"Internet Explorer 10 is fast and fluid. Everything you want to do on the web is a swipe or a tap away, and feels instant. Browser tabs and navigation controls appear only when you need them and quietly get out of the way when you don’t." Boy, if that doesn’t sound sexy…I don’t know what does! Who wouldn’t want that? We’ve just received notice from Articulate (the software that we used to create our elearning courses) that with Internet Explorer 10, our learners may have difficulty using and tracking their courses. That’s a pretty frustrating experience for our customers, as well as for the learners. We want to minimize the pain for everyone involved. TorranceLearning kicks it into gear! First, and foremost, we let our customers know right away about the issue and assure them that we will stay on top of the problem until it is resolved. Next…we contact our LMS vendors and work through a solution. Here’s our plan of action: If you own Articulate Studio ’09, please update to version 9.9. We have updated Studio on our end, and are in the process of testing files in our LMS for Internet Explorer 10 (as well as IE 8 and IE 9).   If you have mission-critical courses that need to be updated within 72 hours (and these courses are being used by Windows 8/IE 10 users), we recommend that you republish your content after installing the Studio update.   If this criteria fits your situation and TorranceLearning published your courses, let us know and we will republish your files.   Otherwise, sit tight - a fix is currently being implemented. (As of February 2013, Internet Explorer 10 is only being used by about 1.58% of the market share, due to its new release late last year.)   If you use our LMS (or are in the process of converting), we will update your course files once the patch from Articulate is completed, and notify you as soon as it is done.   We plan on updating all of our archived/stored versions of our clients’ courses, as well.   If you have questions, we’d be happy to help. Just contact us at info@torrancelearning.com. To learn more about Articulate Studio and follow the news as it happens, visit their forums at http://community.articulate.com/forums/.      

