Free and Open Source Web Conferencing Tools for e-Learning

I just ran across this great list of free and open source web conferencing tools at The Elearning Frontier.


The tools are a valuable resource for the e-Learning community.  Each tool on the list has a video demo and an overview of what it can do for you.  


Happy Hunting!

View PowerPoint Presentation in Quarter Screen

I need to be able to view PowerPoint in presentation view in a small screen so I can record a smaller screen in Camtasia.  Other people might need to do the same because they only have one monitor and need to be able to see their animations and their working screen at the same time.  Anyway, I just found out there's a way to do it! Wow!

Just hold down Control while you click the Presentation icon.  Try it. It really works.   For step by step instuctions, check out this About article.  Now that I've discovered this secret, I have work to do!

Kicking Your PowerPoint Art Up a Notch

PowerPoint 2010 has added quite a few features that you can use to create new PowerPoint effects.  While I still rely on my Photoshop and Illustrator to create quite a bit of my PowerPoint art, I am doing more and more of it right in the program.   I ran across an article today that outlines some of the new tools and I want to pass it on to you in case you haven't discovered them for yourselves.  

TechRepublic has just posted, "Five tips for adding splashy art to your PowerPoint presentations."  Enjoy . .  .

A Smorgasboard of E-Learning Demos

I just love Articulate's Rapid E-Learning Blog!  Have you ever tried to help people who don't really understand e-learning get started?  What's one of the first steps, once you have decided how you are going to deliver your content and what content you are going to deliver?   You have to decide how your modules are going to work. 

Of course, you must choose the tools you want to use, but before you choose them, you need to decide if you'll be delivering videos or (hopefully) interactive lessons.  You have to decide what styles will work for your audience and best convery your content.  Then you must build templates.  And that's when you must decide what kind of navigational system your modules need. 

The blog post I'm sending you to today is  a great first step.  It's purpose is to let you explore a variety of navigation styles, but it does much more than that.  It demonstrates a very nice collection of e-learning module styles.  It's a great resource to anyone who needs to educate themselves about e-learning. 

Although I've created quite a lot of e-learning in various companies,  these demos were a great overview of what other people and other companies are doing.

So go out and check Tom's latest blog . . . and enjoy!

Sell Classes for Corporate LMSs

I just discovered Open Sesame yesterday, and I think it's such a cool idea for freelancers.  It gives them a completely new channel for their work.  You can create an upload courses, which companies can purcase to place on their LMSs.  You set the price for individual users or bulk purchases.   And it doesn't cost the devleopers anything.  70% of the cost of the courses goes to YOU!

You can use any course creation package that creates standards compliant courses, and OpenSesame claims that your work cannot be pirated.

Let me know what you think about it!

36 Free and Open Source Authoring Tools for e-Learning

From News from the e-learning frontier:  Wonderful free resourses!!

Click this link to access the list.

Information Architecture for a Wiki

As I know that my company is considering using a Wiki for online documentation, and as we move to a more Agile environment, a Linkedin thread in the Agile Technical Writers Group caught my eye.  I'm going to provide the link to the whole article, as the information there would help anyone considering building a Wiki, but I've also pulled out a list of links scattered throughout the posts for ease of access.

 

• Link to the thread:  Has anyone created an information architecture for a wiki? Was it Agile-style? (Granted, wikis grow by themselves, but content growth can be guided by structure like vines are guided by a trellis.) 
• http://www.learningbywrote.com
• PHP online manual (It provides a good structure for providing both reviewed information and user contributions on all pages)          
• Yahoo Group about DITA Wikis       
• MediaWiki
• A demo on how to create a DITAWiki with spreadsheets
• Demo of using Open Source mind mapping tools for graphical mapping, and editors for outlining and  outputting their maps in OPML format and transformming that  into a DITA or HTML map (and generating stub topics if you want to get fancy).
• IBM's free-to-download Information Architecture Workbench

 

