Beg, Borrow or Google...!!!

I always thought it would be impossible to insert Articulate Engage output to Adobe Captivate. Someone here proved me wrong.

http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2010/06/21/publishing-articulate-to-captivate/

I always thought we could not reduce the speed of narration we get from Captivate 4.0’s Neo Text to Speech. This Adobe blog -
http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/04/vtml_tags_in_text_to_speech_1.html - proved me wrong and taught me that you could actually modify not just the speed, but its pitch, voice, and what not!!!

The other day, I received a letter from an anonymous Xmas friend in my office and it was written in Hindi. As I was investigating for people who knew Hindi, my colleague Googled the text and there you go – that’s a common SMS.

Every time I think something is not possible, some one or the other proves me wrong. Trust me; you can Google for almost anything under the universe. And it applies to Instructional Designers more than anyone else. So the next time you have a query, I would say – Ask your colleague first and if he/she doesn’t have the answer, just Google it. In fact, I would recommend that even if your colleague comes to your rescue, just Google the topic and who knows, you might end up with a better option.

ADDIE and Me ...!!!

Almost all instructional designers (especially the ones who did a course in Instructional Designing / e-Learning) know Addie. I heard about him only recently. But when I met him, I realized that even I knew him before. It’s just that I dint know that I knew him. :-)


Well I really don’t want to talk here much about who Addie is and what he does. I guess a lot of people have already done that. Just Google ‘ADDIE’ and you will know what I mean. What interests me is the fact that I have been using his theory for a long time but I never knew that it came from him. Actually I never knew that it was a theory even. ;-)


Here is how my team uses Addie's theory at work:

A for Analysis

D for Design

D for Development

I for Implementation



E for Evaluation

SCORM unzipped!!!

Well, it took me another four months to write my second blog on E-Learning basics. And this time, I am about to unzip SCORM. It stands for Sharable Content Objects Reference Model.

1. It is used to share content.

2. It is a reference model.

Sharing content is done by a hell lot of things. Newspapers share content. So does blogs, movies, DVDs, websites and books. And do all of these use SCORM? The answer is definitely a big NO. But all these share a certain common standards. I think this concept is best explained in the website www.scorm.com. In my research on SCORM, I could not find a better URL than this one to know the A to Z of SCORM.

SCORM is a set of standards used especially in e-learning portals to share content. They make content in different software and different formats, compatible for normal users who does not have these software to open such files. SCORM makes up the backbone of e-learning. There are different versions of SCORM; SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 being the most popular ones used now.

Two most widely used softwares in e-learning industry are the Articulate series and the Adobe series and I am proud that my firm uses both of these softwares. Articulate Engage, Quiz and Presenter provides excellent interactive templates which are easy to use and manage. Adobe Captivate allows us to create highly interactive e-learning modules. It is perhaps the best option when you have to explain the navigation of a software or website. Screen simulations can be recorded and edited to suit our needs with this software.

Although I am yet to find out how to utilize the SCORM features of Captivate most effectively, I have already started making SCORM files out of it and I have uploaded some of them in my LMS. One point I am still trying to find out is the compatibility of files among the different software used to create content. Say, for example, a file made in Engage to be inserted into Captivate. The vice versa option is quite possible; but still requires a better option.

As I continue my research on SCORM, you go check out Articulate and Adobe Captivate provided you are keen to create some good stuff e-learning content.