This post is part of the series on Text-to-Speech (TTS) for eLearning written by Dr. Joel Harband and edited by me. The other posts are: Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality, Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech, Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course, Text-to-Speech eLearning Tools - Integrated Products, and seeming the most popular of the series so far: Text-to-Speech vs Human Narration for eLearning. One of the concerns raised by various comments during the series has been around the quality of the results of Text-to-Speech (TTS) Voices and if that was suitable for eLearning. This issue was partly addressed in the previous post. In this post we’ll take a different cut at it by looking at how authors can use punctuation and mark-up language with TTS voices to bring out the meaning of the text more accurately and to make them more interesting. Using these techniques a voice can be made similar enough to human narration to hold a learner’s interest during an entire eLearning course - with a retention rate equivalent to that of a human voice. Value and Concern Around Voice-Over Before we jump into this specific topic, let’s look back at some of the specifics from last month’s Big Question - Voice Over in eLearning. Here’s a very quick summary of some of the responses regarding the added learning value of a voice-over as opposed to plain screen text: Audio provides an additional channel of information which the brain can process in parallel with the visual information [Kapp]. A voice should not just read screen text [Kapp] but can optionally be supported by running subtitles at the bottom of the slide as in Captivate and Speech-Over [Joel]. A great deal more information per slide can be transferred with voice than with plain text. One minute of speech is equivalent to 125 words - which would crowd the slide considerably [Joel]. A lively and interesting voice can motivate learning and increase retention. [Mike Harrison] A voice can often express the intended meaning more accurately than plain text by changing speed, volume and pitch, emphasizing words, and pausing for emphasis [Mike Harrison] (This is the prosody that we discussed in the first post). For example: He reads well. He reads well. He reads well. It’s these last two points that relate closely to this topic. Ultimately, we would like the voice (human or TTS) to be lively and interesting, help increase motivation and learning, and convey the meaning more accurately. Some of the concern around the use of Text-to-Speech Voices in eLearning is whether you can achieve that level of voice use. Making the Author into a Voice Talent Today’s post aims to show that with state-of-the-art tools that simplify the use of markup language, like Speech-Over Professional, TTS voices can easily be made interesting as well as prosody-accurate (points 4 and 5 above). The concept presented here is a bit of a change in thinking: An author together with a TTS voice is equivalent to a voice talent! While handling the grammar quite well, the TTS voice by itself cannot know the nuances and emphases (prosody) needed to bring out the intended meaning of the sentence and will produce a compromise prosody. Authors need to fill the gap. Some people in the world of TTS call them "Text Authors." Throughout this post, we will refer to them simply as "authors" as they likely are also the course author. Authors know what the voice should sound like, they use punctuation and mark-up language to makes the TTS voice achieve the intended meaning and clarity as well as enlivening it. In some ways this is not that new for people who have worked with voice talent before. If you’ve ever worked a recording session, you will sit there and listen to what’s being said and often correct the phrasing, pronunciation, pacing, and other aspects of how the voice talent is handling the script that you have written. What we are saying is that there’s an equivalent operation when dealing with TTS Voices. You need to listen to the results and make corrections. Of course as we’ve pointed out in Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course, the effort to make changes is likely substantially less. The Basics Let’s see an example of what we are talking about. Here is a clip of the TTS voice Heather reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem "How I love thee?" produced by Speech-Over Professional. How I love thee? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love with a passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. When you listen there are a few simple uses of punctuation and markup language with Speech-Over Professional’s SAPI editor that provide some improvements to how the default would have read this. The Speech-Over SAPI editor shown above lets authors apply markup language quickly and accurately with simple text symbols, which are as easy to use as ordinary punctuation. The symbols used in this example are the em-dash (—) which inserts a 0.5 sec silent delay and the right and left arrows (⊳,⊲) which decrease and increase the voice speed by one unit. Listen to the effect of ordinary punctuation on the voice in the example: The question mark is obvious - Heather expresses it very nicely. The colon after "Let me count the ways:" gives a feeling of expectation for what’s to come. Putting a comma or period there would not give the same flow. Colons are generally used to introduce sequences to good effect. Commas are used to give phrasing and resolve ambiguous sentences. They are a powerful tool and are used more often than proper punctuation would require. Listen also to the effect of the markup language: A delay (—) was placed between "How do I love thee" and "Let me count the ways" to express a slight hesitation for thought and then again after "Let me count the ways" to further hesitate for thought before stating the reasons. Delays are also inserted throughout introduce the hesitations that make the voice more realistic. The decrease and increase in speed for groups of words give them a slight accent and emphasis. For example, the words "I love thee", "most quiet need", etc have a speed decrease before them and a return to normal speed afterwards to give them a slight accent, depth, and emotional content. The amount of accent is controlled by the amount of speed reduction two units (⊳⊳) or one (⊳). A similar effect can be achieved by the emphasis tag (!!). Also Heather’s natural slight Southern accent is because she is made from a real Southerner’s voice! Now let’s see these concepts more in detail. Using Punctuation The judicious use of punctuation goes a long way towards making the voices more expressive and precise, especially the comma and the colon. Let’s see how the prosody of the following sentence becomes clearer as we add punctuation: A color is described in three ways by its name how pure it is and its value. (no punctuation) Paul A color is described in three ways: by its name how pure it is and its value. (adding a colon for expectation) Paul A color is described in three ways: by its name, how pure it is, and its value. (adding commas for phrasing) Paul In our experience, the really good voices like Paul and Heather do quite well on their own most of the time with well-placed commas, colons, and silent delays only. Mark-Up Language As we mentioned in the first post, many "small" innovations are needed to make text to speech useful and practical. The most important of these is the programming standard Microsoft Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) for Windows. SAPI standardizes the way authors control TTS voices: starting and stopping the voice, controlling its speed, volume and pitch, and its flow with silent delays. Manufacturers of SAPI-standard voices implement the SAPI controls in the voice software and developers of speech applications program SAPI controls into their applications to let the user control any SAPI-standard voice. To control the properties and flow of the voice, SAPI provides a XML markup language, also called speech tags, which is added to the input text to communicate to the voice processor actions to take when converting the text to speech. Some examples: 1. Volume - The Volume tag controls the volume of a voice on a scale of 0:100. The voice will change volume at the point it encounters the tag. This text should be spoken at volume level 100. <volume level="50"> This text should be spoken at volume level fifty. </volume> 2. Rate - The Rate tag controls the rate (speed) of a voice on a scale of -10:10. The voice will change speed at the point it encounters the tag. This text should be spoken at rate 0. <rate absspeed="3"> This text should be spoken at rate 3. <rate absspeed="-3"> This text should be spoken at rate -3. </rate> </rate> Heather The Pitch tag works the same as the Rate tag. 3. Emphasis - The Emph tag instructs the voice to emphasize a word or section of text. <emph> boo </emph>! Use the Emph tag to determine the prosody of an ambiguous sentence, for example the one referred to in the first post. "He reads well" Paul "He reads well" Paul "He reads well" Paul 4. Silence - The Silence tag inserts a specified number of milliseconds of silence into the output audio stream. Five hundred milliseconds of silence <silence msec="500"/> just occurred. This is a very important tag for the naturalness of the voice. 5. Pronounce - The Pron tag inserts a specified pronunciation using the SYM phonetic language. Here is "Hello world" in SYM. <pron sym="h eh 1 l ow & w er 1 l d "/> This tag lets you instruct the voice how to say highly technical words and company slogans. See the first post for an example. 6. The PartOfSp tag lets you resolve the part of speech of a word. Notes: · Not all voices have all the tags implemented, for example, Heather does not have an emph tag. · The NeoSpeech voices in Captivate do not use the SAPI tags but rather a proprietary markup language, VTML. Speech-Over works with SAPI-standard voices only. · For more info about SAPI and its markup language, download sapi.chm from here. Automating the markup language - SAPI editor Clearly, having to type in or even paste these XML tags into the input text is time-consuming and error-prone. This is another case where a small innovation is called for: as discussed above, Speech-Over Professional has a SAPI editor that represents XML tags with simple text symbols - which makes it very easy and error-proof to insert and manipulate speech tags in the input text. Speech-Over Professional also automates the Pron tag with its Pronunciation lexicon you can use to add highly technical terms and company slogans. Bottom Line You may be thinking that some of the cost savings that you get from using TTS as compared to human voice talent is lost in this effort and that’s true. However, the rework aspect is still substantially less. Again, the best comparison is that of going through a recording session with a script. That process is very similar to what you end up with doing punctuation and markup with text to get the TTS voice to be much improved for eLearning. For me personally, this is still not the same quality as a good voice talent, but it is definitely a lower cost and has MUCH lower cost in the face of change. It’s a good balance in many situations. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

The Download is Friday, May 10, 11-3:30 It’s coming up fast…but, there is still space available! If you’ve got the time on your calendar for the next TorranceLearning Download conference, we’d love to have you! Click here to register! Writing with Images, Developing a Learning Culture, Learning Transfer: Making it stick after they leave the classroom, iPads & Kindles, & Nooks - Oh My!, Storytelling Techniques for Learning. If you’re thinking, "Wow! That sounds REALLY cool!" Then, you oughta check out our Download conference at the TorranceLearning office because these are all topics that have been discussed at previous Downloads. What is the Download, exactly? Well…there is no exact. It changes every time. It’s not really a conference. Not even a mini-conference. Well, sort of. The Download is a unique way for learning and development professionals to connect, learn and share. In a nutshell, we run several really short, concurrent discussions on a wide range of topics, all related to learning and development. You choose what you want to see, wander about as you wish. Did you notice that?  They’re called "discussions" not "presentations" — and that’s on purpose. While the person facilitating certainly has something to share, the Q&A usually goes in all directions. Many of the presentations don’t even use PowerPoint (egad!). Come on…join us!

Topics for this show include Microsoft's mobile woes, Apple Music, and the joy of streaming live concerts on the Internet. The post Gadget Lab Podcast: Microsoft Feels the Surface Tension appeared first on WIRED.

