We receive many questions regarding viewing Flash on iPads and iPhones. iSpring recently published a great blog with a comparison of different tools available to view Flash on iPads . They spent some time testing Puffin, Appsverse Photon, iSwifter, and Cloud Browse, listing the pros and cons of each application.

I decided to give Puffin a try and was able to successfully view a published Flash course that included imbedded videos and various interactions. I also tested a few of our Flash games, and they too worked well. The only update to the iSpring blog I would add is, the free version of Puffin only offers a 14-day trial of the Flash plugin. You need to purchase the app for $2.99 to maintain the Flash plugin option.

The iSpring team also explored using remote desktop software that would allow you to access your computer and view Flash files. They tested the TeamViewer software and have detailed the pros and cons of this option as well.

So if you are looking for an app that will allow you to view Flash on your iPad/iPhone, check out this blog post for more information: Can I Play Flash on iPad? Yes!

Have you ever been challenged with the task of quickly converting a PowerPoint Presentation to Flash? iSpring has a cool product, Free PowerPoint to Flash Converter  that makes converting your PPT to Flash a very quick and easy process. Check it out…it’s FREE…and who doesn’t like free?

Also, today they announced an upgrade to their suite of products with new advanced features. So, while you are visiting their website investigating the free product, check out their other stellar Rapid eLearning products: iSpring Pro, iSpring Kinetics, and iSpring QuizMaker.

We thought it would be cool to try and create some people cutouts (transparent background .pngs) that looked like they were hand sketched by pencil. Since no one here in the office was any good at drawing, we took some of our current photo files and ran them through a series of filters. Magic happened and we came up with Sketch People Cutouts! We whipped up a few example layouts of how you might use them in your next elearning course. We hope you enjoy them.

This new product is current available in the eLearning Template Library.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new eLearning Template Library . This new library gives subscribers an “All You Can Buffet” of templates, images, and assets.

Here’s some of the grub available on our Buffet:

• Flash Games, Quizzes, and Interactions
• PowerPoint Slide Layouts
• PowerPoint Classroom Games
• Articulate Player Skins
• Captivate Templates
• CutOut People Images
• Branded Themes
• Speech Bubbles and tons of other graphics

You may be wondering, what are the benefits of being a subscriber? Well, here are a few:

• Unlimited Access to the Buffet – you can come back for seconds, thirds…
• Immediate Access to New Products
• Product Upgrades and Enhancements immediately available
• Access to Exclusive Content not available for individual sale

Subscribe now and get Everything!

It’s time to pull up a chair and begin the feast!

Greetings from Hawaii. Do you want to build amazing training? Do you want to engage your learners? Well we have just the answer for you. We just launched some cool new Flash Games! These new games will help you build, to use a local term, ”mo’ bettah” training courses. Our new games include some exciting new features like: new audio sound effects, timed activies, and sports challenges, just to name a few.

Check out these cool new games:

Wheel Spin – In this game, your learners spin the big wheel, answer the question correctly, and earn the points from the spin.

Line It Up – Line It Up is a sequence type game where you have to put all of the options on the screen in the correct order. It is great for quizzing someone regarding memory order.

Try Your Luck – In this fun game, you get to “buzz in” to stop the bouncing game piece, answer the question correctly, and earn points for each correct answer.

Word Guess – The Word Guess game presents your learners with a question and they are given an opportunity to guess the answer by selecting different letters and filling in the blanks.

Jump Shot – Are you ready for a little sports action? In Jump Shot, as your learners answer questions correctly, they earn time to shoot jump shots at the end of your quiz.

Field Goal – Field Goal is very similar to Jump Shot, in that your learners earn time to kick Field Goals for each correct answer in the quiz questions.

Board Game – The Board Game challenge is similar to playing a classic board game. Learners roll the dice, move the game piece, and answer questions.

Card Stack – Sort through a stack of cards to identify the correct answer.

Fishing – Well, it’s just like it sounds…learners get to cast their line, catch a fish, and answer a question.

Come check out our new Flash Games and see for yourself how much fun elearning can be!

Are you developing online training content (eLearning)? Do you want to save money and time? Are there multiple members on your team and you need everything to be consistent? Are there varying levels of technical expertise on the team?

These are just a few questions that we come across while building online training content. Using templates to build eLearning can address many of the questions above. Before discussing a few points let me describe what I mean by eLearning templates.

Templates can include many different assets. Many common ones are PowerPoint master slide layouts that have many different pages ready for you to insert content. There are also various tools that create template interfaces and GUIs for courses. E-learning templates can include buttons, icons, color schemes, images, quizzes, games, and more. Basically they can be used over and over in different projects. Now let’s discuss a few benefits.

