Seven Top Authoring Tools by Joe Ganci. “You choose the tools you need depending on the instructional design you need to implement, the venues to which you need to deliver, your budget and schedule, and other factors. I hope this table helps you to reach your eLearning goals.” Recently The eLearning Guild published a research report written by yours truly, entitled Rapid eLearning Authoring: Top Tools, in which I analyzed the results of the continuous surveys to which thousands of Guild members respond. The results proved enlightening. In the report, I lay the groundwork for understanding and adopting tools, and then cover in good detail each of the top-seven tools.
If you are a paid Guild member, I encourage you to download the report. Following the publication of that report, I thought it would make sense to take the seven tools that survey respondents reported using the most and compare their features for you. The top-seven tools that people reported using, in order of most use to least, are: The table appears below. Cost: Five-Minute Film Festival: 8 Interactive Video Tools for Engaging Learners. It's no secret that I am a passionate advocate for using video in the classroom.
When used well, videos can help students make connections to people and ideas beyond their usual frame of reference. That's why I've been really excited to see a wave of new (and mostly free or low-cost!) Tech tools recently that enable teachers to take favorite clips and make them more valuable for educational use. Whether you use videos to flip your classroom or you just appreciate the power of video to engage kids, maybe one of the tools in my playlist below will help you go deeper in 2014.
Video Playlist: Tools to Enhance Videos for Learning You may notice my playlist below looks a little different this time; I'm embedding using a great tool called Huzzaz, reviewed below. More Resources on Using Video in the Classroom Reviews and Guides for Interactive Video Tools Sources and Ideas for Using Videos in the Classroom. Consumer Electronics Show Report: New Video Hardware for eLearning by Stephen Haskin. “This is such a fluid market that no matter what I say this year, next year will bring something better. Heck, probably next month will bring something better, cheaper, and different.
The whole bar is rapidly moving up.” The Consumer Electronics Show 2014 (CES) has shown us new video cameras aplenty. The trickle-down of technology has seemingly accelerated. 4K (UHD) video This year the buzz at CES was about 4K and “wearable” cameras. 4K or UHDTV is video with 3,840 pixels across and 2,160 pixels vertically. The biggest problem for 4K video is this: while there are plenty of displays that are 4K, there’s very little content … yet. What’s new? There’s a lot this year that looks terrific to shoot with. Small action and “wearable” cameras Everyone is trying to emulate the GoPro. Sony showed the AS100V as a direct competitor to the GoPro. In other mini cameras, the Canon Vixia X has better audio than a regular camcorder.
You may be asking, “Why?” Larger camcorders DSLR Cameras. Censoring Cell Phones in School or Using them for Learning? 8 Flares Twitter 1 Facebook 2 Google+ 5 LinkedIn 0 inShare0 8 Flares × Students Love Learning with Cell Phones Do learning resources such as cell phones, iPads, tablets, androids, laptops and other mobile devices belong in the classroom? If they do, why are schools censoring certain learning resources such as mobile devices from being used in the classroom?
Do Cell Phones Belong in the Classroom? Read the article published by The Atlantic on May 18, 2012. Guidelines for Schools According to the American National Council of Teachers of English (NCET), non-print and mulimedia should not be censored by the schools because students have a right to know (2004). NCET lists the challenges and provides guidelines for schools so that they can allow non-print and multmedia material into the school.
Cell Phones in an English Class I’m an English teacher to students of other languages which means that non-native speakers of English practice language skills in and out of the classroom. Toolkit: eLearning Tools Year in Review (Oh, Goodness!) by Joe Ganci. “I’m always astonished when I see a tool vendor being interviewed on the subject of authoring tools. Do the interviewers expect them to be unbiased? That’s too much to ask of anyone who’s put their heart and soul and oodles of cash into building an eLearning tool. I haven’t built such a tool, I just use a lot of them, so it’s easier for me to be impartial.” 2013 will be seen as the turning point in … well, not really a turning point, more like a harbinger of … well, gosh golly, just what was 2013 in eLearning tools?
