A look back at what we've seen in 2010 and speculation about 2011.Post from: The eLearning CoachLearning Technology Trends To Watch In 2011

I use Articulate Studio a lot in my e-learning projects. It’s a great tool and because it relies on PowerPoint as the primary authoring environment (Articulate Presenter is actually a PowerPoint add-on) it is ideal for trainers who are just getting into e-learning. This reliance on PowerPoint however has also caused some key problems - primarily because PowerPoint is a presentation tool not an e-learning development tool. It quite common to see e-learning that looks a lot like PowerPoint presentations with a voice over. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing -  Articualte Presenter was originally conceived as a presentation tool NOT an e-learning authoring tool (the name gives the game away). However as a learning designer I have always wanted to break out of the PowerPoint environment and be a little more creative with my e-learning projects. For a while now there has been some speculation as to when the next version of Articulate Studio (the current version is Studio 09) might appear and what additional features it may contain. More recently there has been speculation that it might abandon Flash altogether and take the HTML5 route. Well it appears that the mist is clearing and we will see in 2011 TWO new products from Articulate: A new product called Articulate Storyline which will be aimed at intermediate e-learning designers. This will be a standalone installed desktop application (like Quizmaker) and will publish to both Flash and HTML5 (primarily to keep us iPad owners happy). It will have a lot more creative control over learning interaction and also the player design. Release is due in Summer 2011. Articulate Studio will remain but will be upgraded with new functionality. It seems that this will still be the first choice for those just getting started in e-learning. Release is not until the end of 2011. And Quizmaker - well I assume that as a standalone product it will also get an upgrade and either be bundled with Storyline OR with Studio. This seems like a good strategy. We need a tool with the ease of use of Articulate Studio that can break free of the constraints of being a PowerPoint add-on BUT of course learning this tool is going to a challenge to those who have never developed any e-learning (or indeed any form of on-screen multimedia) before. Hopefully moving from Studio to Storyline will be reasonably straightforward so once Studio has been mastered there is a clear next step. The only downside? The extra cost of buying and managing two products in an organisation. But if they let us do more then that investment will be repaid quite quickly (one good client project might just do it)! There is limited information about the new products on the Articulate web site but there is a discussion thread here: http://community.articulate.com/forums/t/1694.aspx?PageIndex=2

This post is part of my continuing series of weekly lesson summaries. My goal is to give parents & caregivers in our school community the resources needed to extend student learning at home, and to share my professional practice with teacher colleagues around the world in the hopes of improving my craft. Week ending 01/31/14 Kindergarten What we learned / did / explored together: Knowing that Kindergarteners would be working on writing sentences by this time of the school year, I wanted to introduce them to some word processing concepts so we could begin writing in the STEMLAB on our Chromebooks. To get them ready, we fired up Learning.com EasyTech and dove into some lessons designed to give them the background knowledge they need to be successful. We also worked through some keyboarding lessons there too - more like "keyboarding awareness" than keyboarding per se as the only thing we are concerned about at this age is that they can FIND the keys they need to press. What I observed / inferred / connected: Learning.com’s EasyTech software is one of the easiest and best ways for students to get solid, foundation skills before we work on projects. The kids love the activities, they work at their own pace, they get the skills before they finally proceed. It’s a win-win-win. What students can do at home: EasyTech is available at home, we provided the login credentials at the start of the school year, if you’d like them, contact me! Check out the Kindergarten Symbaloo for more possibilities. First Grade What we learned / did / explored together: Our first grade "materials engineers" got hands-on experience with three different earth materials - soil, sand and clay flour - to determine their properties when dry and wet and to find out which one made better mortar. Students examined each sample with magnifying lenses while recording our observations on a whiteboard. We added water and noted changes to color, texture and stickiness. Then we made "mortar sandwiches" using ceramic tiles which were dried overnight and tested. What I observed / inferred / connected: Words like "adhesion" and "torque" aren’t usually part of a First Grade lesson but they are in the STEMLAB! As expected, kids were delighted by the touch and feel of the dried earth materials used in the mortar sandwiches. As