Perceptions of time

An interesting discussion on the perception of time in various societies. I think very notable for the discussion at the end about learning styles of young men.

Another SCORM overview resource

Server move

I completed a server move over the weekend for the server that hosts our website and this blog. It appears to have gone well. There really should be no visible change to the service. If anybody notices a problem just leave a comment,

SCORM Demystified

A short animated video presentation explaining SCORM.

SCORMCloud

Take any web product that offers user management and authentication, add SCORMCloud and stir. Presto instant SCORM compliant learning delivery system.

Rustici Software, respected veteran players on the SCORM scene introduced and have been providing this cost effective solution to SCORM learning delivery system world for a while now. Not only is it cost effective from a development point of view but it also is economical for usage, offering a number of different levels of usage payment options.

Creating DVDs from Articulate productions

I have been working on a process to create DVDs from Articulate presentations and have been successful. It is not turnkey though.

It requires, naturally, that the presentation not have any Engage or Quiz elements or any other slides requiring user interaction. It is also necessary to move all elements on background to the foreground (if there is a background colour set that must be simulated by creating a box of the appropriate colour as the lowest layer on the foreground).

Rendering/publishing in Articulate produces a .swf file for each slide (in the data/swf directory) named slidex.swf. I change the publishing quality settings temporarily for the presentation for this publishing cycle to the highest quality audio/video option available and publish to a different directory to avoid overwriting the original presentation(make sure to remember to change them back to normal settings or your later publishing will create very large files).

I then process each slidex.swf file through a program that will convert swf files to avi or wmv files. There are a number on the market. I have tried "iWisoft Flash SWF to Video Converter" and "SWF &FLV Toolbox". There are others as well. I use the highest quality settings I can for output. Both that I have tried have problems and glitches but I have been able to get through the conversion process successfully. The process produces a series of avi files that can then be used to create a dvd.

Any slides that have video I replace with the original high quality avi video (before conversion to flv and embedding in the presentation). (Addendum -- slides that have swf movies require you to use the original swf movie rather than the slide swf. If Articulate Presenter has audio for these slides it will have to be extracted and added to the movie during editing/assembly).

I have found "Windows Movie Maker" (available free from Microsoft for Vista and XP) adequate for the avi assembly process -- assembling the avi files into the units you want to be the eventual scenes on the DVD. I used "Windows DVD Maker" (also free from Microsoft) to create the DVD from the scenes. Any video editing program ( like Sony Vegas) or DVD maker (Nero is a product that I have used in the past) would work here.

Learning how to learn...

Just read some interesting challenge papers written by Contact North, a non-profit organization providing access to education and training to people in Northern Ontario.

Their recent publications address the challenges facing educational institutions and teachers to embrace emerging technologies.
Students still need to be taught how to become independent learners and using new technologies "will make this learning of how to learn much more effective".  - Trends and Developments in e-Learning

Two other interesting publications include:
Fast Forward: How Emerging Technologies are Transforming Education and Training - from the paper's foreword -

Our goal with this paper is to inform, to think about what the future will look like and how we can best use technology to ensure Ontarians and Canadians have quality access to the education and training opportunities that are critical to our future prosperity.

(some interesting speculations of how emerging technologies may be used in the future and their impact on learners, teachers and educational institutions)

Strategic Directions for e-Learning in Canada
(interesting facts on Brazil as an international leader in elearning.)

Parallel Online Flash and DVD delivery

A product we have been working on for a while and now have fully delivered is Articulate/PowerPoint authored Flash eLearning lessons with optional completely parallel DVD delivery.

Using an in house developed process and a number of off the shelf tools we are able to flow our lessons straight through to DVD with exactly equivalent delivery.