It looks like creating a professional storyboard from an existing script just got easier with the a href=”http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/07/amazon-launches-storyteller-to-turn-scripts-into-storyboards-automagically/#vb-gallery:1:753115″Amazon Storytelling Service/a.
I’m curious to if and how filmmakers, educators and others use this tool to create content.
Please share your experience here in the comments.
How interesting that people confine creativity to collaboration in a closed space…
There is creativity in solitude and in collaboration (the latter being virtual or in person)…
Creativity and productivity are organic…
Open up your minds…
In recent news, Yahoo steps decades backward in workplace evolution by banning their work-from-home program.
All their CEO and high execs needed to do was search the Web for an Infographic or other sources of information on the advantages of working from home, and they’d have recanted this tragic decision:
Source: dashburst.com via Enzo on Pinterest
I came across this post on the Instructional Design and eLearning Industry Professionals group on Facebook. Whether you’re trying to learn how to use Adobe Captivate 6, how to administer Moodle, create content in Articulate Storyline, or even how to use Udutu, there’s a learning opportunity for everyone.
Visit VivaELearning.com for more “free video tutorials for Educational Technologies” and sign up.
55 Free Adobe Captivate 6 Video Tutorials
http://elearningindustry.com/55-free-adobe-captivate-6-video-tutorials
34 Free Flash CS6 Video Tutorials
http://elearningindustry.com/34-free-flash-cs6-video-tutorials
105 Free Moodle Video Tutorials
http://elearningindustry.com/105-free-moodle-video-tutorials
21 Free iSpring Presenter Video Tutorials
http://elearningindustry.com/21-free-ispring-presenter-video-tutorials-ispringpro
31 Free eFront Video Tutorials
http://elearningindustry.com/31-free-efront-video-tutorials
13 Free Udutu Video Tutorials
http://elearningindustry.com/13-free-udutu-video-tutorials-authoring-tool
35 Free Articulate Storyline Video Tutorials
http://elearningindustry.com/35-free-articulate-storyline-video-tutorials
and much much more!
Dying on a plane crash is one of my nightmares. I am afraid of flying on commercial aircrafts, it’s tense. So, why not catch my attention in that sweaty-palm moment with a fun little video about air travel safety? I’m already tense enough to be bored by the traditional video segments.
Here’s to the airlines that like to break tradition and provide more engaging educational videos to their passengers:
Skype has changed the way I communicate with my family (who lives in Brazil). When I was dating my wife long-distance, in between international trips to see each other, we communicated via instant messaging (Yahoo! Messenger), email, and expensive phone cards. That was mid-2000s, video chat wasn’t available, let alone video chat via mobile devices! Fast forward to 2010, and now Skype offers video calls on the iPhone: and since I’ve been living in the U.S. for years, I can not only talk to my family in Brazil for free but also show them where I live!
Now Skype aims at changing the way the classroom sees the world and interacts with it too.
Skype in the Classroom is a project that wants to connect teachers and students with professionals out there for live video conferencing sessions. It provides an online community that allows teachers to share projects and find people that want to contribute to them. Skype has also partnered with organizations to provide expertise, be it in the form of a quick Q&A with an expert at a certain field, tagging along a professional doing their job, or having an author perform a book reading for students.
Skype in the Classroom also has a Resources section where teachers can share materials and articles to support lessons in a variety of topics. Content, can be searched and filtered by Age Group, Language, Country, and Category.
Projects can be searched and filtered by age group, language, type of expertise, and category.
This is a great idea to expand the students’ world beyond the walls of the classroom by using a free tool!
When we normally think of reusable learning objects we think of reusing them in other traditional learning settings, be it a chapter of a student manual or a video used in a different e-learning course (yes, e-learning is traditional, isn’t it?).
When we think of modular, reusable learning objects we have to think of them as not just reusable in a traditional sense, but imagine them as shareable learning objects. Media elements to be spread in different social media sites by us (designers/developers) and learners themselves. For instance, when creating a job aid about a process or concept, make it attractive, publish it on different social media sites like Pinterest (the new fad now) so others can also share it. Or perhaps you design a video that can not only be used in a course, but also shared via YouTube. Those are simple examples, but we have to think of learning as a continuum, not just self-contained experiences.
Don’t just design self-contained experiences, design pieces of a whole that can also function separately. Pieces that can be reused, shared in different social networks.