I received an inquiry about resources that would help instructors who are about to move into teaching online courses.  It made me immediately think back to my first experience with an online session.  It was the first ever public session for Placeware - a virtual meeting software company that was much later acquired by Microsoft and became Microsoft Live Meeting.  Because it was their first ever public session and my first ever online session neither of us knew what we were doing.  The topic was roughly (surprise) New Technology for eLearning.  They had 100 people participating.  And because it was public they made sure that everyone was muted including the moderator. So we start the session and I’m sitting alone in front of my computer at Loyola Marymount (this must be before 2000).  I was holding my handset to my ear (no headset in my office).  And I had prepared the way I always did at that point for live, in-person audiences.  Remember I taught class several times a week to live audiences, and this was a topic that I presented all the time at professional conferences.  No problem, right? I was not at all prepared for what I experienced.  About five minutes into the presentation, with me alone in my office, and everyone muted (literally there is zero sound coming back through) and no prepared stopping points for interaction.  Well any good presenter who faces an audience that is completely quiet, sitting still knows they are dying.  And I felt like I was completely dying.  There was zero feedback.  I felt my energy level get used up completely.  I was doing everything I could to make it more interesting, but no matter how much passion I put into the phone - no reaction.  Panic set in roughly 7 minutes into the presentation! After that experience, I vowed to try to stink up virtual presentations less in the future.  And every once in a while, I realize that I’m not doing a good job.  It definitely takes additional thinking/preparation to be good online. And that’s only a single session.  If you are going to teach a course online or run an online learning event or an online conference, then there’s even more to being successful at that. So, what I thought I would do is go back and see what resources I could find some good resources that would help me and could be used by instructors be better prepared to teach online.  What a difference a decade makes - now there’s almost TOO much information. As always I do this by looking through eLearning Learning and related sites like Communities and Networks Connection.   I looked at Virtual Classroom, Distance Learning, ILT, Teaching Distance Learning.  I also did some quick searches for various kinds of things and added them into eLearning Learning (via delicious).  So together, I’ve collected a bunch of resources pretty quickly.  That said, there’s so much already out there on this - I’m at this point not quite sure what the real question was/is.  Certainly a lot of this is already findable.  I hope this is useful.  But I think the problem at this point might be something else.  Still here are 60 great resources. Books By going to one of these on Amazon - you can easily find a TON of additional books. Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction (Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning) Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series) The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips Essential Elements: Prepare, Design, and Teach Your Online Course Making the Move to eLearning: Putting Your Course Online Creating a Sense of Presence in Online Teaching: How to Side note - one of the cool things is that one of these book recommendations came because my delicious activity (related to eLearning) auto-tweets and someone saw my tweets and then put in a recommendation to their book on the subject.  I would guess that’s an automated search or something - but still very smart way to market/PR. Teaching Online Top 10 Best Practices for Teaching Online- Litmos, The Secret of Delivering Outstanding Virtual Classroom Training by Frank Gartland- Ignatia Webs, April 15, 2008 Live online learning - a free download- Clive on Learning, October 13, 2009 The Agile Elearning Design Manual - Why Synchronous Learning makes so much sense today- Free as in Freedom, July 21, 2009 Using Teleseminars For Training- The eLearning Coach, September 7, 2010 Faculty Training for Online Teaching Better Beginnings: How to Capture your Audience in 30 seconds - webinar by Carmen Taran- Free as in Freedom, January 28, 2010 Progressing towards onlignment- Clive on Learning, August 14, 2009 What Makes A Successful Online Facilitator? 13 Tips for Virtual World Teaching Preparing Teachers to Teach Online Tips and Tricks for Teaching Online: How to Teach Like a Pro! Online Teachers: Instructions - Online Pedagogy/Teaching Tools How to facilitate synchronous learning for real and virtual learners using technology?- IDiot, March 28, 2010 Key Steps to Preparing Great Synchronous Interactions- Experiencing eLearning, April 1, 2010 NEA's Guide to Teaching Online (PDF) Web meetings, webinars and virtual classrooms compared- Onlignment, August 21, 2009 Tips For Making Virtual Classroom Sessions More Interactive | Mobile Technology in TAFE, November 21, 2008 Perceived Advantages and Disadvantages- MinuteBio, March 24, 2009 Rubrics for WebLessons Promoting Distance- Learning Technology Learning, September 24, 2010 Cheating in Online Courses- eLearning Acupuncture, April 28, 2010 Changing Roles for Educators (CCK08: Paper 2)- Learnadoodledastic, November 10, 2008 Rubrics for Web Lessons Faculty Training for Online Teaching Preparing Instructors for Quality Online Instruction Converting Instructor-Led Training to E-learning or Distance Learning: Keys to success- Bottom-Line Performance, April 30, 2010 Building Student Engagement in Online Courses- April 15, 2009 How do I learn to teach online?- eLearning Acupuncture, September 9, 2009 5 Easy Tips for Teaching Online Courses- Learning Putty, January 18, 2010 Online Games for Teaching Business Concepts and Ideas- Kapp Notes, October 16, 2009 Online Success - a recipe for learners and facilitators- Designed for Learning, February 14, 2010 5 laws of human nature and online collaborative communities- Thinking Cloud, December 18, 2009 37signals’ Idealogy Meets Online Training (Part 1): Meetings are Toxic- Mindflash, August 24, 2010 Teaching online forces better pedagogy- Learning Conversations, September 16, 2009 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story (Alan Levine)- ZaidLearn, December 16, 2007 The power of Voice in online classrooms- eLearning Acupuncture, May 31, 2010 The Secret Recipe to Delivering World Class Lectures- ZaidLearn, August 29, 2009 E-teaching personality is good for e-learning- Electronic Papyrus, January 5, 2010 Online Discussions Face-to-Face Versus Threaded Discussions: The Role of Time and Higher Order Thinking Dr. Katrina A. Meyer, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks Ten Tips for Generating Engaged Online Discussions Katherine Fischer, Donna Reiss, Art Young Online Discussions: Tips for Instructors Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo Organizing and Managing Good Online Discussions Learning Technologies Center, University of Manitoba The Effectiveness and Development of Online Discussions MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Three-pronged approach to online discussions for learning A few strategies for setting the right tone for online discussions Some guidelines for discussion participation Social Networks TCC09: Evaluating Social Networking Tools for Distance Learning- Experiencing eLearning, April 14, 2009 Learning with 'e's: Teaching with Twitter- Learning with e's, April 23, 2009 Twitter for Learning - 55 Great Articles Effective Online Conferences 19 Tips for Effective Online Conferences Effective Web Conferences - 41 Resources Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences, Online Conference Formats eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

