Silke Fleischer

Flex Your Power, California's outreach campaign for energy efficiency, has a Flash-based trivia game on energy savings facts online.

I think it was completely created in Flash.

It would be cool to see games like this created in Adobe Captivate. This one is fairly simple since it's question based, has a game show background, and uses an animated character - all these pieces could be done in Adobe Captivate. Not sure though how to display the running score ...

energy,saving,environment,flex your power,flash,game

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our Sr. Product Evangelist RJ Jacquez has completed a free online training session on how to create your own AIR-based documentation or performance support system without programming. The training includes sample files, many links to resources, and even the download of the sample information system he built for Adobe Buzzword.

Imagine you could take all your documents, instructions, Adobe Captivate content, PDF files, and more and package it all up into an effective and modern system that installs on the learner's desktop (cross platform); includes full navigation with TOC, index, search, glossary, favorites; additional resources and more. Without programming and in about an hour - how's that for impressing your management!

Watch the free session Getting started with Adobe RoboHelp Packager for AIR

Adobe,captivate,robohelp,framemaker,air,flash,epss,performance support

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Congratulations to BRICSYS - selected for Adobe Site of the Day today for the tutorials created in Adobe Captivate!

On our website:

When Bricsys decided to improve customer service by providing online training for Bricscad, its next-generation CAD product, the company turned to Flash. To highlight new features, provide online training, and decrease support requests, Bricsys created a series of tutorial videos along with a Flash animation that functions like a lightbox to highlight specific tutorials. This site was built with Adobe Captivate, Dreamweaver, Flash, Flash Player, Illustrator, and Photoshop. (Mar. 14, 2008)

If you are interested in seeing your work on the Adobe site, simply submit to the Customer Showcase or Join the Customer Success Program.

Adobe,Captivate,Flash,Dreamweaver,site of the day,showcase,customer success,case study

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

John, one of our users who had listed his link on my blog and then submitted to the Adobe Showcase, was just selected for the official Adobe Site of the day. He created an online phone tour for Toshiba to support the launch of the DP5000 phone - What a great use of Adobe Captivate. Take a look at the site of the day.

Thanks so much for submitting John and congratulations!

If you have public facing content, simply submit the link and you can have the chance to win the Site of the Day and place a prestigious badge on your site.

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

online educa,berlin,adobe,captivate,andrew keen,questionmark,piexelearning,web 2.0,elearning

Online Educa is over and my brain is suffering from information overload. Here are some random notes from the conference:

• It was a busy conference with 2,000 attendees and over 100 exhibitors from all over the world. The sessions can quickly be confusing to track with sometimes 6 different presentations in 2 hours. However - it forces presenters to get to the point ;)
• I love the international aspect of this show - it's rare for me to meet so many people from so many different countries!
• Many games and Web 2.0 sessions that were usually quite packed.
• Due to meetings I didn't have time to attend any of the opening sessions but Andrew Keen (known for his book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Truth), has been quite controversial based on the comments I overheard e.g. comparing bloggers with monkeys and raising the issue that more authority is needed for resources like Wikipedia. Haven’t seen too many blog entries about it other than Wilfred Rubens’ who titles his entry “I am an ape” :) (FYI: it’s in Dutch though)
• Met Kevin Corti and saw some pieces of the serious immersive games his company PIXELearning develops. I wish I had access to some of these during business school...
• Caroline Winning from eBay showed how they are using Questionmark Perception for their assessments and include Adobe Captivate simulations as questions.
• Saw learning content by etraining.eu all  based on Adobe Captivate recordings. Watch a sample simulation for PowerPoint training. If you know Adobe Captivate, you'll probably recognize the animated highlighters. The Playback controls are completely customized. I also like how they are utilizing images for the mouse to help you see which mouse button to click. There must be hundreds of tutorials - great example of rapid authoring! (on the right you see their tutor Jennifer that guides you through the setup - it's all running with text to speech - not sure which engine they are using).
• Enjoyed the presentation closing the participation gap by Prof. Karsten D. Wolf from the University of Bremen. Packed with interested stats on wiki authoring vs. usage.

Some Flash apps I have seen:

• PebblePAD - a fun way to create online portfolios. I enjoyed seeing this application since I am creating my own portfolio for the Educational Technology courses I am taking at SDSU. At 15 pounds/year quite reasonable, especially since it allows users to extract the content. So if you use it in an educational setting, your work is not lost if you decide to move to another system after graduating. It's easy to use and you can request a PepplePad test account.

• Talking Letters – share your pictures with audio by adding your stories. Integrates with Facebook.

If you were at Online Educa, please comment your impressions.

I am off on vacation ... Bye for now.

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

conceptual simulation,scenario,adobe captivate,dazzletech

During the conference, I showed a new example I received: Hotel Conflicts. It's a conceptual simulation where you are faced with a realistic scenario and access to experts (great use of the new slidelet feature) - although, you may not always want to follow the suggestions of your coworker.

Flash Video pieces are well integrated so you can get a full experience - especially when the guest starts to get annoyed if you make the wrong choices. The body language tells you what's going on.

I have tried playing this inside a Connect meeting room and it works great.

Have fun playing.