This year there were lots of new tool versions but few new breakthrough tools that have garnered much attention (yet). Based on the classes I teach and the clients I have, most of you are interested in knowing about what’s happening with the big-name tools, so I’ll cover those first, but keep reading because you owe it to yourself to know about other tools that may … just … save ... your … life (or at least help your career). The big names More valuable tools Oh, definitely! Gamestar Mechanic: Gamification Made Easy. Children in the 21st century experience media in ways that are vastly different from any previous generation.
Social networking, user-created content and video games provide a level of interactivity that was unthinkable a generation ago. As a result, educators are rethinking educational practices that have long been taken for granted. Many have come to the conclusion that the answers they're looking for lie in making video game design a central part of the curriculum. Proponents of game design in the classroom say that it promotes students' systems thinking, problem solving and critical analysis skills. Best of all, including game design in the classroom drastically increases student engagement with the material, thus increasing achievement. Interestingly, even the Boy Scouts have taken notice of this trend and now include a Game Design Merit Badge as part of their program. VIDEO: Learning STEM Skills by Designing Video Games (Time: 06:40) Immersive Teaching Gamification.
The Case Study Kit. Which Technologies are Changing the Way People Learn? When I reflect on my career, it amazes me how much technology has evolved, and how it has completely changed the way I look at the work we do. I first took on the role of “Training Director” for an organization about 15 years ago. At that time, most of what the training department did took place face-to-face, in a classroom. There was a little bit of elearning, mostly off-the-shelf page turners consisting of read-and-sign compliance requirements. It’s amazing how much has changed in only 15 years. The evolution of technology has forever changed the way we interact with each other, and with the world around us. It has also completely redefined how we look at training, learning, and the various ways we support performance. Here are a few of the ways technology has changed the way learning professionals develop solutions to performance problems, and the technologies that continue to change the way people learn.
The Learner is in the Driver’s Seat The era of “push” is ending. Storyline Variables: What They Are, How to Use Them by Shawn Scivally. “With your variables created, you can use triggers and conditions to make your content awesome!” One thing that I have learned is that if you are using Storyline and want to build eLearning games or interactions, you need to use variables and conditions within Storyline. But most developers starting out with Storyline don’t even know what a variable or a condition is. What is a variable? Simply asking, “What exactly is a variable?” For me, asking this question led to doing a little Google search. I quickly found a wiki article with a definition that offers tremendous insight. This fits perfectly for working with variables in Storyline games. Three types of variables in Storyline With the understanding of what a variable is, what types of variables can we use?
To access your Storyline variables, click on the “X” icon in the triggers section. Figure 1: Click the “X” icon to get to your variables Figure 2: This is the screen where you will see the variables for your current project. Create Online Training | Online Training Software | Mindflash. EDUonGo.com. Seamless Learning: Forget MOOCs, Mobile Learning, and Ubiquitous Access by Inge de Waard. “Seamless learning is still a new area, and the challenges are multiple. As this discipline merges the technological and human challenges faced by the emerging new technologies of the last decade (mobile learning, social media, MOOCs, etc.), it is becoming clear that the ultimate learning environment will have to provide a smooth learner experience, with options to both consume and create content. It is a bit of unexplored territory.” Many of us are at or near the leading edge of online teaching and training today, yet we also struggle with optimizing the overall learning experience.
A lot is happening: just-in-time mobile learning, performance support, internal and external massive open online courses (MOOCs), social media inside training strategies, and ubiquitous content delivery just to start naming the trends. But with all these training technologies coming together, we face one major challenge: ensuring a smooth, easy training environment for all our learners. Conclusion References. Create infographics & online charts. The Growthink Dashboard. Research from Aberdeen Group shows the average company that uses operational dashboards enjoys triple the revenue growth and double the profit growth of companies that don’t.