Don’t just design learning media, design potentially social media.
Apple has changed the way consumers expect to get access to applications, especially mobile applications, with the creation of its iOS App Store and then the Mac App Store. There are several advantages for the use of app stores that might outweigh its most apparent disadvantage: the possibility of creating walled gardens which allow customers to only purchase and update their applications via the app store. This also maximizes the possibility of censorship, as has been the case for various developers that tried to sell applications that were questionably suspended or rejected by Apple. However, if implemented well, and provided the right access rights to developers and consumers, the concept of an app store has several advantages, of which I’ll highlight a few:
Notice that I purposely repeat the word “centralized” as it’s key to the concept of app stores, and denotes its main advantage over a discentralized distribution of applications.
SalesForce AppExchange
SalesForce, for instance, has its own application marketplace called AppExchange where users can access cloud business applications centrally. One interesting thing about SalesForce’s app store is that it allows third party developers to publish applications there and make them available to existing SalesForce customers. Also, it allows customers to post a custom app development request and Force.com developers can access the job posting on the AppExchange Developer Marketplace, the customer can choose the developer that best fits the requirements for the job based on rating and skills. Of course, the customer will also rate the developer after the work is done as well, so the community can make sure they only choose the best developers, and so developers drive for best results every time.
Cisco’s AppHQ Cius
Cisco created its own app store called AppHQ for their business-oriented Android App, the Cius. AppHQ lets companies create their own customized app stores with differentiated licensing and distribution control of content and apps as well as a custom storefront. From their AppHQ information page, once can find the following highlights:
- Easy Application Discovery and Search
- Enterprise Wide Application Purchase and Distribution
- Application Bulk Purchases
- License Management
- User and Group Management
- Application Evaluation, and Life Cycle Management
- Private Branding and Customization
- Internal Application Hosting Mechanism
- Application Usage and Reporting
- Rating and Reviews Management
Some examples of custom app stores and related services
If you’re interested in starting your own company’s custom app store, here are some services that could be worth investigating further:
As a side note, Apple offers app volume purchasing for companies that want to purchase and distribute applications for their employees via they B2B service.
If you’re interested in finding out more about custom app stores, their advantages and disadvantages, and use cases, start by reading “Private app stores: does your company need its own?” by Jon Brodkin (2011) on Ars Technica.
Does your company or institution need its own app store for your (and third party developer) apps and contents such as applications and ebooks?
Apple changes the publishing business once again. Sure there are other formats and authoring tools which are supported in iBooks, but this is different: an application that fits tightly in the Apple ecosystem, and as is normally the case with Apple products, simple.
Apple unveiled this new tool in their Apple Education event in NYC. Here are some highlights and features:
Integration with other Apple products and workflow
Template gallery
Drag-and-drop editing
Embedding and customization of elements such as galleries
Support for JavaScript
Support for HTML5
iPad simulator/preview
Accessibility support
Support for widgets
Apple says on their website:
Available free on the Mac App store, iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.
Did I say it is free of charge on the Mac App Store?
This application should facilitate the process for creating custom interactive eBooks that play well, natively, in Apple (and perhaps other) devices. Now all one needs is creativity…
One of the sources: The Official Apple Website, and TheNextWeb.
It”s not not uncommon for geeks to do some wishful thinking a line any mortal hoping their tech dreams will come true in the new year to come.
Id like to make some predictions for 2012 as well. Just a few humble predictions and observations.
1. Education everywhere
And by everywhere I don’t mean the whole any device anytime anywhere hype. I mean, everyone in every part of the world (except cultures that don’t accept technology and our views of Education of course) will have access to quality Education and educational technology. We will see more initiatives such as EducateNCare, which encourages professionals to provide some of their knowledge and time to tutors children in developing countries online. With initiatives such as this, others will see the need to equip this on the other end of the connection, the local students and teachers. We’ll be even more aware of the need to capacitate professionals in their own native countries.
2. Open educational content will actually be OPEN
Many institutions offer open courseware and content for anyone to access. What we will see is more open source content out there, not just open access content, but content that can be reshaped, and shared forward with other educators and learners via a license such as Creative Commons.
3. Learning on smart TVs
With all these smart devices proliferating, Education should take more advantage of them and be, well, smart Education. eLearning is made mostly with the old desktop metaphor in mind. But thing about all kids of fantastic learning experiences we could have of we designed for different smart devices. I’m not talking just about mobile devices with gyroscopes, location awareness, multitouch interfaces, I mean even (smart) connected TVs. If even the good ol’ tube is changing; why cant we innovate in how we do education in it as well?