This sample was developed by Joe Ganci from Dazzle Technologies Corp. Thanks Joe for providing it and allowing us to share with Adobe Captivate users :)

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tagsadobe captivate,games,puzzle,template

Wow - I just received the .cp files for the car puzzle and maze game and they were created even simpler than I initially thought. I assumed the car puzzle uses inserted .SWF files to show the car moving - no way, it's using images stacked in the timeline! Very creative and easy. It still blows me away that you can develop this type of content using very simple techniques - without programming. I uploaded the project files to the Adobe Exchange where you can download them to check out.

PS: The Adobe Exchange might currently still say "Adobe Captivate 2" for the projects but they were created in Adobe Captivate 3 and please only open them in this version - you can download the trial from our web site.

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 8:59 PM | Permalink

Tagsvideo tutorials,free software demos

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 9:51 AM | Permalink

Tagsrobodemo,adobe captivate,videos,desktop software,piflar,learning portal

3 years ago, a project called Piflar.com started in Slovenia, a small country in central Europe with about 2 million people. Today, you can find over 350 video tips (created with Adobe Captivate) for standard desktop software on this learning portal, which gets over 20,000 page views per month! (Example of Word 2007)

Jose Antonio Morales, who works on the project, told me how over time the project has changed quite dramatically from subscription based to completely free to the public. Among the reasons were these:

• "When opening the contents of the portal we were able to track statistics that could be interesting for other companies. That means that we could get sponsors for contents and pages".
• "Maximizing the number of visitors increases the chances of receiving feedback from them".
• "Opening the contents helped us to find some content partners. For example we get partnership with non profit organizations that protect the rights of kids using the internet. Those partnerships improved business opportunities for other services we provide".

I love this success story and it's a win-win for everyone. Thanks Jose for prividing the link and the background info.

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 2:17 PM | Permalink

We are currently working on a white paper to be published later this year. The author is looking for interactive examples that can be used to showcase the instructional design principles as described in Ruth Clark's book e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning.

If you have created any interactive simulations (could be anything from software simulation to games or soft skills scenarios), please submit a link to me via the comments and I'll forward it.

If you want to see your work on the Adobe website, please submit to our customer showcase. The customer examples are updated all the time and you might even have a chance to be selected for the site of the day or a case study - which could come in handy for your next promotion :)

PS: If your content is proprietory, you might want to opt for a case study.

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 1:42 PM | Permalink

Happy new year! I am back at work and there are quite some news to share with you: Adobe RoboHelp is shipping! If you are a technical writer, Flex developer or RIA/software developer in general, training manager who needs to develop comprehensive performance support systems, or anyone who wants a well structured online reference or help system, you may want to check out the trial version. Important for me of course is the integration between Adobe Captivate and Adobe RoboHelp, which makes it easy to include visual demonstrations in online help systems. Show versus tell!

Continue reading "RoboHelp and Soft skills" »

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 4:43 PM | Permalink

Happy new year! I am back at work and there are quite some news to share with you: Adobe RoboHelp is shipping! If you are a technical writer, Flex developer or RIA/software developer in general, training manager who needs to develop comprehensive performance support systems, or anyone who wants a well structured online reference or help system, you may want to check out the trial version. Important for me of course is the integration between Adobe Captivate and Adobe RoboHelp, which makes it easy to include visual demonstrations in online help systems. Show versus tell!

Continue reading "RoboHelp and Soft skills" »

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 4:43 PM | Permalink

This morning, sitting in the hotel cafe in Berlin, Ellen Wagner, Wayne Hodgins and I were talking about tools, applications, services, legos, the future of learning and of course sailing around the world. We also briefly chatted about the creativity of our users and what they do with our tools without us ever thinking of these possibilities when we developed them. My Google blog alert for "Adobe+Captivate" found another unique usage today.

Aanarav Sareen, a TV editor and producer uses Adobe Captivate 2 for client review. Check out how - it's a pretty neat way of using Adobe Captivate!.

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 5:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just received an email from a coworker who used Macromedia Captivate in a very unique way. Her second grade son wrote 2 stories for school. Using a digital camera, a microphone and Macromedia Captivate, she was able to turn the book into a digital format to share on her blog: http://www.jakeandval.com/blog/.

After seeing this, I started a quick search on "blog tutorial Captivate" and was surprised to find so many entries. Here are some I collected and maybe they give you further ideas on what else you can do with the product:

Here is another blog from Matt Woodward, where I found a Macromedia Captivate piece - it's a presentation using Mach II Matt gave at a conference and he wanted to provide an online version of it.

Nice tutorials in this blog from SDSU Karl Richter.

And of course you will find a lot of places that contain Macromedia Captivate tutorials on how to use Flash features. One more - Flash tutorials directly in the blog.

Have you blogged about Macromedia Captivate yet or used it in your blogs?

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just wanted to share some "non-traditional" Macromedia Captivate content with you and hope that you have some links to share with us.

Take a look at Webassist's Cookies Toolkit site and click on Solution Recipe on the right hand side. This Macromedia Captivate project is a nice and simple explanation of how client-side and server-side cookies work!

I have used Macromedia Captivate myself to do Flash-based picture projects as well as website banners. Here is one of my projects where some people from our office supported Habitat for Humanity last month - it took less than half an hour including publishing. Or check out what our own dev team did with pictures. It's really cool, looks very professional, and it was created using the beta of Adobe Captivate 2 - no Flash skills necessary.

Or check out the animated banner for this radio station. It was done in minutes using the text animations that are available in Macromedia Captivate.

Please send me your links if you have "non-software" examples.

Posted by Silke Fleischer at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)