Free Powerpoint Maps from Present.me

Spencer shared this resource on Linkin:

"I hope you find these useful - they save me hours when building maps for clients. They're free to use - the original maps are from wikimedia so they're all under the creative commons licence, i've imported then into Powerpoint and labelled each country as a layer so you can turn them on and off in the selection pane. They're all vectors too so you can recolour to match your theme. Download them from present.me, and watch the YouTube tutorial if you're not familiar with the 'selection pane' and 'themes'. If you find this useful, please let me know and i'll upload more from my library. All the best, Spencer"

You can download these maps here at Present.me

Documents Have No Teeth: Wikis Used as Online Help

Scott Hanselman of ComputerZen.com (Programming, Life and the Zen of Computers), claims that "Documents have no teeth."


What does he mean?  According to the Providing Thoughts On Development blog, maybe these reasons are a start:

1. Requirements change rapidly
2. They are stored everywhere
3. They are hard to search for relevant information
4. Developers dislike documentation
5. Changes in personnel

Documents start becoming obsolete as soon as they are written. And much software today is customizable by its customers.  How can you create and software documentation that is dynamic and customizable?   The Wiki is one answer.

Wikis can even provide content-sensitive help.  ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog, discusses the difference between a wiki and a help authoring tool:

Well, there’s a big difference, of course. A wiki is essentially a collaboration platform — your online documents become a place where everyone goes to find information, share their own tips with others, and pick up the latest updates. A help authoring tool is tailored towards building a documentation set which is essentially static (even if you update it every day, it’s still not a discussion platform) but which has all the bells and whistles of an integrated online help system.

You can read more about how to make a wiki context sensitive here, and out on the Atlassian blog, you can get into more detail, complete with pretty pictures!

Elearning Examples

What can you really do with online mutimedia?  What are the creative ways designers are using the technology?  

For some inspirational samples, check out ElearningExample.com.   From interactive quits to quizzes about the Royals, you can enjoy yourself and leave with great ideas for your own projects.

 Click here to get started.


Oh, and here's one of the coolest examples:  The history of the spacesuit.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

I don't know about you, but I am always searching for better ways to communicate with my audiences.  Metaphor, whether in storytelling or visual cues, can open up the minds of your audience and students.  I have a PowerPoint of visualization ideas and graphics, which I refer to and update regularly.  Image my delight, geek that I am, when I stumbled across this interactive Periodic Table of Visualization Methods!  Simply mouseover each square in the table to view an example of a visualization to clarify that concept!  Click here for the interactive table.



Go out to Visual-Literacy. Org to see the source of this brilliant tool!

How much narration should e-learning contain? Lessons learned.

How Much Narration in eLearning? Our Lessons Learned by Don Bair & Mike Dickinson : Learning Solutions Magazine

Whether to narrate eLearning content, how much to narrate, and choosing the person or "voice" to narrate are among questions that come up constantly for eLearning designers. Unfortunately, the research and the guidance from experts is not necessarily consistent or easy to apply. Here is what one team learned from their own study of the questions, and the guidelines they adopted.

Of course, others argue that narration does add to the learning experience.  This article on the Making Change blog once again argues against overuse of narration, but the comments below it are almost more interesting. 

For instance:

I think, that if we want to be learner centric, the choice must be left to the learner as to wheather they will listen or read to a presentation. For auditory learners, narration will do more good than a page turner. On the other side, visual learners might prefer reading the explanations. You must also provide some sort of interaction for kinestaetics learners.

Now I'll throw another idea about narration out for consideration.  In our company, we want to keep costs down, keep our elearning editable, and not end up with the voice of someone who no longer works here on a module that would have to be completely re-recorded if changes are made.  So, if we use narration, we are just considering . . . robotics voices.  (Don't hit me, please)

Anyway, see what you think.  Check out NeoSpeech.

What do you think?

Content Strategy for Content Agility, What does that mean?