4. Micro-location learning and information
We’re all familiar with the concept of GPS devices or mobile map applications taking you from point A to point B with guided turn-by-turn directions and pop-up traffic/trip conditions and events warnings. However, these technologies are normally only for outdoors navigation. You’re lost inside a building. This is a problem that Google has taken on now with their new solution Google Maps indoors feature, which offers guidance inside buildings such as airports. However, in 2012 we’ll see the rise of microlocation-based learning, which can provide guidance within buildings and institutions indoors. Imagine the educational uses of such mobile applications: exploring the workplace, accurately connecting with others inside of buildings to share information and perhaps serendipitously meet up for lunch (yes, learning is about forging relationships with others with whom we share or not interests), on-demand information about machines as a learner walks by it. Better yet, as the learner walks by that very same machine, s/he will be prompted by an alert on their location-aware device that there is something wrong with it and that it needs repair, not only that, but the alert will show what exactly is wrong with it and give the user an option to follow an interactive strep-by-step repair “tour”. On the job support, information, and true task-based learning about specific concepts, tools, processes as the learner actually does it.
5. Education institutions will allow more social media
With the advent of better content aggregation and curation techniques, Education institutions will appreciate more of the educational applications of social media and feel safer in letting students access social media resources to learn. Youtube has recently released it’s Youtube EDU which allows educators and schools to allow access (mostly) to content they approve on their channel by using technologies such as filters. Students will be given access to a variety of social media services in school as these services start to offer options for content access based on some of the issues faced by schools, issues such as inappropriate or distracting content.
6. [Bonus Prediction] Motion-based learning gets popular and affordable
As devices like the XBox Kinect and Playstation Move start to become more popular, we should see more affordable motion-based learning experiences in the field. Moreover, we should see precise motion training and job aids coupled with Augmented Reality HUDs as employees try to solve real-life problems in the workplace.
A phenomenon that can be classified as anything from multitasking to plain distraction is getting more popular as smartphones get smarter and tablet computers more ubiquitous: the use of the “second screen“.
It is common now to have at least one person (if not everyone) in the living room watching as movie on TV while, at the same time, checking what their friends are saying on Facebook, Twitter, or simply researching the lead role’s biography on Wikipedia. Whatever they are doing on the little screen, it seems that nowadays the big screen is not enough. People crave more. People want to connect with others and with information outside what they see on the big screen. Often, at least in my family, it is an interaction around the content of the TV, tagging it in Into_Now, and telling their friends on Facebook that they’re watching it and following up on comments about the same post.
ReadWriteWeb reports that 86% of people using their mobile device do so while watching TV. Of those, 33% use mobile apps, 37% browse non-related content, 40% are social networking, while 60% are texting with friends and family. It’s the rise of social TV which so far comprises mostly of static content (TV) coupled with dynamic, social activities (social networking, Web browsing, mobile apps, check-ins into shows and movies).
Disney offers an iPad / PC application called Second Screen which live syncs with the Blu-Ray movie on the TV and provides different content that supplements the movie: games, flipbooks, photo galleries with sketches, trivia about the movie, etc.
How would this second screen experience affect Education? What if, instead of banning smartphones and tablets, teachers in K12 encouraged synchronous exploration of concepts “synced” with what the teacher is discussing?What if in corporate Education, we saw complimentary interactions and information that gave students a better understanding of what the instructor is explaining or even interact with other students in a backchannel discussion around the topics in class?
Many already use in conferences, for instance, Twitter streams as a means to have a backchannel discussions in different sessions. Can we to go beyond that, explore other forms of “second screen experiences” at events, in the classroom, outside the classroom?
How can we combat some of the potential negative aspects of the second screen in the classroom, like distraction, lack of concentration? Can we produce second screen experiences that are channeled. guided and enhances attention rather than distract the learners? How can we employ this concept in online learning environments (being them synchronous live virtual classrooms or self-paces asynchronous experiences)?
Many questions, exciting exploration.
Food for thought: here’s a blogger’s take on how second screen experiences could be used not only in entertainment but also in politics, for instance.
Perhaps second screen experiences in Education will be a trend in 2012, with more an more mobile devices in consumers’ hands.