Save Time and Effort

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the interface, page layouts, buttons, icons, colors, and the most often used components of an online course ready to go? Right there on your desktop and ready to drag and drop into place?

Having templates ready to go means that you don’t have to waste time re-creating the same pieces for each course. This can be very valuable for those who may not have a strong background in multimedia. It could take a novice designer a long time to create a flash movie or design an asset that an expert could do in minutes. Also, the quality will be very different.

Another huge plus is that the designers can now spend time focusing on writing good material and less on how to make a button look pretty.

Consistency

Many organizations want their online courses to be consistent. They should have the same colors, look/feel, quality, etc. no matter who the individual designer was. Templates can help achieve this desire. Designers have a base to work from and are all using the same files.

You can also develop a template interface player. This would ensure that learners always have the same navigation options on each course. You could also standardize where links to job aids, outlines, bookmarks, and other features appear. The learner becomes familiar with navigating your course and doesn’t need to waste time trying to figure that part out. They can jump right into the training.

Technical Functionality

Are there certain requirements that your Learning Management System has for courses to function properly? Are there guidelines that the IT department has? Templates are a great way to build a file that works within all guidelines and then to share it with the entire department. As designers use the template it cuts down on troubleshooting time trying to determine why something isn’t working. That effort has already been done and only needs to happen once.

Move Beyond Your Talent

There are some amazing multimedia designers that can create some great content for online training. Not all instructional designers are good at creating multimedia. Templates can be created to add a lot of professionally designed interactivity and games to courses. All you have to know how to do is edit the template and then you can add content that is beyond your skill level to create on your own.

Increase Output and Creativity

I touched on this earlier but e learning templates allow designers to spend time on what they do best…writing course content. Templates can allow you to spend project time on the “meat” of the course and not on the “administrative” parts. This has two consequences: 1. You can spend time thinking of creative ways to make your course interesting and 2. You can build more courses in a shorter amount of time.

I hope that this article gave you a few ideas around how eLearning templates can help you and your team.

If you would like to see some templates here are some examples:
eLearning Flash Template Interactions
eLearning Games
PowerPoint Templates

Knoodle recently announced a new release of their software that makes it more intuitive and easier to use. With the new release, “you get more done in less time”, and let’s face it…who doesn’t want to save time these days.

New updates include:

• Redesigned content creation workflow
• Reduction in the number of steps between uploading content and publishing presentations
• Newly developed tools making synchronizing slides with the timeline and selected media easier
• New drag and drop capabilities to change slide order
• New intuitive UI that makes managing content, editing, and synchronizing easier than ever
• New Preview function to preview work before publishing.

Check out their blog post, New Release: More Content, More Social, More Rapid, to learn more about these exciting new updates.

eLearning Brothers Teaming Up with Knoodle

eLearning Brothers is happy to announce we are teaming up with Knoodle to offer eLearning PowerPoint Templates and Cutout People Images. Using templates adds consistency to your eLearning courses and helps to speed up the design process.

Take a look at these templates that work great with Knoodle.

We thought it would be nice to start the New Year by sharing with you a sample PowerPoint Template…for FREE. That’s right, click the link below to go to our eLearning Templates website and download this free template.

Free PowerPoint Template

Are you tired of the same dull classroom training experiences? Why not start the New Year with a resolution to liven up your classroom training content?

The Brothers have been hard at work designing some new PowerPoint Classroom Games that are a perfect way to add some energy and excitement to your classroom training courses. We currently have two different games available: GameShow and Millionaire.

Game features include:

• Professional graphics and design
• Team play available (GameShow)
• Automated score tracking
• Built in timers on each question slide
• Customizable questions and answers
• Compatible with PC – PowerPoint 03, 07, and 10

Game packages include all source files and an additional PowerPoint file with 40+ different branding themes that you can use to customize the game.

We have been hard working little Elves this Holiday Season, and just finished making some sweet updates to all of our Flash Games and Quizzes.

Check out these updates that give you more control:

• Various question types: multiple-choice, true/false, multiple answer.
• Add 4 – 20 questions.
• Change point values for correct answers.
• Set the countdown timer on timed activities.
• Fresh new graphics.

Of course we still offer these same great features:

• Randomized questions.
• Interchangeable themes/buttons/backgrounds.
• Customizable colors for everything.
• Free online tutorials.
• We give you all .FLA source files for AS2 and AS3.
• SCORM compliant.

All Flash Games and Quizzes are simple to use and easily edited. Just open the template in Flash and copy/paste your text into the movie clips for each question and answer. Remember: you get all source files, so you can tweak them to meet any need you may have.

Check out the new eLearning Games!

Check out the new eLearning Quizzes!