expected, the clay flour was the best mortar and we decided it would be the "base" for our rock wall mortar testing / creations next week. What students can do at home: Ask your child to explain the difference between soil, sand and clay - both dry and wet - when used for mortar. Let them tell you which would be the better choice and why. Ask them to provide specifics as to why they feel that way! Check out the First Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities. Second and Fourth Grade What we learned / did / explored together: Second and Fourth Graders are preparing to do some presentation work so we took the opportunity to work through several related Learning.com EasyTech lessons. As an added bonus, students experimented with the 3D design application Tinkercad, mostly with great success, completing several tutorials including a basic key ring (as shown above). What I observed / inferred / connected: The Learning.com EasyTech lessons went about as well as they could have, allowing kids to work at their own pace and re-learn techniques as needed. Tinkercad was great fun and the tutorials were straightforward and effective. What students can do at home: Parents can create free Tinkercad accounts and work through the tool together with their children. Let them show you what they know! EasyTech is available at home, we provided the login credentials at the start of the school year, if you’d like them, contact me. Third Grade What we learned / did / explored together: After having read about how wind energy can be converted into rotational energy, students actually MADE IT HAPPEN in the STEMLAB by creating their own windmills. With some of the materials prebuilt to save time, students were able to focus their attention on designing windmill blades and determining where (and how many) to place on the hub for maximum lift. The initial goal was to get the blades to turn enough to lift an empty paper cup; from there, students tried to design a windmill strong enough to lift as many metal washers as possible. What I learned / observed / inferred: THIS. WAS. AMAZING!!! Everyone was successful to one degree or another and some were EXTREMELY successful; out most powerful windmill, shown above, EASILY lifted 60 metal washers - the base had to be held in place and cup could not hold any more! This lesson CAPTIVATED students and challenged their scientific understandings and design skills. Windmills featured as few as two and as many as thirteen blades and were made of a variety of materials. The pace was frenetic and the noise in the room was deafening at times but it was the best kind of noise - happy, enthusiastic and celebratory noise! What students can do at home: Ask your child about their windmill design. How well did it work initially? How did they redesign it? What change made it better? What surprises did they encounter? What design changes do they still need to make? We have at least one more week of work ahead with the windmills, we plan to make the most of it!

Last week I spent an excellent day at the University of Leeds sharing Articulate tips and tricks with 70 other UK based users. This is actually the third event of its kind - I completely missed the others in 2009 and 2010! The day is the brainchild of Dragos Ciobanu from the University of Leeds Development Support Unit supported by his team; Carol, Jade and Michelle. The University of Leeds currently has 212 user licenses of Articulate Studio - quite an impressive investment! Here are some of my observations on the day: The eight minute rule - apparently this is the maximum attention span in front of a piece of e-learning. When I first started developing e-learning an hour was the standard length of an e-learning programme. Today clients generally want something that is no more than 20-30 minutes but even I have recognised that 10-15 minutes is more popular with time pressed learners. Maybe we really do need to break things down into even smaller easily digestible chunks but it’s also possible that we are confusing  learning with information access.  There is an argument that good learning is actually slow learning (article to follow on that). Graeme Youngs repeated a message I have been telling clients and people on my Articulate courses - if something already exists as a document don’t rush headlong into putting all that content into your e-learning. Simply introduce the resource, explain why it’s important and provide it either as an attachment (file) or as a link (web based resource). Finally - if appropriate - test them on the content. All done in two slides plus a Quizmaker quiz! As well as saving heaps of time, if the resource changes it’s less likely to affect your e-learning. Steve Rayson from Kineo walked us through some really nice examples of Articulate developed using primarily PowerPoint and Engage and Quizmaker. Even pro e-learning companies keep things simple sometimes. One challenge he talked about specifically was ‘page wait’ due to poor corporate networks. That rings true with my own experience - people really don’t like to wait for the ‘spinning wheel’ too long while an Engage interaction with lots of embedded media loads up. As far as a collaborative authoring environment is concerned he was less enthusiastic about