In response to the latest post in the series on Text-to-Speech (TTS): Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality, Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech, Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course, Text-to-Speech eLearning Tools - Integrated Products, Text-to-Speech vs Human Narration for eLearning, and Using Punctuation and Mark-Up Language to Increase Text-to-Speech Quality. Javed Alam pointed me to a couple of Text-to-Speech eLearning Examples, so I thought I’d capture a few of the examples here. I would welcome pointers to additional examples! Example #1 - Introduction to Venice - Qwiki uses Text-to-Speech in really interesting ways. Example #2 - CompUSA Dealer Training - Legal Issues - Legal services presentation on a company web site Example #3 - Calculating Usain Bolt's Power - Math derivation. Example #4 - Jane Eyre Meets Mr. Rochester in the Garden Example #5 - Concepts of Calculus with Professor Paul Example #6 - Magic PowerPoint Voices - Dialog between Paul and Heather synched with animations Example #7 - A bit older example using NeoSpeech 1.0 Example #8 "Degree of Freedom E-Lecture with Animated Agent" - a bit older with an animated agent. Want to See Your Course as an Example? Dr. Joel Harband has made an offer to create some brief examples using PowerPoint-based courses that a corporation had developed using a real voice. He would need the original PowerPoint presentation of the course together with the narration script that was used. He could then create part or all of the course using TTS voices instead and we could demo the result. Of course, I would want to show the original so we can show a comparison. If you would like to do this, please contact me via email: akarrer@techempower.com Questions? And, if you have any questions at this point in the series on the use of Text-to-Speech, please ask away. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

The most satisfying scene was a simple reunion in front of Botticelli’s "Primavera." The post Hannibal GIF and a Graf: TV’s Most Romantic Scene This Year appeared first on WIRED.

Dupree Jones is at San Diego Comic-Con, where's dressed like Darth Vader and throwing Force Choke holds to asphyxiate all who cross his path. The post Darth Vader’s Running Around Comic-Con Choking People
 appeared first on WIRED.

I’ve been recently working on lots of eLearning strategy consulting engagements and one of my colleagues asked me to provide a set of resources around this topic.  I went back and looked at what I had written before on eLearning Strategy and saw that I had said at the time: I've spent several hours this morning trying to find good resources on eLearning Strategy development and particularly looking for examples to use in this post. I've really been striking out. I'm hoping that people will help out.  This time I had better luck and also had great luck searching for elearning strategy articles on eLearning Learning under the topic pages: eLearning Strategies, Learning Strategies and Strategy.  Here’s some of what I found.  It’s still needs more, but represents a good starting point for review: eLearning Strategy (PDF) Elearning - A Primer Learning 2.0 Strategy eLearning 3.0 Top-Down Strategy What does a real life e-learning strategy look like? 14 Things We Can Learn from the BEST - Part 1 The Ten Commandments of eLearning Optimizing eLearning Strategy (Bryan Chapman) The eLearning Guild's Handbook of e-Learning Strategy Strategizing informal learning When a Rapid Approach Makes the Most Sense by Patti Shank Social Learning Strategies Checklist Checklist of Social Learning Strategies How To Create Successful M-Learning Strategy: mLearnCon - Part I e-learning strategy - the year ahead Social Learning Strategies, Models, and Roles Getting strategic- Learnlets Your Enterprise 2.0 Strategy Is Flawed - Now Embrace It- Engaged Learning Strategy, strategically- Learnlets elearning, strategically- Learnlets 21st Century Learning Strategies- Spark Your Interest The Performance Environment- Learnlets Compliance training treatment hierarchy- Thinking Cloud Use Learning Paths to develop the right Learning Strategy- Free as in Freedom Strategy as Process, Not Product: The Learning Value Chain by Ellen Behrens 10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 1) 10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 2) 10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 3) Breathing life into an informal learning strategy Web 2.0 Strategy Strategies for learning and performance support: a summary Twitter in learning strategies: Yes or No? Strategizing informal learning Five Steps to Mobile Learning Success by Brian Taliesin If you feel I’m missing good articles, please let me know. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

