Fastest Marathon Ever!
October 30, 2009
The first team eLB marathon is complete! Sister Kim and I ran our fastest marathons ever! (ok…it was also our first marathon ever) The St George Marathon was 10/3 in St George Utah and the race went through the beautiful Snow Canyon area.
I (Brother Andrew) was only 5 1/2 weeks out from my collarbone surgery and was out of training for about 3 weeks. So needless to say my body was not in the best shape. I don’t think that the medicine, trauma, lack of sleep, and plate/screws helped either. My goal was to come in under 4 hours and to not walk. I was able to do it! (3:53 and no walking). I would love to do it again but I’m not sure when yet. The biggest thing that I learned it that I LOVE icy-hot. They had icy-hot stations every few miles. It feels really nice on aching legs 
Sister Kim did a great job as well. This is her first shot at running. She started to really feel it at about mile 20 and had to “gut it out” the rest of the way. Her husband (Brother Shawn) went out to see/encourage her during the last stretch. Sister Kim was surrounded by her 4 daughters as she crossed the finish line.
This was a great experience and we’ll remember it forever!
BootCamp Challenge Flash Game Template
October 21, 2009
You got it…another awesome Flash eLearning game template to spice up your online training courses. Just like all our other games, this is super easy to update/customize in Flash.
Made to work within most rapid elearning software (Articulate Presenter, Adobe Captivate, Rapid Intake, Adobe Presenter, and more).
New Articles: eLearning Templates and Design
October 21, 2009
Just published 2 more articles on ezinearticles.com.
eLearning Development Using Templates
Article focuses on how templates help you build eLearning more rapidly.
10 Online Training Do’s and Don’ts
Article discusses 10 things to think about when starting an eLearning team and course.
If you’d like to see some sample Flash eLearning templates here are a few (from e-LearningTemplates.com):
Interaction Pack – Grudge
Interaction Pack – City Rays
Interaction Pack – Clean Corporate
Interaction Pack – Pulsing Dots
Golf Challenge eLearning Flash Game Template
October 21, 2009
We have just released another awesome rapid eLearning Flash game template. This template is super easy to update/customize within Flash…even for the non-flash developer.
Made to work within most rapid elearning software (Articulate Presenter, Adobe Captivate, Rapid Intake, Adobe Presenter, and more).
Using View Slides to Send LMS Completion in Articulate
October 20, 2009
I published a course the other day and when users started going through it the completion status never passed to the LMS. I just used the standard “publish to LMS” option in Articulate…it has to be working. The user must be doing something incorrectly right? Well, actually I messed up. (but the software tricked me)
Using “Track using number of slides viewed” to pass a completion status to your LMS:
You can have users pass a course if they pass a quiz or if they viewed a pre-determined number of slides. I chose “view slides” to pass my course.
When you publish in Articulate and your course has no quiz, the completion status defaults to “view number of slides”. You can select how many slides must be viewed. I left it at “view 64 of 64 slides”. I wanted them to view all of my pages. Seems simple right? Well, not so fast
What I didn’t think through is that if your course has hidden slides then your user won’t be able to click on every slide. (for example if you use branching) Articulate software doesn’t calculate that you have hidden slides. It just gives you the option to have a user click every slide.
In conclusion, make sure you think through the flow of your course. Will a user touch every page? If not, make sure that you calculate that when determining how many slides they should view to be considered “complete/done”.
View our Articulate eLearning games, flash interactions, PowerPoint style kits, and clipped-out people.
EzineArticles Expert Author
October 14, 2009
After a few weeks of waiting….we’re proud to announce that Brother Andrew has finally achieved “Expert Author” status on EzineArticles.com.
Ok, it’s not that big of a deal but it’s always fun to see your articles published somewhere online besides your own blog. The process takes about 2 weeks and their editors go through your article to make sure it has meaningful content. They ensure that it’s not just “self-serving” marketing. Once the editors are done they send you an email saying that your article has been accepted and published. (they may request a few edits) I’m guessing that once you publish an article you achieve the rank of “expert author”.