using Articulate. I have to agree - working on big collaborative projects is not a perfect application of the Articulate ‘workflow’. Kineo use CourseBuilder but you could also use Mohive or ContentPoint (ex Atlantic Link). Steve also mentioned ‘art direction’ which is key for getting a consistent look and feel - especially in a corporate branded environment. Matthew Lloyd from Omniplex took us through the complexities of ADDIE as it is applied to developing e-learning. Ouch! I do believe a development methodology can help but ADDIE needs serious simplification for the type of rapid authoring environment at which Articulate is targeted. Don Freda from Articulate gave us a demo of the pre-beta version of Storyline. It looks really good but is probably not the Studio killer I was hoping it would be. More in a separate article to come. Tony Lowe from Webducate talked about Articulate skins. Tony and his partner Rachael run Webducate which develops Articulate skins and also Flash interactions such as Dragster. We had an interesting presentation from Richard Windle from the University of Nottingham on ‘Open Resources in Education’. Think universities adopting the ‘freemium’ model. Why? Because sharing helps promote their areas of expertise and because most of what they do is publicly funded, so providing some resources back to society is a natural thing to do. He also shared some interesting results from feedback from e-learners. Apparently both bespoke Flash work and work developed using just the Articulate tools were pretty equally liked by learners. So the message is think twice before you spend all that cash of expensive Flash. However there are some circumstances when the bespoke solution is the best for the learning experience. In the afternoon there were some 5 minutes slots - one of which I gave on 10 gripes with Articulate. I’ll post my presentation with voice over is a later blog post. Robert Cochrane from the University of Leeds Engineering Department also gave a really interesting talk on using online learning to get MSc students up to flying speed. Thought this was a really creative use of online learning to prepare students for the full-on lecture room experience. And did I learn anything? Yes here are a few things I learnt: Sometimes it’s OK to let learner’s wander around a learning resource (some of the Leeds programmes adopt this ‘learn what you need approach’). Articulate ‘web objects’ can be used for variety of clever things - certificates, forms or even micro-web sites designed specifically as part of the course. The simplicity of Articulate causes lots of ‘workarounds’ to be employed and this actually fosters creativity and lateral thinking. And finally…I can’t wait to have a play with the beta version of Articulate Storyline! See you in Leeds next year. Useful Links: Articulate example projects from the conference

Need help starting a career in eLearning? Check these ways for getting into the field.Post from: The eLearning CoachJoining The eLearning Tribe

My STEMLAB Second Graders are taking part in the Doodle4Google challenge this year as an introduction to a unit on design thinking. We’re using our Great White Wall to ideate: Problem is, I need to clean the board every day for a new class. So, I’m going to transcribe the notes as best I can here every day to make it easy for everyone to review, ponder and revamp. The Doodle4Google prompt this year is: If I could invent one thing to make the world a better place… Here are the kids’ contributions, in no particular order, transcribed to the best of my ability (capturing the kids’ intent), by category as suggested by Google. (Some belong in different categories but I want to honor the students’ work and share as-is.) I will update this post every day after school. Animals Virtual animals for hunters to hunt instead of real animals. A machine that brings animals back to life. An animal force-field (for protection). Animal Teleporter (to get animals from place to place, like across highways). Animal Robot Butler. Hunter Alert - to tell animals when hunters are nearby. Food canon to shoot food toward animals. Red Light / Green Light to tell fish and sea animals when boats are coming. Friends & Family A floating skateboard A glue thing that fills holes (wounds) in your body. A machine that makes clothes (from trash? natural materials?) Robot assistants for old people that are blind or need help. A giant balloon that inflates by itself and catches old people if they fall. Gloves that make your hands hot or cold by the press of a button. A robot that makes food in one minute. Jet packs for people to escape robbers. A seagull poop shield. A happiness machine to make people happy. Automatic Voice Controlled Oven. Robot Doctors. Doctor Teleporters (to get them to places they are needed). Automatic Foot Massager. Imaginary Friend Glasses (they let you see you imaginary friend). Remote Control that stops family members from fighting. A machine that makes everything free in stores. Toast Deliverer (hands you toast when it is done so you don’t burn your hand.) Bully-Stopping Robot. School Drone (flies around and takes your classes for you). Heated Jacket. Restaurant Drone (delivers your food). Napkin Shirt. Robot to help you get dressed. Heated shirt. The