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.

This seems like a cool movie to watch. The social campaign around is interesting, a quiz to test your surviving skills and giveaways…

“Would You #SurviveTheNight? The Purge is coming!

The Purge follows one family over the course of a single night… From sundown to sunrise, for 12 hours, all crime is legal. Four people will be tested to see how far they will go to protect themselves when the danger of the outside world invades their home.

The question is… Would You #SurviveTheNight? Take the quiz to find out! Warn your friends The Purge is coming!”

How did you score in the game above? Post your answer and you’ll enter to win a shirt from the movie… not bad

I can’t begin to stress how learning languages opened my life to new opportunities, coming from the countryside of Brazil
There are several ways to learn a language for free online: Skype meetups, virtual worlds, video chats, chatrooms (I used to go to my sister’s house to get on ICQ chatrooms to practice English on her computer), applications, open curricula, and so forth… many of these discussed previously on this blog.

Duolingo is especially interesting because:

• It helps translate the Web (in partnership with Google)
• It contains gamification elements (rewards and levels are linked to how well you perform in the application)
• The curricula are instructionally sound and well-designed
• It is offered on the Web, for iOS, and for Android platforms
• It is FREE for life (especially in light of major online language learning services like LiveMocha now charging for their services)

Duolingo currently (June 2013) offers courses in:

• Spanish
• English
• French
• German
• Portuguese
• Italian

Look for Duolingo on your app store and download it for free.

Pick a language and start learning!

Duolingo on the go

Now on iPhone and Android.

Email a link to my device

Email a link to my device

There are sooooooooo many authoring tools out there…

So many tool choices, platform integrations, file formats to output, mobile compatibility, accessibility compliance… Flash, HTML5?!!! Ahhhhhhh….

The “paradox of choice” kicks in big time when trying to do the right thing.

Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.
— Ch.5, The Paradox of Choice, 2004

My friend Joe Ganci has created a great matrix comparing the main affordances of The Seven Top Authoring Tools in the market. Of course, from the time of publication to now there are probably 1269 new authoring tools out there (hyperbole granted).

The tools he compares are:

Adobe Captivate

Reference:

Paradox of Choice, Harper Perennial 2004

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:

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!

Designing a cool learning experience in your favorite authoring tool and the built-in images such as PowertPoint (Office) clipart is driving you crazy?

There’s an app for that, I mean, a website (more than that, actually). Here are some that I use or have used in the past:

Stock Exchange: you can download photos for free here, they have quite a vast selection. All you have to do is register and agree to the terms to download images at no cost.

IconFinder: If you’re looking for icons for your courseware and materials, this place has all you need (unless you want to create your own from scratch – good luck).

Microsoft Images (Clipart, Illustration and Photos): This website offers a LOT of great images that appear in the Office Clipart Search funtion, the search here is more comprehensive and yields fantastic results. A tip, you can download clipart images in .wmf format, bring them into a Microsoft Office application like Word or PowerPoint and ungroup that image to edit portions of it to create a new image from it! 

Note: Everyone, I know there are numerous other services like these, but I find myself coming back to these specific ones more often. Please feel free to add your own suggestions with descriptions in the comments  below and I can incorporate more services onto this post later.

I’ve written about the community manager’s mindset before.
I recently came across this great summary of the main skills a community manager needs to have on Mashable:

A Community Manager’s Mindset

Those willing to participate in any company’s social media presence executing and improving on its social media strategy need to have, for the most part, a community manager’s mindset.

What are some of the characteristics of a community manager?

Expert Ryan Lytle highlights the following, summarized here:

1. Strong Communication Skills: social butterfly online and offline, strong people skills.

2. Good Judgement: sometimes answering a question in social media is detrimental to a brand’s image.

3. Empathy: see our brand from the customer/fan’s perspective! Don’t sell them anything!

4. Dedication: we all need to be dedicated to our careers, it goes without saying. However, a community manager needs to be always ready to reply, post, help the community anytime, anywhere.

5. Organizational Skills: with a presence that spreads across different online communities and offline events, it is important to keep track of communications, faces, trends.

6. Adaptability: with so many roles, communities, technologies to engage in, a community manager needs to stay abreast of the latest trends in social media AND quickly change roles from a designer to a communications/marketing person, to tech support – constantly! Especially when most of our day jobs ARE NOT that of a community manager.

7. Level-Headed Attitude: anything we say as community managers can be perceived as our company’s brand’s own opinions and used against the company and individuals. Watch what you communicate, when you communicate, how you respond to offensive or provocative comments as well as praises.

8. Analytics Skills: there are tons of tools out there to measure social media (ROI – o the hated acronym) or reach of campaigns, interactions, etc. Use them wisely. Know how and what to read in the numbers.

9. Ability to Enable the Community: the ability to start and participate in conversations that solve the community’s problems, point them in the right direction, connect them to expert advice is KEY.

10. Passion for the Brand: use your products and services, have  positive attitude about its mistakes, accomplishments, etc. Be a brand ambassador!

A lot of these skills (if not all) seem to apply really well to educators in various sectors of the industry.

Even if you’re not a community manager in your job title, do you find yourself performing skills related to this role in your professional network?

The question in the title of this post should guide most (if not all) decisions we make when authoring content for our audiences, this doesn’t just apply to Education, but is extremely important as the technological frameworks that permeate it are constantly evolving. In the fields of Marketing and Entertainment, it’s constantly stressed as an emerging trend that a user can start accessing content (e.g. a movie) on a SmartTV and continue where s/he left off on a mobile device, without breaking the flow of the experience.

The same should be true for learning experiences we design. We, designers and developers of learning experiences, should always ask ourselves “why shouldn’t my learner be able to start experiencing this content on one device and continue where s/he left off on another device?”

A couple of years ago, when HTML5 and other technologies offered alternative ways to provide rich content to audiences that were used to the omnipresent Flash technology were a little cumbersome to learn and glitchy to play with. Now, there is n lack of “mobile-friendly-content-spitting” authoring tools that are as friendly as those that previously authored Flash-only content.

Captivate 6+, Articulate Storyline, Articulate Studio ’13 (just to mention the most well-known ones) all offer ways to convert old content and create new content in mobile-friendly frameworks. No excuses. We should at least “investigate” the possibility of offering seamless and/or second screen experiences to our learners, yesterday.

It’s not a choice.

I’m not discussing the creation of native apps and content that take advantage of mobile-platforms unique features like location-awareness, gyroscopes, etc. Nothing ground-breaking and uncomfortable. That’s topic for another discussion. I’m simply emphasizing the need to offer what you currently have restricted to a “desktop experience” in ways that are accessible from any* platform.

Free your learner. Now…

Do you face any challenges when trying to seamlessly offer content anytime, anywhere?

* “any” is a dangerous word, perhaps better replaced by “most widespread”

A Few Infographics on “Mobile Learning”