Why? Because with the right dashboard: You’ll make more intelligent business decisionsYou’ll have complete, real-time visibility into your organizationYou’ll manage your business more effectively Custom Business Intelligence Dashboards Hi, I’m Dave Lavinsky, co-founder and President of Growthink, Inc. I originally created the Growthink Dashboard because I wanted real-time insights into my own business, so I could make better business decisions.
And now I’ve made this powerful technology accessible and affordable for any business – including yours. Every Growthink Dashboard is With the Growthink Dashboard, you will: How The Growthink Dashboard Works No more logging into multiple applications to see how your business is performing. A Brief Tour of The Growthink Dashboard And please note: Sample Revenue Dashboard Chart. Technology: The Next Giant Leap in Education? | Nancy Conrad. Last week I received the Leap Motion Controller. This little device, only three inches by one inch, allows for the operation of a computer with the simple wave of a hand. In only a few minutes of playing around with the hands free controller, something quite monumental occurred to me -- the future is now!
Just a few short decades ago, a device like this was unfathomable, and now here it is -- well within our reach. Technology is evolving exponentially and is being used for far more than simply keeping in touch with friends and family on Facebook. It is revolutionizing every aspect of our lives. There are apps to help us eat healthier, sleep better, organize more efficiently, and that's just the beginning. Doctors can treat us faster and easier.
But hyper-efficient at what? That's where the opportunity in education comes in. Well, surprisingly, there are plenty who argue against technology in our children's lives. What if each "next big thing" made its debut in our classrooms? FAQs. Table of Contents: The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It is a capable little computer which can be used in electronics projects, and for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word processing, browsing the internet, and playing games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by adults and children all over the world to learn programming and digital making. You can read more about the Raspberry Pi here. -Introduction -Top The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity, so you can’t buy shares in the company.
You can buy a Raspberry Pi from our main distributors, Premier Farnell/Element14 and RS Components/Allied Electronics. The Model A+ costs $20, the Model B+ costs $25, the Pi 2 costs $35, the Pi 3 costs $35, and the Pi Zero costs $5, plus local taxes and shipping/handling fees. You get the Raspberry Pi board itself. Not at the current time. Yes. There is no on/off switch! 10. 11. 12. No. Google Course Builder: Initial Review. Not too long ago, Google came out with a Course Builder program, designed to allow schools and institutions an easy way to set-up their own MOOC platform.
Today, I decided to take a look at the program to get a sense of their offering and what it can do. Naturally, I have some high expectations, I mean, this is Google after all. The first thing that I did was navigate to the Google Course Builder “home”. Quite honestly, I couldn’t help be feel a bit overwhelmed when I came to this site. With so much information, it’s a bit hard to know where to start. The “Get Started” link (if you can find it) takes you to a rather cold, wiki-type page that details the entire program from start to finish.
I took a moment to look at some example sites made with Course Builder, and well… here take a look (some are in Spanish): Perhaps it’s just me, but the success of a training program is more than the “bones” of the software, it’s the entire presentation. Brainshark | Sales Enablement | Online Video Presentations | eLearning. Create infographics & online charts | infogr.am. How to Effectively Use Video for Training. Delivering courses online affords organizations the ability to deliver their content in a variety of ways, including video. However, just like anything, there is a correct way to deliver online training videos, and then there is the wrong way. Gone are the days when you could just record a live presentation and post the fuzzy tape online for others to view (well, maybe those days aren’t gone… but they should be!)
Video isn’t always the best choice for learning, but it does provide some advantages. First, it allows for variation in instructional delivery – which helps with learning retention. Video is also a great way to demonstrate case studies and reinforce information explained in text. If you have training that is procedural in nature, then videos are a great way to present a string of procedures in a comprehensive way that can be referenced again and again.