 Noz Urbina, organizer of the upcoming Congility conference, held May 24-26 in Gatwick, UK explains what he means by "Content Agility"  on the "I'd Rather be Writing" blog.

For many organizations, the expectations of their customers have outpaced with the information managers can provide — and in some cases, can even conceive of. The notion of ‘agile content’ would thus seem to encompass several aspects: development of increasingly sophisticated information in multiple media, storing it in such a way that it is accessible and relevant throughout an organization, and designing the optimal user experience when the information is needed.

 
Read Noz Urbina's post here.

Record yourself presenting online--Free! with Present Me

I can't wait to try out this app.  Here's what they do:

"According to Microsoft, 500 million PowerPoint users give 30 million presentations every working day. I'm the presenter, you're the audience and you miss the presentation, or you saw it, but want to watch it again. What are your choices?


I can email you my slides, but without you being able to see and hear me, you get less than half the story. We all know the stat that over 60% of a presentation's impact is through voice, facial expression and body language.



How about a webex, or a teleconference? Better, but I still can't see you. OK, a video conference then? Getting there, but cost is going up now, and all the above require participants to be there at the same time.


Why can't I record the presentation and send you the slides together, so that you can see and hear me, whilst looking at my slides, at your own convenience? Well, I can. There are a number of desktop applications, but they're incredibly complex & difficult to use, and they don't come cheap. Result - most people don't have the time, energy or inclination.


There are a few online tools available - they all have the ability to add video & audio to presentations, but they're no easier to use than their desktop friends - it's just shifting the same problem from the desktop to the web.


The gap is all too clear - a simple, easy to use, low cost application that splits the screen and allows you to record your presentation and display you and your slides at the same time, in the same place and then share the results online with whomever you want.


That's Present.Me - we solve that problem!"

Check them out here!

TOP eLearning and Workplace Learning Blogs

The Refreshing Learning Tools Blog has posted their list of the best 142 e-learning blogs.  Nice.

Click here to see the list.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and Agile Technical Writing

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering information. Although its main applications have so far been in technical publications, DITA is also used for other types of documents such as policies, procedures, and training.

The DITA architecture and a related DTD and XML Schema were originally developed by IBM. The architecture incorporates ideas in XML architecture, such as modular information architecture, various features for content reuse, and specialization, that had been developed over previous decades.^[1] DITA is now an OASIS standard.

The first word in the name "Darwin Information Typing Architecture" is a reference to the naturalist Charles Darwin. The key concept of "specialization" in DITA is in some ways analogous to Darwin's concept of evolutionary adaptation, with a specialized element inheriting the properties of the base element from which it is specialized.

~Wikipedia

To learn more about this information architecture for Wikis and technical documentation, which may be beneficial to working in an Agile environment, check out the following sites:

• Wikipedia article
• Learning by Wrote blog
• DITA Chicks Blog
• DITA4All

10 ways to format Excel data so that people can actually understand it

I love Excel. I really do.  I don't get to use it much on my current job, unfortunately.  I have taught Excel both in the university and in business, and I created some pretty powerful macros at previous jobs. 

I've listed the basic points below, but follow this link to read the details.

#1: Give your worksheet a good title

#2: Wake people up with color

#3: Let the format lead the eye

#4: Apply a theme

#5: Don’t cram your charts

#6: Diagrams are helpful

#7: Take advantage of conditional formatting

#8: When in doubt, spell it out

#9: Frame it

#10: Invite feedback

Oh yes, and while you are messing around with Excel, check out this site (

http://www.gamesexcel.com/games-excel-monopoly.html)  for a Monopoly game for Excel!

Does the Agile Manifesto Cut Technical Writers Out of the Loop?

"I don’t think so " answers Sarah Maddox in her blog,  ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog

The preamble from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Sarah claims that "the technical writer’s role has become even more interesting, exciting and above all, valuable — that’s what I find, anyway, now that I’m working in an agile development shop."
 
Read more about Sarah's experiences as an Agile Technical Writer here.