World An anti-littering robot (drone?) A machine that sucks up litter. Robots that put equipment on for you. Robots that pick up garbage. A World Peace Maker. A button that makes a giant wave that wipes pollution out of the ocean. Safer playgrounds. A robot that turns bad people into good people. Automatic Food Maker/Dispenser. Car Teleporter (to move long distances quickly). Homework "Doer". Job Finder / Person Matcher. Robot Firemen. Giant Rock Breaker. House Maker Device. Our Community A microwave oven that is powered by the sun. Moving sidewalks for kids. Flying cars. A car that is powered by the sun. A bus that can fly in an emergency. Make a dog (robot?) to do our homework and chores. Robots that stop people from littering. Street light that is free to make and does not use electricity. A robot that can deliver food. A robot to help old people be stronger and feel younger. Flying Goose Poop Cleaner The Environment A machine that makes paper out of air. A machine that makes anything you need. Underwater garbage eater. A machine that can turn water into snow. A non-polluting car that has an engine made of plastic. A ship that picks up trash in the ocean. Automatic (Forest) Tree Planter. Self-Cutting Grass for lawns. Outdoor Large Scale Smoke Remover. Robot Litter Sucker. Trash-Eating Robot. Fire-Fighting Robot. More to come! Stay tuned!

This post is part of my continuing series of weekly lesson summaries. My goal is to give parents & caregivers in our school community the resources needed to extend student learning at home, and to share my professional practice with teacher colleagues around the world in the hopes of improving my craft. Week ending 02/07/14 Kindergarten What we learned / did / explored together: Kindergarteners are currently working on their sentence writing skills, so I took this opportunity to introduce them to the concept of doing so on a computer. Last week we laid the groundwork with an EasyTech lesson on words, spaces and the enter key. This week we put it to use. We began by reviewing sentence writing technique by hand while identifying the key components: start with a capital/uppercase letter, one space between words, finish with a punctuation/ending mark. We then discussed how this process is similar (and different) on a keyboard before sending them to their Chromebooks to get to work. I set up a unique Google Presentation for each student with a picture and a starter sentence. They were given the option to recopy the sentence as-is, copy one of several we posted on the board, or come up with their own by looking at the picture. They also had to put their name on the top using a capital/uppercase letter. "Kidspell" was allowed. I was mainly interested in their ability to capitalize, space, and keyboard correctly. What I observed / inferred / connected: This worked really, really well. Much better than I expected, across the range of abilities in class. Kids that were comfortable on the keyboard went bananas writing sentences, they just kept going and going (I provided several pages for them to use if desired.) Those who struggled were able to copy directly from the screen or whiteboard, with help from a teacher. Those in the middle just powered through. Everyone was productive, no one got frustrated. This was one of our most challenging lessons to date. A Google Presentation was the ideal container for this work. The standard slide layout was perfect; it had a space for their name at the top, a spot for the photo prompt, and a text box just big enough for simple sentence writing. The font was large and easy to see. It was everything we needed and worked wonderfully. What students can do at home: Practice writing simple sentences by hand first. If you have a computer, any word processor or text editor will do. Heck, even your email program will work - have your kids type sentences into an email and send them to friends and family. What I am looking for: capitalization of their names and first letters in the sentence; a single space between words; and some kind of ending mark. The Kindergarten  Symbaloo is always worth checking out, too! First Grade What we learned / did / explored together: For this part of our Engineering is Elementary unit involving materials engineering, students built rock walls using two different types of mortar - clay flour mixed with either sand or soil, just like the character did in the storybook. Students worked in teams mixing the mortar and placing the rocks in designated sections for later testing (demolition!) What I observed / inferred / connected: This was, as expected, a highlight for the students - we all know they LOVE hands-on learning. It was messy, but we anticipated that, thanks to the smocks provided by Mrs. Lisa Pilli last year. (I can now add "doing a load of laundry every night" to my lesson plans.) Kids did a much better job this year designing the walls themselves because I took the time to explain how to stagger-stack the rocks and how to place the mortar. We created a total of 10 sections of rock wall, five each using the sand+clay and soil+clay mixtures. They are now fully dried and ready for testing in our next lesson. What students can do at home: I actually had a student come up and tell me they made mortar and a rock wall