This quality control is certainly susceptible to biases and malfeasance, but I have since become a big fan of Wikipedia, particularly as a means of locating sources for Masters papers I am writing. My university is dutifully wary of Wikipedia as a scholarly resource - which it of course is not - but at the very least I can link to some sources I had not yet found, or branch into related subjects, another power of the wiki format.

My most recent contracting project had me creating a wiki for the program team, partly as a means of communication regarding the program's aims and projects, and getting the word out to the wider workforce. This wiki was fast becoming a good resource on the company's intranet for locating material on the company's history, various industry topics, departments, and other types of knowledge. It would be hard to say that the wiki was becoming a tool for storing business intelligence, as much of the internal information was sensitive and likely unacceptable for company-wide posting. But as an intranet tool the wiki appeared to be serving its purpose well, and the ease of entering the wiki and making editions to information empowered all members of a project team (for example) to enter new information when it became relevant.

I'm still getting to know the wiki, but I do find the participatory element of wikis to be a good thing for engaging others in learning. As such, whether the wiki succeeds of fails as a central information resource on the internet, it seems likely to succeed as a key learning tool.