"It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports." — Ralph Waldo Emerson I can imagine the conversation that Ralph Waldo Emerson and Conrad Gottfredson might have if they were to meet. Two big thinkers, tossing around ideas about how we humans experience our lives, our work and our learning. Oh, to be a fly on that wall. Gottfredson, Bob Mosher and many others are moving the training & learning world past a single event-based training model and really embracing all that we need to consider as we aim to support performance on the job. Hallelujah! In the training & learning world, we now commonly talk about the "Five Moments of Learning Need," or the five opportunities to support learners as they reach and sustain competence. From the Gottfredson & Mosher’s recent Learning Solutions Magazine article, the Five Moments of Learning Need are: When people are learning how to do something for the first time (New); When people are expanding the breadth and depth of what they have learned (More); When they need to act upon what they have learned, which includes planning what they will do, remembering what they may have forgotten, or adapting their performance to a unique situation (Apply); When problems arise, or things break or don’t work the way they were intended (Solve); and, When people need to learn a new way of doing something, which requires them to change skills that are deeply ingrained in their performance practices (Change). The first two to three Moments typically fall within the realm of formal learning, where decisions are being made centrally about what to learn, in what order and how to go about it. We can set up resources, brokered support systems and troubleshooting guides for Moments 3 through 5, but the what, when and how of the learning is informally driven by the learner. It’s not unusual for one of our project teams to think through a client’s situation using something akin to Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping approach for each of the Moments.   We didn’t think 5 was enough. In our work with clients, we’re finding ourselves adding a few more moments … and our experience tells us we’re onto something. We see two Moments that come before the first formal training experience: 0.            Before people know they need to know something (Aware) 0. 5         When people are preparing to learn something for the first time (Prepare) As training professionals, we have the opportunity to do something quite intentional as we make learners aware of a learning and performance gap, and as we help them prepare for their training. At Moment 0, it’s entirely possible that your target learning audience doesn’t even know that they need to learn something new in order to do their jobs well. Or, they may not know the extent to which the gap in their knowledge prevents them from helping move the organization toward its collective goals. Pre-course messages need to build this burning platform, ideally without embarrassing people about what they don’t know. In order to make sure that training is truly actionable - and not just an interesting diversion - it needs to be tied back to the goals of the organization, the department, the team and the individual. That’s where cleverly-numbered Moment 0.5 comes in. One of our favorite concepts around that preparation is from Rob Brinkerhoff & Anne Apking’s book, High Impact Learning. The Training Impact Map offers learners and their managers an opportunity to connect individual learning needs through the training event and on to departmental and organizational goals. Each participant will then be prepared to get a "specific most" out of the experience.   "Oh, you’ve been trained on that. Just go show Tim how to do it." Not so fast. Call me biased, but there is a qualitative difference in knowing how to do something and knowing how to teach something. That’s where our final moment of learning need comes in: 6.            When people need to teach the concept to others (Teach)   At Moment 6, when the learner becomes a teacher (or a guide or a coach), he or she will probably need more than just a brush-up on the basics. At this point, the key skill is in being able to generalize the skill and apply it in new situations that are relevant to the new learners. That’s now Eight Moments of Learning Need. What a needy bunch, these learners! In all seriousness, all the moments of need aren’t going to come into play every single time. It’s a good practice, though, that will uncover hidden requirements as it helps you think through all the facets of the problem at hand.   Now go do something momentous! Like perhaps join the discussion! Drop us a line here.

This post is part of the series on Text-to-Speech (TTS) for eLearning written by Dr. Joel Harband and edited by me. The other posts are: Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality, Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech, Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course, Text-to-Speech eLearning Tools - Integrated Products, Text-to-Speech vs Human Narration for eLearning, and Using Punctuation and Mark-Up Language to Increase Text-to-Speech Quality. Text-to-Speech Examples In this post, we will look more closely at costs of Text-to-Speech and issues around TTS Voice Licensing and Pricing.  The subject of TTS voice licensing and pricing is important because it helps e-learning practitioners understand which TTS tools they are legally allowed to use for their specific applications as well as letting them estimate the costs and pricing models of using these TTS tools. Voice Talent Rates and Implications on TTS Licensing and Pricing When the TTS voice manufacturers looked for a pricing model for their product, they naturally looked at the model used by real voice talents, including the rates and the types of usage. Here are some examples of rates of voice talents suited for e-learning (voice talents for advertising can be a lot more). The rates are given in $ per hour of recorded sound. Site Rate per hour www.e-learningvoices.com/price-per-minute.php $1200 www.voices.com $800-$1200 www.voice123.com $1800 (median) www.narratorfiles.com $650 The average for this type of voice talent is about $1200/hour. In addition, voice talents and voice producers tend to charge depending on the purpose of the recording and size of the intended audience of the recording. If the recording is going to be heard by many people and helps the customer make a lot of money, the voice talents expect to get more money than if the recording has a very limited use. The rates will be different for local, regional or national broadcasts. For example: a 30 second recording for a TV commercial broadcast all over the US may cost several times more than a five minute recording for a local documentary (voice123.com). The TTS vendors learned two things from the voice-talent pricing model: The price level - Because of their perceived lower voice quality, TTS voices need to be priced much lower than their real counterparts to be an attractive alternative The TTS voice price need to be fixed according to the value of its use to the customer. Based on the second criterion, the TTS vendors work with the following two general usage categories: Personal Use - reading books, making sound files for personal use, etc. This is a low value usage. Audio Distribution - a sound file that was created with the voice is distributed and played to an audience. This usage has a higher value. Audio Distribution Audio distribution, which is similar to broadcasting a voice talent recording, is considered to be a usage that is more valuable to the customer. Within audio distribution the following categories exist. They are listed according to increasing value to the customer: Internal audio distribution - a company puts an audio training presentation with the TTS sound file on an internal server - intended for company employees only Public audio distribution - a company puts an audio product presentation they made with the TTS sound file on a public web site - intended for a more general audience. Includes call centers. Selling a TTS sound file for profit - a company sells an audio training presentation they made with the TTS sound file for profit E-learning courses created by corporations are typically in the category of internal audio distribution - the course is put on the company server to be accessed by company employees. TTS Voice Licenses The TTS voice vendors enforce the intended usage of a voice by a voice license, which precisely describes the restrictions on the use of the voice. Strictly speaking, the vendors sell a license to use the voice software rather than selling the voice itself. The following licenses are used: Personal Use License - this license covers personal use of the TTS voice by the customer and expressly prohibits audio distribution - thus cannot be used for e-learning. Examples of products that use voices with personal license are: Natural Reader, TextAloud, Read the Words, and Spoken Text. Personal licenses are sold for a low fixed price. In general, a price less than $50 indicates a personal license. Audio Distribution License (ADL) - This is the license that permits audio distribution and is the type of license required for e-learning in business and education. The voice vendors have fixed the rate for an ADL license to be around 1/3 - 2/3 of the price of the equivalent voice talent ($1200/hour), depending on the TTS voice quality. The basic TTS voices cost $360/hour of recorded time and for the best TTS voices the rate can go up to $720/hour of recorded time. The TTS voices with ADL are sold in three ways: Fixed Price - this model allows a company to purchase any TTS voice with full audio distribution rights from a vendor without being tied to the specific authoring tools (e.g., Captivate) and its bundled voices. In talking to vendors (Neospeech), I was told that this model had been selected by some companies. Acapela also offers a model like this for unrestricted ADL.  The fixed price depends on the exact usage. A typical price for internal training courses is $2500, which represents about 7 hours of recorded time. On-Demand - Voices can be purchased via on-demand web services or desktop products that accept text and generate sound files. They charge according to elapsed time of the generated file, at a rate of about $6/min ($360/hour). From a Reseller - A company purchases voices from a reseller at a reduced price. The price is lower because the reseller has bought voices in volume. This is the case for Adobe Captivate and Tuval Software’s Speech-Over Professional where those companies resell the voices bundled with their products and the voice license terms are specified with the product. At present, the purchase price for these tools includes a fixed price for the voice license that does not depend on the elapsed time of the generated file. Course developers generally are going to use bundled products, i.e., from a reseller.  In some cases, there will be use of other models.   eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

