The best tools to generate and communicate ideas.Post from: The eLearning CoachHow To Build Your Graphic Design Toolbox

The top 10 tools that make up my personal learning environment.Post from: The eLearning CoachMy Top Ten Learning Tools For 2012

Another resurrected post from my old blog ‘A Compound of Alchymie’. This time on e-Learning 2.0. Have we come that far in seven years. Sadly I don’t think so. Originally posted on 5 November 2005. Came across this interesting article entitled E-Learning 2.0 by Stephen Downes from the National Research Council of Canada today while researching some stuff on e-learning. It takes a whirlwind tour through the landscape of e-learning and touches on a wide range of related ideas (and especially those in the social computing space) before looking at how e-learning will look in the context of Web 2.0.  E-learning is definitely evolving and with the massed array of social computing tools is likley to become much more collaborative, flexible, adaptable and even chaotic. The question is can we as learners accept this new learner centric approach? It certainly feels different but also really empowering - roll on Learners 2.0.

Write astounding multiple-choice questions. See examples here.Post from: The eLearning CoachWriting Multiple Choice Questions For Higher Order Thinking

Adobe has just launched Presenter 8 the latest version of it’s PowerPoint to Flash development tool. Presenter is Adobe’s answer to Articulate Presenter (the core element of Articulate Studio). Both tools started out life as presentation tools (hence the names) but it quickly became apparent that they were pretty useful for producing simple e-learning courses. Re-badged as ‘Rapid e-Learning’ authoring tools they both became popular components in the e-learning developer’s toolkit. However Adobe Presenter has always been eclipsed by Adobe Captivate while Articulate has captured the lion’s share of the Rapid e-Learning market. So where does the new Presenter 8 fit in the grand scheme of things? I haven’t downloaded and reviewed the product yet but intitial investigations reveal a return to it’s roots as a presenter’s tool because of its focus on integrating presenter video. The integration looks pretty impressive, enabling a good presenter to create a presentation that mixes slides and presenter either interleaved or side by side. You can also add nice pre-built intro sequences and use professional looking overlays (to show the presenter name for example). It also includes e-learning type functionality but I can’t help feeling that it’s aimed more at producing video based content that is mobile friendly. One thing that appears to be missing is any HTML5 support. There is an iPad app but what about other tablets and mobile OSs? Full review to follow. For the time being here is Adobe’s e-Learning Evangelist Dr Allen Partridge taking you through the new features. List of features: http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/presenter/features.html

HTML5 is causing all sorts of headaches for us learning technologists at the moment. Suddenly everyone wants their e-learning to be developed in HTML5 without having a clue what it actually is. Of course much of this behaviour is down to Apple and its fashionable iPad but even Google have now dropped support for Flash on mobile devices from Android 4.0 onwards. Here’s a video that explains what HTML5 is in 1m 32s. Note the use of the word ‘hope‘, the phrase ‘working hard‘, and the phrase ‘some day in the future‘. Enjoy.

Find out how to promote transfer of learning with a supportive workplace.Post from: The eLearning CoachHow Your Workplace Can Support Learning Transfer

A consistent process to transform poorly designed slides into ones that are instructionally effective.Post from: The eLearning Coach5 Steps To A PowerPoint Redesign

This is a nice simple introduction to SCORM. Anyone seen one for Project Tin Can?

How long does it take to develop online learning? These resources will help.Post from: The eLearning CoachFive Resources for Estimating Development Time