Don’t use Gratuitous Images in eLearning
October 12, 2009
We’ve all heard the phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Graphics are great training tools and can make the difference between an average course and a great course.
The true test of an graphic: Can the learner look at the image and understand the concept of the training page without reading the text? If your answer is “NO”, then you have yourself a gratuitous image. Yuck!
Graphics come in many different shapes, sizes, layouts, colors, and complexities. They are more than just a simple picture of a person or an office. Graphics can portray steps in a process, pieces of a concept, interaction between people, emotions, and much more.
Just because there is some open space on a page, don’t get lazy and place some meaningless gratuitous image. We always recommend finding a way to create an image that engages the learner. Have fun with it and be creative!
Below are two simple examples:
eLearning Brothers, LLC specializes in making you look good. We are passionate about our belief that great online training needs to be engaging, interactive and inspiring. Flash games, challenges, interactions, and some pretty sweet look’n custom course development…contact us today for our complimentary consultation. Not ready to outsource? Try using our awesome e Learning Templates. They work great with most rapid elearning development tools.
As always, Happy eLearning!
The Brothers
Articulate Resources and Articles
October 9, 2009
If you’re like me I’m always looking for good articles and “how-to” blogs on Articulate. So I thought that I’d share a few resources that I’ve written and use.
Articles:
Articulate and Flash Audio
Navigating the Articulate API with Flash
Scavenger Hunts in Articulate
Using Flash to Control Articulate Navigation
Blogs/Sites:
Articulate Forums
Rapid eLearning Blog (great usability and design info)
Mozealous (technical developer info)
Daveperso (technical developer info)
Articulate and Flash with Audio
October 9, 2009
I’ve been working on an Articulate Presenter course with a lot of flash files that have audio. Each of the .swfs have buttons that the user clicks to go to various frames. There are audio clips that go along with each slide. I quickly began to notice that the .swfs acted differently once imported into Articulate. Here are a few things to consider/think about:
1. Import settings – When inserting a flash movie into Articulate you have a few different settings to consider.
- How to display the movie – I choose to display the moving in the presenter panel because it was the main content that I wanted to show. You could experiment with have the flash display in a new browser window (full screen on top of the main course) and have it automatically “pop-up” when a user hits a particulate slide. This could be helpful with system simulations.
- How the movie behaves (advancing) – I you have a linear movie that the users watches and doesn’t need to interact with, you could choose “Advance to next slide automatically”. However if you have a movie with buttons and user interaction, you must select “Advance to next slide when user clicks next.
- How the movie behaves (synchronization) – I always choose “Movie plays independently of slide” as this setting. I want the flash movie to be completely separate from what’s happening on the slide. In fact, when I import a flash movie I never have anything on the slide.
2. Audio placement – If you are using audio in your flash movie don’t import audio to the slide as well. If the user clicks on your flash movie before the slide audio is done, you will have overlapping audio.
3. Overlapping audio within the Flash movie – When I previewed the .swfs in flash the audio worked great. The sounds didn’t overlap. However when previewing in Articulate if I clicked on a button before the audio was complete it would overlap with the next frame’s audio. I solved this by putting a stopAllSounds() action script on each button before moving to the next frame. For example:
on (release) {
stopAllSounds();
this.gotoAndStop(”tool4″);
}
This script stops all audio before moving to the frame label “tool4”.
4. Few audio tips – It’s a good idea to warn the users that the course that they are about to take has audio. This allows them to adjust their speakers and not get surprised. This can be a big embarrassment especially if a course starts blaring and there are customers around. Warning them also allows them to find another computer if for some reason sound doesn’t work on their current computer.
Audio is a great addition to any course. However with the benefits also comes the extra work.
View our Articulate eLearning games, flash interactions, PowerPoint style kits, and clipped-out people.
Presenting at BYOL eLearning 09
October 8, 2009
The brothers are presenting Oct 20 at the BYOL eLearning conference (Bring Your Own Laptop) in Salt Lake City, UT.
Brother Shawn is doing a session on creating interfaces and the essential elements of course layouts.
Brother Andrew is showing how to use Articulate to bring Power Point to life.
If you’re at the conference…come say hi!