The cast and executive producer of the hit HBO show answered fan questions about the contentious scene at Comic-Con. The post Game of Thrones Team Addresses Controversial Rape Scene appeared first on WIRED.

At a recent conference session on using Agile project methods for elearning (what we call LLAMA), an interesting question came up. I’ll paraphrase. "Doesn’t the project team think this is just incredibly controlling?" Uh, no… "Really? I tried to do something very much like this and nobody liked it. They said I was controlling every minute of their lives with these very small tasks and time estimates on everything and checking in all the time. They said I was micro-managing them." Aha. Yes. Now I see. Yes, I would dread every moment of a project like that, too. Here’s the thing. With Agile-based methods - including the Lot Like Agile Methods Approach, or LLAMA for learning - the project manager is not making the plan. The project team makes the plan. The project team includes the client, subject matter expert, team members and the project lead. The beautiful thing about this is that the entire process sets up what I like to call a "work-directed work team." In the 90s, I spent a lot of time studying self-directed work teams. These teams were often high-performing, very collaborative, leader-less teams performing well-defined business operations. Very cool stuff. Not exactly what’s going on with an Agile team, though. Agile teams have a project leader. The leader’s job is to facilitate the planning and rituals of the Agile approach, keep track of key details and help navigate roadblocks to progress. On an Agile project, it’s the scope and priorities that drive what work gets done and when. The client and the team agree to the goals and the boundaries of the work, and the team gets down to business. On a work-directed work team, members are given the tools they need and trusted to get the work done. Getting the work done includes updating the task status as it changes, and to raise issues as soon as they occur. This changes the project lead’s role from one of planning, measuring and controlling to one of coaching, facilitating and communicating. It’s a far more enjoyable way to work for everyone involved.  

I just read George Siemens post Will online lectures destroy universities?  He makes the point that despite articles like Why free online lectures will destroy universities - unless they get their act together fast: Statements like "universities are obsolete" or "universities are dying" are comical. And untrue. Universities are continuing to grow in enrolment and general influence in society. Calling universities obsolete while we are early on in the so-called knowledge economy is like declaring factories obsolete in the 18th century just as the industrial revolution was taking hold. Utter nonsense. While George does talk about challenges in education, I think he misses part of the point of the article.  And this is something that I’ve been thinking (and writing - see Physics Lectures) about for a long time.  Here’s the point: It’s incredibly easy to capture and distribute lectures. Rather than getting a lecture from whoever is teaching your course locally, wouldn’t it be better to get a world-class lecture. As the article points out: At the same time, millions of learners around the world are watching world-class lectures online about every subject imaginable, from fractional reserve banking to moral philosophy to pharmacology, supplied by Harvard, MIT, and The Open University. Have you seen Planet Earth or watched a Professor Lewin physics presentation?  There’s basically no way to compete with those sources.  And wouldn’t it be better to get the best available lecture with local discussion, studying, testing, etc.? I’m not quite sure that I buy the article’s contention that: The simple fact is that university lectures never worked that well in the first place - it’s just that for centuries, we didn’t have any better option for transmitting information. In fact, the success of top universities, both now and historically, is in spite of lectures, not because of it. Maybe that’s because I’ve learned a lot in schools that way.  But even if you keep lectures, but you open up everyone to the Best Lecture available on a given topic … The implications here for education are profound.  Best Lectures in Corporate Training I also believe the implications here are profound for corporate training.  We can continue to hide behind the myth that our content is special and different.  Some of the time, that’s quite true.  But there’s a lot of content (leadership, management, safety, etc.) that really should not be replicated by every organization. Instead, we should be looking for the Best Lecture and work our specifics around that.  Of course, that’s sometimes made harder because despite the Open Content movement in education, there’s less of a movement in corporate learning (and some barriers: Open Content in Workplace Learning?, Creative Commons Use in For-Profit Company eLearning?). What’s also interesting about this situation is that there are similar barriers from the content creators standpoint.  In the Business of Learning, I talk about the challenges as a content creator and how the business models might work.  And every day, I’m talking with people who have great content and could be creating the Best Lecture on a topic.  And while they can easily capture it, getting it distributed in a way that pays is difficult.  Instead, they need to package it into a unit that is self-contained.  They need something similar to an LMS or a course that runs in a corporate LMS.  But it certainly won’t look like a Best Lecture model with corporate eLearning professionals being able to act like local discussion, studying, testing. I’m not sure what any of this will look like in education or in corporate training - but I am sure it will be quite different in 20 years from how we do it today. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

2065, it turns out, will be even MOAR FUTUREY than 2054. And here are some things we now know about that future! The post Minority Report Is Back, And So is Its Crazy Future-Tech appeared first on WIRED.