themselves at home. How cool is THAT! It’s the kind of inspiration I would love to see more of. The key concepts in this lesson involve understanding how different materials can be combined to create new materials, and, how water can make mortar soft and sticky and usable to create a structure. Check out the First Grade Symbaloo for fun digital activities! Second Grade What we learned / did / explored together: Second Graders are taking part in this year’s Doodle for Google competition, which will provide me with content to do a unit on presentations. We started by discussing the need for and process surrounding inventions, emphasizing the fact that everyone is an inventor (especially kids) and that inventions serve people / solve problems. We followed the Doodle for Google prompt and divided into groups to brainstorm ideas that could be the basis for doodles - specifically, what could they invent to help either: Animals, Friends/Family, the World, our local Community, or the Environment. We used the Great White Wall (above) to brainstorm ideas, which I dutifully transcribe every day onto this blog post for kids to refer to. At the end of class, we passed out copies of the official entry form and asked everyone to do a ROUGH FIRST DRAFT by the next class meeting. Students will then either re-do the draft in final form or choose another concept for their official entry. These creations will be photographed and inserted into Google Presentations which is the curricular link I was after from the start. What I observed / inferred / connected: The brainstorming worked amazingly well. Students had to work together for a limited time on a particular subject area and write down whatever they could - all ideas were welcomed. Conversations were great, kids supported each other and generally had a blast writing their ideas all over the whiteboard wall. What students can do at home: Keep brainstorming! Check the blog post for ideas and start doodling! We will be finishing up this coming week! Check out the Second Grade Symbaloo for other fun activities! Third Grade What we learned / did / explored together: We had another session dedicated to building, testing and and improving our windmill designs. It’s very important to me that everyone have a chance to be successful with this activity. What I learned / observed / inferred: Everyone was able to get their windmills to work - to varying degrees. A pair of students in Mrs. Hinman’s class set a new record - their windmill lifted 92 (!) washers, the entire contents of the box we purchased for testing. It was quite an accomplishment! Despite our many successes, some students still did not grasp the key concepts of proper blade design and orientation, and as a result, their windmills were among those who struggled the most. We need different styrofoam balls for next year; the ones we used were too easily deformed by multiple blade insertions. Several failed completely. What students can do at home: I am hearing reports that students are creating these windmills at home - that is terrific - they are easy to make, just look at the photos. As students explore the connection between wind and rotational energy, ask them to improve their designs until it can lift greater and greater amounts. Check out the Third Grade Symbaloo for additional learning activities! Fourth Grade What we covered / did / explored: Needing a container / context for a unit on presentations, I came across "Back to KG???!!!," a terrific activity on the Stanford d.School’s K12 wiki focused on design thinking. I was immediately enamored with the theme / concept and its value as an introduction to the design thinking mindset. We started the lesson with a wide-ranging conversation about memories from kindergarten and what it is like today - setting up some very profound exchanges between kids, especially those who have younger siblings in Kindergarten. We then sent the kids into a Google Document (presentation) I’d created in advance where they had to respond to prompts (writing like this, on a keyboard, off the top of their heads, is a critical skill and one that is tested under the new PARCC assessments.) My goal with the prompts was to dredge up enough memories so that they would be able to come up with five excellent questions for next week - when we will be travelling to Kindergarten classrooms and interviewing students (individually and in groups.) What I observed / inferred / connected: This went really, really well. Even as fourth graders, these students experienced POWERFUL nostalgia for their first year of schooling. It is clear that many, many great memories are formed in those years, and a great deal of learning occurs. The interviews next week are going to be fantastic. What students can do at home: This is one of those rare times I have assigned homework in my class. For the students who have had this lesson, the homework is for them to come up with five questions to ask a kindergartner by our next class. Many finished in class; many others wanted to be able to access the Google Doc from home and work on it. I provided instructions for anyone that needs them on my classroom website: http://eslab.northfield.groupfusion.net/. Check out the Fourth Grade Symbaloo for even more learning activities!

