Rapid eLearning | Adobe Captivate Blog

We receive many enquiries on how to download the Text-to-Speech voices from our site… I have to say the experience can be a little bit of a treasure hunt. For now, RJ, our senior evangelist, has created a quick how-to movie to help users with locating and installing this content:  http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/text2speechdwnld/

captivate,text-to-speech

Adobe Captivate,printed version of E-learning course,publish to word,E-Learning

Well yes!.. Printed versions of your e-learning courses prove to be instrumental in re-iterating the learning. They can turn out to be of huge help when you need a reference at future point of time when the e-learning course is no more accessible. 

Recently, I took an e-learning course on how to file income tax returns. Boy!! Believe me filing IT returns in India is pretty taxing. When I actually sat down to file my returns I wished I had some kind of hard copy of the e-learning course which could have helped me file my returns.

It then struck me that the e-learning author should have provided us with a printed version of the course so that people like me could refer it at later point of time. Adobe Captivate could have helped here. Adobe Captivate does a great job in converting you re-learning course into MS Word document. Once you have the document you could print it to create the hard copies of the course which can be referenced by the users at later point of time. In my opinion this is a huge advantage which re-iterates the learning.

Let us check out what Adobe Captivate has to offer in this paradigm. Well, with captivate you could publish your file to MS word in following formats:

• Handouts : The ‘Handout’ output converts your Adobe Captivate project into handouts showing all the slides as they would appear in the e-learning project. You also have options to control what objects from your e-learning course get printed to handouts. For e.g. you could eliminate printing of mouse objects, in your e-learning course, in the handouts by simply un-checking a checkbox.
• Lesson : The ‘Lesson’ output converts your Adobe Captivate project into a lesson, complete with your questions and an answer key.
• Step by step: The ‘Step by Step’ output converts your Adobe Captivate project into a short reference guide. This is the best option when you intend to provide a hard copy of a software demo for future reference (say when the user is actually using the software). Btw, this is exactly what I was looking for while browsing through the thousands of controls on IT website in-order to file my IT returns..
• Storyboard : You are a content designer and have been given a set of requirements to create an application for a client. You design the application using Adobe Captivate and want your manager to review it, but your manager doesn’t have Adobe Captivate installed locally to review your project.  You can select the Publish Your Project as a Storyboard option so that others can review a printed version of the project. The storyboard option outputs two sections:
• A brief summary of the entire project such as the number of slides, duration of each slide, project preferences selected, quiz preferences, hidden slides, background audio, and so forth
• A detailed view of each slide, including each slide’s properties, such as transition, navigation, audio, background image and so forth; it also shows the objects within each slide.

You would find above options in the publish dialog:

So you see..How the printed version of the e-learning course could have made my life easy. Do you still think that printed version of an e-learning course is ironical?? Happy publishing to word!!

The Captivate team is going to present in full strength at ASTD TK 2010 in Las Vegas. Do stop by the booth to meet our evangelist, Allen, who recently delivered the popular webinars on Cp and mLearning. Also at the booth is Tridib, the director of products (and my boss). They will be discussing our plans for the future, and will help answer any questions or concerns you have about the current product. Tridib is also hosting one of the concurrent sessions titled ’Collaboration thru the cloud’. If you’ve been toying with ideas on fostering collaboration in your elearning authoring process; or about getting the learners more involved to become active participants in making the course a living document- Tridib’s session will help you analyze the advantages of different collaboration models; and identify areas where you could improve some of your current processes by benchmarking against your peers.

Come prepared to share the current modes of communication between the different entities (author, SME, learner); and collaboratively create a model that can be used in different parts of the learning workflow.

Session #: W105

Date: Wednesday, 1/27, 11.00AM- 12.15PM, Room Miranda 3/5

captivate,collaboration through the cloud,astd techknowledge 2010,allen partridge,tridib roy chowdhury

I couldn’t resisted the opportunity to highlight the growing number of lowercase aTtachments to various terms in an attempt to describe efficiently the evergrowing array of associations.

We’ve created links to this weeks Adobe eLearning eSeminars at the locations below. The sessions were well attended and each lasted about an hour. The first has a more pragmatic emphasis with a focus on creating and delivering mLearning solutions using Adobe Captivate and the eLearning Suite. The second is a deeper dive into the issues surrounding mLearning. Is it time to explore this channel? Are we hitting a new wave? Is it all still just hype? Links are below;

Title: How do I make eLearning mobile?
Duration: 01:00:29
URL for Viewing: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?loc=en_us&id=1578639&event=register_no_session

Summary: A step by step walk through of producing mobile eLearning content with Captivate and the eLearning Suite.
Language: English

Title: Is it really time for mobile eLearning?
Duration: 01:03:48
URL for Viewing: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?loc=en_us&id=1578643&event=register_no_session

Summary: mLearning; Beyond the Hype. A discussion of deeper issues relative to mobile delivery and eLearning. What is the critical tipping point? An examination of the mobile environment demographics and fiscal motives. A quest to find and share information about successful, and unsuccessful attempts at eLearning with mobile delivery.

Language: English

Many of you must have received a mailer yesterday, inviting you to participate in the Captivate User Survey. Unfortunately, due to some technical glitches, the survey site was down. Our vendors have fixed the issue, and the survey is now live. We apologize for any inconvenience caused yesterday, and hope that you will take 15 mins to answer this survey. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us in improve the product.

If you did not receive the mailer, but would still like to participate, please do so by following this link.

captivate survey

Allen, our eLearning evangelist, has just announced the next set of webinars that he is going to be hosting. He has some interesting topics lined up- including mobile eLearning. Also, if you missed his previous sessions, you can find the recordings of those webinars here:

Basics: 21st Century Skills & Adobe eLearning Suite

Advanced: 21st Century Skills and Adobe eLearning Suite

captivate webinar,elearning webinar,allen partridge

I’m going to be in London on the week of Jan 25th attending the Learning Technologies conference. This is a big conference for Adobe, and the Captivate and eLearning suite team will be there in full strength. We are in booth no. 6, right at the entrance, next to the registration deck. Drop by our booth for your chance to see a sneak peek of Captivate on Mac, and collect some great goodies we are giving away just for this event. I will also be taking requests to participate in the Mac Beta (chance to jump the queue).

On Thursday, Jan 28th, I will be doing a session on Collaborative eLearning using Twitter and Captivate. This is scheduled for 12.00 noon, in Theatre 5. Hope to see you folks there.

Also, would any of you like to meet up post the show- drop me an email, the drinks are on me (on Adobe )

Also, I have a limited set of complimentary passes to the show. If you would like to score one, shoot me an email.

learning technologies 2010,captivate for mac,captivate twitter widget

A good way to start of the year. Adobe Captivate has won Best of Elearning! 2009 in the category- “Best Simulation Tool”. This award is especially valuable because these are based on end user nominations- our customers voting for us. Also, Adobe eLearning Suite (eLS), which is not even a year old, has won the Award of Excellence for  “Best E-Learning Development Tool”. Our nascent eLS customer base has voted us up over other established products. I would like to say ‘Thank You’ to all of you who took the time to vote.

best of eLearning!,best simulation tool,captivate,elearning suite