Tech4learning

Zentation - the Fusion of YouTube and PowerPoint

In my last posting I commented on how sometimes having two visual channels in use, in particular the video feed of a presenter, alongside their slideshow, can have a detrimental impact on the learner's ability to take in the messages.

So it's not surprising that I'll raise this as a consideration when talking about Zentation - a beta product at the moment - that allows you to synchronise your PowerPoint slides with a YouTube video.  In fact, if you've never thought about this issue or seen an example, then do take a look at the many sample Zentation presentations and judge for yourself.  In particular, after a short while, does your eye gravitate to the video feed of the presenter or do you try to block that out, to just focus on the commentary over the slides?

To use the service you first of all have to upload your video to YouTube. You'll then need to log into Zentation and create a new Account and "Add a New Presentation."  Once you've entered the details of your YouTube video, you next unload your slide and use their ZenSync too to provide precise start timings for each graphic in your presentation.

The service is free is you allow your presentation to remain in the public domain.  Otherwise, for a private presentation, which I'm sure will be the case for many in the corporate learning and development space, you can take out a paid subscription.

Rapid E-learning - Clearly Articulated

For a developer of a rapid e-learning authoring tool to have an independent publisher commission a book to explain how to use their software is testimony to the market domination of that tool.  To have that book's team of authors led by e-learning development expert, Patti Shank, is proof that this tool can be used to create high quality and instructionally sound content.  And for the book to be over 1,000 pages long and weigh 1.75kg clearly positions this tool as a feature-packed package.

So I was pleased - after quite a few months' delay - to get hold of my copy of Essential Articulate Studio '09.

This book provides a very complete guide to using the four elements that make up the Articulate Studio '09 suite, namely Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage and the Video Encoder.  Each of the different aspects of the software are covered - and I mean "each" - so you won't miss out on anything.  In fact, if the book wasn't so long, I would love to read it cover to cover, as although I've used this tool for over four years now, I know I've only scratched the surface of what it can do.

The first chapter provides a quick overview of the tool, including how to install the software.  The next chapter then goes on to look at the topic of rapid e-learning development, including the preparation required before embarking on a project.

In Chapter Three, the authors introduce the main part of the tool, Presenter, and as well as providing a brief introduction to this part, they also look at what to include as part of your project and good project management techniques.  The next four chapters cover all the elements of this application.

Chapters Eight to Thirteen focus on the Quizmaker software and again begin with some of the background preparation when it comes to creating quizzes and surveys.

From Chapter Fourteen to Twenty Five, the book devotes a lot of pages to individual explanations of the different types of interaction that can be created using the Engage program. 

Chapter Twenty Six brings together the publishing aspects of each of the three main software applications, before the final chapter puts the Video Encoder application through its paces.

The book also includes a CD-ROM that contains a 30-day trial of the software itself, together with a copy of the vendor's own documentation, plus links to some of the support resources on their website.

What I most appreciated about this book was the clear explanations provided at each step and the frequent illustrations.  As a frequent user of Articulate Studio, one of the barriers that has held me back from pushing the tool to its full potential has been the uncertainty about what would happen if, for instance, I tweaked something.  With this book, I don't need to worry about the impact something I do might have - I can see it illustrated for myself.  In particular, thanks to the content of Chapter Seven, I now feel much more confident in customising the player templates.

As well as the step-by-step instructions, the book is full of hints and tips on to get the most from the application.  This is probably the closest the book gets to providing some instructional design coaching.  If anything, given the background of the authors, I was expecting more of a focus on how the software could be used to reinforce sound instructional design techniques, but that's my only "minor" criticism of what is certainly a must-have resource for both novice and experienced Articulate Studio '09 users.

Pen and Paper - The Basics with an E-twist

Now this posting is different...it's about a gadget!

Alongside my interest in "online" learning technologies, for a couple of years now, I've also had my attention drawn to other uses of technology in the traditional face-to-face corporate training room.  In particular, the use of interactive whiteboards has seen me having to"sit on the fence" as to their true potential.  Whereas they seem very popular in school classrooms, I've yet to see them make as significant an in-road into organisational training rooms.

Maybe it's their cost - or as I experienced when trying out some competing technologies a year ago, the steep learning curve for the trainer and adult participants - but they ought really to be used more often.

In particular, I've been interested in how the capture of participant-generated content during a face-to-face session could be seemlessly integrated into a blend with online components which could later build on that content.

So I was interested to have a flyer for PaperShow fall out of a management skills magazine I was reading.

Now there have been similar technologies in the past, but in essence, with PaperShow you get a special Bluetooth pen, a pad of special paper and a USB stick that contains the software.  Link them all up and you can create electronic whiteboards using the pad, or annotate over the top of a PowerPoint presentation, or combine the both.  You can share the results by printing out the outputs or e-mailing them and they can also be saved to the USB stick for re-use in the future.

What I liked about this solution was its simplicity.  When I was reviewing some of the hardware-based e-whiteboard solutions, they depended on digital writing pads attached to PCs or laptops.  I had always hoped they could be used in breakout rooms, with the content later "brought back" into the main room for the debrief. But unless the participants had used similar tools before - or were graphic designers - it was a struggle to keep the technology in its rightful place as a support tool, not the focus of the session itself - or, worst case, a barrier to learning.