"We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it." This is the preamble to the Agile Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org) and it’s one of the most important pieces of the whole thing, as far as we’re concerned. It means we’ve learned this by experimenting, by failing, by tweaking and by trying again. And we’re learning more by helping others do it, too. You see, we have this thing called LLAMA: the Lot Like Agile Methods Approach. It’s our project management approach that combines the best of Agile methods with excellence in instructional design practices. Our business is custom elearning development, not project management training. But we have made a deliberate choice about our teaching. Every time we teach a LLAMA class - and we’re doing this more and more - we learn something new. Sometimes we learn about a technique or a tweak that would improve our work. And sometimes we learn more about the way we do what we do just by getting to explain it a different way to someone else. It’s why we’re writing more and more about it, too. Here’s an article from Learning Solutions Magazine this week with an overview of the approach. In that article, you’ll see a line about Agile helps you "accept and expect change" - that came from an "aha" moment in one of Megan’s 3-day LLAMA classes. A perspective we gained through our teaching. Enjoy. Learn. Ask questions. We’ll all learn something new in the process. Welcome aboard.

Over the past few years, I spend part of December going back through my blog to recap a bit of what some of the key things I’ve learned over the course of the year.  I’ve been doing this the past few years, for example: Learned about Learning in 2009.  And every year I use this as a Big Question - see: Learning 2010.  A lot of it is thinking through where my thinking has changed over the course of the year.  So here are a few of the things that are a bit different for me. 1. Twitter is Much Better than I Thought for Learning I used to say during presentations that I wasn’t quite sure about twitter as a learning tool.  During 2010, I’ve been ramping up my use of twitter as a learning tool.  I’ve had to find ways to filter the flow and figure out when/how to reach out.  It was definitely helpful to spend time going through Twitter for Learning - 55 Great Articles. 2. Learning Coach Model Very Powerful In 2010, I had a great experience where Dr. Joel Harband wrote a series of articles for my blog on Text-to-Speech in eLearning.   Here’s the series: Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality, Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech, Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course, Text-to-Speech eLearning Tools - Integrated Products, Text-to-Speech vs Human Narration for eLearning, and Using Punctuation and Mark-Up Language to Increase Text-to-Speech Quality. Text-to-Speech Examples Text-to-Speech Costs - Licensing and Pricing But what I learned from this was that it was a fantastic way to learn about a topic where I was interested but didn’t have the time to spend researching it.  Instead, Joel would write it up.  I’d ask questions and edit it. It provided high value for me and hopefully value for people reading it. I’m looking forward to doing more of this going forward.  Please let me know if you want to be a Learning Coach for me on another topic. 3. iPad (and iPhone) are Much More Useful Than I Expected I didn’t actually think that I would care about the iPad except as a tool for training and performance support in environments like retail and restaurants where it’s always been an issue having access to machines.  However, now that I have an iPad myself, I’ve found myself sitting on the couch with it a LOT.  And slowly it’s got me to try more applications and then those applications expand off to my iPhone. It’s an amazing device and no surprise it was one of the breakout topics on eLearning Learning this year. 4. LMS and Learning Tracking Still Struggling While LMS solutions continue to get better, more powerful, more diverse, I continue to find myself searching for just the right solution for particular needs.  For example my search for an LMS Solution for Simple Partner Compliance Training didn’t really arrive at just the right solution.  I was also struggling for clients who needed very simple learning tracking but with some customizations.  Marketplace LMS solutions don’t quite fit.  Neither do more complex solutions. And a big part of the problem is just how many there are and how fast they change. 5. Aggregation and Social Filtering Provide High Value eLearning Learning has somewhat become my singular source of great eLearning content.  I use it to filter and find all the best content on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.  And it’s going to become much better in the new year as it moves over to the next generation platform.  I was really glad to see it grow to become one of the Top eLearning Sites.  And the system itself is growing with sites like Social Media Informer.  6. Open Content Potential But There are Challenges This year I spent quite a bit of time looking at where and how open content could get leveraged in different ways.  I’m still struggling a little bit with it, but I know there’s going to be a lot going on around it.  See Failure of Creative Commons Licenses and Creative Commons Use in For-Profit Company eLearning? for more on this. 7. Flash may Die and HTML 5 is Going to be Big 2010 opened my eyes are Flash and HTML 5.  I really think that 2010 marks the Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash.  This, of course, means some really big changes for authoring tools in the industry. Top Topics and Posts As part of this exercise, I went back to look at my top posts and hottest topics for the year via eLearning Learning.  What I wrote more about in 2010 than past years: Text-to-Speech (8) OCW (3) SharePoint (8) eLearning Strategy (16) eLearning Tools (34) Corporate eLearning (18) Knowledge Worker (8) Authoring Tools (8) Voice (15) Knowledge Work (4) Captivate (11) Adobe Captivate (6) Enterprise 2.0 (6) iPad (5) SkillSoft (2) Social Learning (15) Virtual Classroom (5) ASTD (8) eLearningGuild (2) And here were my top posts based on social signals. Twitter for Learning - 55 Great Articles Wikis and Learning - 60 Resources Teaching Online Courses - 60 Great Resources Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010 Top 35 Articles on eLearning Strategy Open Source eLearning Tools 19 Tips for Effective Online Conferences Effective Web Conferences - 41 Resources Augmented Reality for Learning eLearning Conferences 2011 Creative Commons Use in For-Profit Company eLearning? Top eLearning Sites? Social Learning Tools Should Not be Separate from Enterprise 2.0 Social Media for Knowledge Workers Low-Cost Test and Quiz Tool Comparison Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality SharePoint Social Learning Experience Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash Text-to-Speech vs Human Narration for eLearning eLearning Innovation 2010 - Top 30 Future of Virtual 3D Environments for Learning Failure of Creative Commons Licenses Text-to-Speech eLearning Tools - Integrated Products Success Formula for Discussion Forums in Financial Services Ning Alternatives that Require Little to No Work? Performance Support in 2015 What Makes an LMS Easy to Use? Selling Social Learning - Be a Jack Evaluating Knowledge Workers Learning Flash LMS Solution for Simple Partner Compliance Training Filtering, Crowdsourcing and Information Overload Best Lecture Text-to-Speech Examples Sales eLearning - 21 Great Resources Simulations Games Social and Trends SharePoint Templates for Academic Departments Virtual Presentation - Ten eLearning Predictions for 2010 Information Filtering eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

As news of Ellen Pao's resignation as interim CEO of Reddit spread across the Twitter-sphere, many saw sexism in play. The post Pao’s Reddit Resignation Seen As Setback for Tech Equality appeared first on WIRED.