To make sure that your videos in your online training are effective, there are some easy steps to take. Reference: Video Compression Secrets: Smaller Files, Better Quality by Stephen Haskin. “The best codec to keep file sizes small is Windows Media (.wmv). Microsoft has done an excellent job of combining small file size and very good temporal quality. The format isn’t necessarily good for iOS devices, but if you can manage to get your projects on YouTube, you will be able to deliver everywhere. And that’s a plus, in my opinion.” Last year, YouTube reported that users were uploading 48 hours of video to the service every minute. That’s over 69,000 hours of video a day, every day. Most of us already use or are beginning to use video in our eLearning. How you compress your video and what form you compress it to makes a difference. What affects file size? Any timeline-based project (Figure 1) must be compressed in order to put it on YouTube, Vimeo, your servers, or wherever you need to store and access it.
Figure 1: Timeline sample The video you upload to YouTube gets compressed the way YouTube wants to compress it, no matter how you compressed it originally. Video cards. AWESOME e-Learning Templates for eLearning course development. Overview. Futuristic Gaming Suit Adds Real Impact For Gamers. UniRow | Video Calling - Meetings - Events | Free Web Conferencing. 19 Kick-Butt Tools for ELearning. Rich interactive wireframes to define web and mobile applications.
Download ReadyGo Software. Toolkit: Ready? Go! The ReadyGo Authoring Tool by Joe Ganci. I-POINT Interactive. Animations: When to Use Them and When to Lose Them. WizIQ | Making Online Teaching & Learning Easier and Affordable. RTMP Security. Secure Streaming via RTMPE | Akwaaba Live TV Help. RTMP or Streaming Options and Secure Videos / Questions / Discussion Area - vzaar Support. Secure streaming with Wowza. SlideTalk - turn your presentations into engaging talking videos. Selecting a Digital Curation Tool by David Kelly.
Our site will be launched soon. Free Authoring Tools. Home. E-learning - the interest of the market. Top 100 Learning Game Resources. Stem-Builder - A rapid development tool for building branching interactions for elearning. eLearning Art - training photos, training images, e-learning images, characters, and templates. Twine: a tool for creating interactive stories. AWESOME e-Learning Templates for eLearning course development.
Photos + Movement = Photeo (Part 1 of 5) by Stephen Haskin & Megan Torrance. What is Layar? Agumented Reality. Developing A Layar Application. eLearning Authoring Tools. Teaching Action - Dozuki. What are important things to keep in mind when using audio narration in Elearning? Cloud based, Lean and Complete LMS with an emphasis on Usability and easy Course creation. Welcome to cyScape - Makers of BrowserHawk. Free 30-Day Trials. Pixton | World's Best Way to Make & Share Comics. Comiclife.com. Wooshii | Professional Video Production Company | Online Video Advertising. The Frugal Filmmaker.
Video Production. @Mojotillett. Video based learning. Storyboarding tools? Bsoco - Software comparison. MOS - MindOnSite SA. CourseLab - free e-Learning authoring tool. Eduongo Overview. Articulate, Captivate and Lectora – Do they deserve your praise? Text-to-Speech in Adobe Captivate 5.5 – Create and Reuse! PowerPoint to Flash Converter | Rapid E-Learning Software | PowerPoint to HTML5 Converter | Convert PowerPoint to Flash. AuthoringToolComparison-May2011.pdf (application/pdf Object) Elearning Resources | Elearning Resources. Video Editing By Magisto | An Automatic Online Video Editor. Online Mind Mapping and Brainstorming app - SpiderScribe.
ROI Calculator | BlueVolt. Is a rapid interactivity builder tool. Create HTML5 and Flash interactivities for eLearning courses. Syncronize SCORM Results for Mobile Learning Courses Taken Offline. CodeBaby. Living Actor™ Presenter … Bring your Presentation to life with animated 3D avatars! Articulate Storyline vs. Adobe Cativate | Cogentys. Storyline. E-Learning Software, LMS, Learning Management System | Lectora. The Best Virtual Classroom for Live, Online Teaching - WizIQ. Adobe Lets the CS6 Cat Out of the Bag by Stephen Haskin. Development Tips: Audio and Video with HTML5 by Mark Lassoff. Collaborative e-Learning Platform to Create Courses | QuickLessons.