But with PaperShow, it's just  a pen and piece of paper.  How straightfoward!

At about £100, it's not a bad price either.  Extra pads of paper cost around the £15 mark and you can buy the components separately too.

E-learning Gets Vocal

Sometime I hope to be able to blog about a great voiced based tool that could add an aural dimension to asynchronous e-learning objects.  I've known about it for over a year now, but unfortunately, it was withdrawn by its vendor after a few months of beta testing, pending a further overhaul.

But having whet your appetite, I'm pleased to review another tool, in a similar vein, although different in many respects.

VoiceThread offers the ability to collaborate via voice messages around on-screen content.  From a corporate training point of view, the content could be a PowerPoint slideshow.  Not only could the trainer present their slides via video or just by voice, but their trainees could comment back via a number of different methods - voice (via a US telephone number of VoIP), text, audio file or video clip.  

Not only can you comment by voice, but you can also annotate the content as you do so.  The vendor refers to this as "doodling" and your doodles are even synchronised with your commentary.

The VoiceThreads can be shared with others too, so creating larger learning networks.  They can also be embedded into websites and even exported onto mobile devices as video files.  When you've embedded the VoiceThread into your site or blog, the conversations can continue or really get started.

Thanks to the power of sharing, you can see a demo of how to embed a VoiceThread into a learning blog on YouTube.

I think this is a great way to create rapid e-learning that not only enables you to deliver your content quickly across the web, but it also adds in the missing social dimension that has held e-learning back in the past.

Igniting PowerPoint

I've recently mentioned the fact that it's now possible to create podcasts based on narrated PowerPoint presentations.  Since first commenting on this, I've stumbled on another great tool in this market place. 

Scate Ignite 4 is a very versatile product that can convert all manner of resources into web-based and mobile learning objects.

It comes in three versions, from a straightforward, but nonetheless comprehensive home package, through to a SCORM compliant corporate version, complete with simulations and assessments.

Some very useful demos - created in the tool, of course - help to show off the various features.

When it comes to deploying the podcasts or e-learning modules, then it's easy to post these to their sister igniteCAST hosting service.

Death Prevention by PowerPoint

One of the areas of training where I am keen to see the use of more technology is in the corporate training room.  And I'm not talking about using a DVD player or showing an e-learning course on a big screen.

Instead, I'm interested in how we can introduce collaborate learning tools into our training sessions, similar to the ones that we can use in webinars.  In fact, in my opinion, having delivered webinars for over three years now, I'm increasingly convinced that we should retro-fit some of the web-conferencing techniques we use in virtual classrooms back into their face-to-face equivalents.

I'm sitting on the fence when it comes to interactive whiteboards.  Whilst popular in schools, where the teachers have the chance to become very familiar with them through constant use, in the corporate world, my own experience has shown that we don't use them enough yet to truly understand how to get the most from them.

So I was very interested to see the new YawnBuster tool from Harbinger Knowledge Products, which enables you to add interactivity to your PowerPoint slideshows.  There are eight templates to choose from which cover exercise types such icebreakers, activators, group exercises, energiser and closers.

Personally, I liked the Show of Hands (polling), Brainstorm and Sequence (ranking items), along with the Key Takeaway (the ability to create summaries and next steps, etc. at the end of each session topic) interactions the best.  The others were based on quiz or competition formats, so maybe less popular for a UK/European audience and I would have preferred these interactions to have the automatic marking of the answers, as they currently rely on the trainer manually clicking "correct" or "incorrect buttons each time.

For me, without the need to get to grips with an interactive whiteboard, YawnBuster allows us to introduce more interaction into our training rooms alongside a tool that we've been using for many years now.

Pod My PowerPoint

What I like about the world of learning technologies is once you start to explore one particular avenue, lots of more opportunities open up.

A while back, I was talking about - and receiving comments on - converting PowerPoint presentations into m-learning.  This then drifted into whether presentations could be converted into a podcasting format.

Well, over the last two days or so, I've uncovered two more options.

Firstly, I hadn't realised that you could use the popular screen-caputure/simulations tool, Camtasia, to create podcasts that not only include the slides and audio, but could potentially include a video feed of the speaker.

This instructional video clip shows you how to go about doing this, whilst this one shows you how to produce the result into a podcasting format.

The one draw-back I can see at the moment is on the emphasis on creating podcasts for the Apple iPod/iPhone range and for Windows Mobile devices, or audio-only versions for other players.  Given there is no common mobile devices platform at the moment and many of us have no control over the mobile media players that our audience own, I'd be reluctant to adopt one production method that was limited in its output formats.

This quest led me to uncover another solution - SnapKast.  What I really like about this solution is that it does exactly what I want it to do.  It enables me to take PowerPoint presentation, narrate it and podcast it to the widest range of portable media players possible, as it exports in the nearly universal MPEG4 format. 