"Lean Coffee is a discussion facilitation technique that helps a small group agree on topics and a structure for a discussion that otherwise has no specific agenda." As a team of project managers, instructional designers, trainers and leaders, we do like our big box of tools and techniques we can wield at a moment’s notice. Lean Coffee is one of our new favorites. It’s not necessarily just for Lean, and doesn’t have to involve coffee, although that would make it extra special. Lean Coffee is a discussion facilitation technique that helps a small group agree on topics and a structure for a discussion that otherwise has no specific agenda. It requires no prep, few materials, and no special room arrangements. So, that’s pretty lean. Here’s a rundown on the method that we wrote up for the Learning DevCamp blog. So now that you have this tool, what can you do with it? Here are a few ideas. You’ll probably have some more to add. Discuss among experienced peers what’s happening & where they need help Gather recent hires together to share experiences and open questions Follow up a few weeks post-training to see how things are going Review training feedback with learners during beta or pilot periods, letting them take the lead Enjoy! (Ok, you can go get a cup of coffee now…)

I was just asked for some examples of eLearning.  I had collected up eLearning Examples a couple years ago, but thought it was worth going back to look for more.  The following are some very good lists of widely varying examples of eLearning. Elearning samples eLearning Examples Examples of E-Learning Where are Examples of eLearning? Lots Right Here! Two examples of elearning Elearning example: Branching scenario eLearning Examples 100+ Free Websites to Find out About Anything & Everything 100+ places to learn a language online 100+ free sites for learning about business The last three provide a glimpse into the great variation that exists to learn and get help on particular topics.  While a lot of people think of eLearning as being a course, notice how few of the resources in those last three are actual online courses.  Instead, most examples of eLearning actually fall outside of that realm. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

The latest image of Pluto from New Horizons' LORRI camera shows new geological features emerging on the dwarf planet. The post New Horizons Scientists React to Geological Detail on Pluto appeared first on WIRED.

It’s about time. Are you ready? The world needs you to be a mentor. Megan’s recent blog post on DBusiness Daily News: It’s Time for You to be The Mentor has gotten more than a bit of traction. We think it’s because people are ready to help others grow and, at the same time, grow their own skills and knowledge. The DBusiness blog post touches on some reasons to be a mentor and a number of ways to do it. From an instructional design and performance development perspective, being a mentor allows a seasoned professional to expand his or her skills by creating an opportunity to step back and see a bigger picture. When you mentor, you’re teaching and guiding. This requires you to recall and select from your experiences, generalize what you’ve learned and use it in a new context and guide - not dictate - someone else’s performance. These are all higher-order activities that often require support. (Check out Megan’s September 2014 TD Magazine article on the Nine Moments of Learning for more on how this fits into an instructional design approach.)

I received an inquiry from a reader at a large company that is continuously working on large projects with lots of course content running around.   They have Articulate courses, classroom courses, SharePoint sites, etc.  They have an LMS but not an LCMS.  And they currently manage all of this using what I’ve seen at a lot of companies: network drives, naming conventions, some SharePoint.  Of course, it’s still a bit of a mess.  Sound familiar? A long time ago, the goal of an LCMS was to help to manage all of these kinds of assets.  Along the way, a lot of the LCMS products on the market have become more about a kind of authoring approached with content stored in a database that is transformed into courseware.  This is valuable for large scale authoring and translation of content.  They also handle asset management, but I really have not been seeing the kind of large scale adoption of LCMS products for that purpose. Here are some specifics of what this reader is going for: We need to figure out a way to get information from other departments to make sure we have the most current information available. We need to set up a process to determine all courses the information will impact. We need to make the changes.  Save the previous version in the archives for discovery requests. Save the current version for future updates. These are classic requirements for learning content management.  But I’m not sure they line up with what most LCMS packages provide - unless you decide that you will use it as a super-authoring tool. In Digital Asset Management - LCMS, ECM and SharePoint, I talk to how ECM (Enterprise Content Management) solutions might be a better fit for parts of this.  But I’ve seen organizations cobble together solutions using SharePoint more than I’ve seen LCMS solutions. This seems to be backed up by The LCMS at a Crossroads: Our research has shown that content management needs vary widely from company to company, and some organizations are well served by some combination of social and collaboration platforms, portals, and the lightweight content management functionalities now common to rapid development tools. In fact, because content management is now so ubiquitous in almost all social networking systems (including Microsoft SharePoint), many companies are finding ways to leverage these tools to help aid content development. In LCMS - Not Just a Technology: It’s a Strategy, Bryan Chapman really nails a key issue going into all of this discussion: you need to think about your overall strategy and then make sure your systems support that strategy.  Some key elements in the learning technology strategy that Bryan talks to some of the bigger pictures questions that organizations need to think through.  This is exactly what I discuss in eLearning Strategy.  Without an eLearning Strategy defined and the specific objectives defined, then you can’t possibly figure out the right systems. What are you trying to achieve here?  Is it lower-cost development?  Easier translation?  Faster time-to-market of learning?  Greater re-use? What’s the ROI for spending time doing this? This is what Dawn Poulos talks about in How NOT to adopt an LCMS.  Okay, this is probably too much motherhood and apple-pie.  Yes, you need to figure out the larger strategy, value proposition, what you are really trying to achieve, etc.  Let’s assume you’ve done that.  You still do get back to the core questions: Are people using an LCMS to manage content assets and workflow across the enterprise?  Or are they really using SharePoint or other ECM products for that?  And LCMS products are more a different kind of authoring tool? Curious to get reactions to this.  What are you seeing out there?  Any advice for this person? eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

HBO showed a supercut of some of the best audition tapes from its hit fantasy show during its Comic-Con panel. You can now watch it here. The post Here Are the Best Game of Thrones Audition Tapes appeared first on WIRED.