I have seen the new Articulate Storyline - or at least a pre-beta version of it. Don Freda gave us a demo via webinar at the Articulate UK Users conference at the University of Leeds. So what does Storyline do that Studio doesn’t? Well it didn’t feel like a full Studio replacement but that may be because of the limited demo that we saw. First of all Storyline is a standalone program - it doesn’t rely on PowerPoint as its base authoring environment. This is both both good and bad - good because no longer do we have to rely on piggy backing off another application, bad because does it effectively recreate all the functionality that we relied upon in PowerPoint? I couldn’t get any pictures sadly but here are the menus from Storyline: Home, Insert, Slides, Design, Animations, View, Help, Character Tools (Design, Format) So what does each of these menus do? Well I really don’t know (even after watching the demo) but my best guess is that they pretty much replicate a lot of the PowerPoint functionality in the same way that PowerPoint functions such as animations etc. were added to Quizmaker 09. Most of Don’s demo focussed on the scenario building aspects of Storyline. Its ability to develop scenarios with different characters (using the Character Tools menus above) is really powerful. You can create libraries of different characters and then weave them into scenarios which use branching to take the learners on different routes through the content. So for example when you are presented with a scenario where two people are discussing a possible solution you can choose which solution you would go with and follow the ‘storyline’ from there. To make the scenario more believable you can even alter each character’s expression to suit the situation so Frankie can be happy, sad or even perplexed at the touch of a slider (well a drop-down actually). This capability is underpinned by things like ‘MouseOver’ or ‘Hover’ or ‘Click’ events just like in real app development. In this respect Storyline really does take hyperlinks and branching to a new level, and one which is way beyond what you can currently achieve easily with PowerPoint. Don also touched on whether it would work with the iPad. The good news is that it will - there will be a new publish option to iOS (though there may be some features not fully supported). How this will work for the two current form factors (iPhone and iPad) remains to be seen. There won’t however be a publish to HTML5 option. Regarding workflow it looks like Storyline will replace Studio as the core authoring environment and like Studio it will have the add Quizmaker or Engage buttons to drop in quizzes or learning interactions before finally publishing. So where does that leave Studio? Well Studio, Quizmaker and Engage are all due an upgrade by the end of this year so it seems that Studio (effectively Presenter) will be positioned as the entry level authoring environment while Storyline will be used by more advanced users. This strategy seems sensible and it allows an organisation to buy a certain number of Studio licenses for low level users and a smaller number of Storyline licenses for more advanced e-learning designers. The pricing for Storyline is apparently going to be ‘similar’ to Presenter so I guess that means it can be bought standalone or with Quizmaker and/or Engagage for $xxx Release date for Storyline is ‘this summer’. Will Studio users be able to upgrade to Storyline? Should we do so, or should we wait until the Studio upgrade later in the year? I don’t know the answer but it’s something I am definitely thinking about! That’s about it. Time to start designing my new Storyline course! I’ve requested to be included on the beta test programme so hopefully we will see more pretty shortly. Can’t wait! Follow Storyline thread on Articulate e-Learning Heroes Forum: http://community.articulate.com/forums/t/1694.aspx?PageIndex=2

These are the ten most popular articles from 2010. If you missed any, I hope you check them out!Post from: The eLearning CoachTop 10 Learning Articles Of 2010

Whoa! The STEMLAB had two media visits this week! Our local paper - The Current of Somers Point, Linwood and Northfield - came by, and a team from NBC40, the local NBC affiliate, did as well. It was great fun to see the kids’ reactions to all the equipment and attention; they were on their best behavior! Click below to check out the stories. The NBC40 piece has video. (I really need to lay off the cheeseburgers…) School aims to grow future engineers and computer scientists in STEM lab (The Current) Technology enhancing Northfield school’s curriculum (NBC40) Just want to say THANKS to Superintendent Dr. Janice Fipp, my Elementary Principal Mrs. Maureen Vaccaro, our Board of Education, and our parent community (especially the Northfield PTO and Northfield Education Foundation), for all the support - it makes our unique and innovative classroom possible!