But something was still niggling me.  How could I deliver SnapKast podcasts to BlackBerry devices, as they've not been that good at handling video formats?  Turns out this problem will soon begin to fade away, as BlackBerry have literally just released their latest model, the BlackBerry Storm, that really matches up to the iPhone and - good for me - can play video using the MPEG4 format, amongst others.  In the UK, so far anyway, only Vodafone seems to be offering this version, but let's hope its availability increases further - and corporates can find the budget to upgrade their workforces.

Portable PowerPoint

In previous postings about m-learning, I've sometimes mentioned a sales training solution I have seen that was delivered via an iPod.  And I've also posted a few times on the subject of rapid e-learning, the most popular form of this being the conversion of an existing PowerPoint slideshow into a piece of web-based e-learning.

A comment on my last posting about m-learning got me thinking about how a narrated PowerPoint presentation could find its way onto an iPod.  Logically I knew this to be possible, but whilst looking around to confirm a couple of the questions I had, I discovered that a self-contained solution already existed - at least in beta form.

authorSTREAM offer a free service to post narrated PowerPoint slideshows to both YouTube and for downloading to Ipods.  They also allow you to create RSS feeds, so that your PowerPoint slides can be fed to iPods via iTunes, or from a website, so creating a video podcasting solution.  The video below describes the iPod feature in more detail.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by DaveGrewal

So with this solution, you could offer trainees post-workshop narrated reminders from your workshops, or even use it beforehand, to deliver one or two preparatory "modules".  It's worth pointing out that you can make your submissions private, so that only those "in the know" can find them.

To me this looks like a great rapid m-learning development solution.  Of course, you'll not be able to make the session as interactive as you would with one of the full-blown rapid e-learning authoring tools, such as Articulate, but nevertheless, you could create a useful set of portable resources this way.

Bullet-proof Rapid E-learning

I've just finished reading one of the latest additions to my e-learning library, "Better Than Bullet Points: Creating Engaging e-Learning with PowerPoint", by Jane Bozarth. 

This book shows you how you can use PowerPoint itself to create e-learning modules, together with how you can improve the source presentations you might use in a rapid e-learning authoring tool, such as Articulate and Adobe Presenter (the two main tools she highlights in her many examples).

As someone who is still trying to find their way around PowerPoint 2007, the book provides frequent "how tos" based on both the latest and previous versions of the software.  And there are plenty of worked examples on the CD-ROM that comes with the book.

Given the space taken up by the many examples, the book is actually very easy and quick to read.  In essence, Jane shows you how to take a basic (and maybe "typically dry") PowerPoint presentation and apply good instructional design principles to it and how to use the many different features of the software to create powerful e-learning modules.

I particularly liked the sections on adding animation and interactivity - it's amazing what you can do - and how to add in narration, even if you're not using a rapid e-learning tool that also has this feature.  She also shows how you can link in external testing services such as Quia (which will be the subject of my next posting), to add in more sophisticated assessment.

And - thank you Jane - she shows you how to use a standard PowerPoint feature to remove the background from an imported image, so that you don't have a piece of clip art, stuck on, say a white background, on top of your lovely corporate-coloured background.  One of my personal dislikes!

Finally, even if you don't have access to a rapid e-learning tool (which usually does all the hard work for you), Jane shows you how to you publish your PowerPoint e-learning to the web and other destinations.

All Good Things Come in Threes

Although my main focus on this blog is the world of corporate learning technologies, I'm always mindful that the academic sector has led the way in many areas for some time now.  But it's been a while since I've discovered a product offering that's originated from this sector and from within the UK too.

Webducate offers e-learning developers a trio of products that can create effective online modules that could all play a role in corporate learning programmes.  And what's more...they are inexpensive, so putting learning technologies into the hands of many more potential courseware developers.

Dragster is a tool for authoring drag-and-drop exercises.  These are most useful for subjects where processes or identification of components is the main driving force behind the training.  You can easily drop in your background image and complete the process of adding in the labels, the "zones" for the correct positions and feedback.  There is also a wiki-feature, whereby each participant can, for instance, rearrange a series of post-it notes (aka labels), but preserving the previous selections of others.

Pollster, as its name suggests, is a tool for creating polling questions, with the ability to display the results automatically and invite comments that could be used to support each person's voting preference.  It's possible to remove inappropriate comments should they arise and you can also set up an RSS feed, so you don't have to remember to keep checking for the latest poll results.

The final tool is known as the Accessible Multimedia Player.  The name is derived from the fact that you can combine audio, with video, with PowerPoint slides and a written transcript.  For me, this is my favourite tool of the set, as I've written before about software that enables trainers to take their slides, add in their script and synchronise all the elements, to create an archive of a previous live event.  This is a great way to create an asynchronous e-learning module from a live synchronous session and benefits not only those that couldn't attend the original event, but also provide a valuable source of refresher training.  Of course, you could also use the tool to create narrated pre-workshop modules too, or an asynchronous component before a live webinar.

The Webducate website provides detailed step-by-step instructions for each tool and it's worthwhile taking the time to study these, especially when you could be handling many different types of media, in the case of the Accessible Multimedia Player.

[As for the title of this posting, in Germany they say "Alle guten Dinge sind drei" which roughly translates into "all good things come in threes"]