Adobe recently released eLearning Suite 2 comprising of Captivate 5, Flash Professional CS5, Dreamweaver CS5, Photoshop CS5 Extended, Acrobat 9 Pro, Presenter 7 (available on Windows only), Soundbooth CS5, Bridge CS5, Device Central CS5 in it. One of the most significant improvements in this version is the availability of Captivate 5 for both Windows and Mac OS platforms previously it was only available for Windows users. (Thankfully, Adobe Apple fight is not affecting everything)
eLearning Network today released the below graphic providing some stats about the US eLearning market in 2009.
Last week, while justifying Apple’s refusal to allow Flash player on iPhone/iPad, Steve Jobs wrote– “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too)”. A few days before the launch of iPad Apple had released a list of ‘iPad ready’ websites having support for HTML5. Clearly Apple is backing HTML 5, CSS 3 and JavaScript for developing future web applications.
Yes, HTML5 is a major revision over its predecessor HTML4. Some pertinent questions need to be asked.
Earlier this morning, I was trawling through my feeds and came across this interesting post on Cathy Moore’s blog. She points to a really great example of a branching scenario, an activity called ‘Connect with Haji Kamal‘. The online scenario is the homework part of a lesson plan that includes in-class discussion about how to build rapport across cultures; part of a larger toolkit for military educators to strengthen soldiers’ cross-cultural and peacekeeping skills.
About a year back we realized using AS 3.0 in the custom eLearning development would be essential. A few weeks back I wrote about the reasons for using ActionScript 3.0 [AS 3.0] in Flash based eLearning development. While training our team on AS 3.0 we collated some good tutorials and blogs available freely on the web, and I thought it would be good to share that list. Some of these resources will also help AS 1.0/AS 2.0 developers to quickly migrate to AS 3.0. This list also contains links to tutorials for some popular open source AS 3.0 classes like papervision, box2d and tweener.
One of the key challenges associated with mLearning development is to manage development across varied types of devices and platforms. With new devices being launched every week and no clear cross device platform to target, procuring myriad devices for testing is very difficult or at the very least expensive. Adobe’s Device Central is an application bundled with Adobe’s Creative Suite [which includes tools like Flash Professional, Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc.] of products and attempts to provide just that – the ability to simulate a variety of devices.
The war between Adobe and Apple just got hotter. With the announcement of iPhone OS 4.0 Apple has revised the Developer Program License Agreement to ban the use of cross compiler tools like Unity3d, Appcelerator’s Titanium, Adobe’s Flash CS5 etc. for developing iPhone and iPad applications. As per the new agreement developers can use only C, C++, Objective-C, and JavaScript to develop iPad/iPhone apps. Some companies like PhoneGap, Appcelerator and Unity3d having cross compiler products [that can publish the same code for iPhone/iPad or other mobile devices] have clarified or assured that the apps developed using their tools would still be accepted by Apple but there is no official response from Adobe on this.
An eLearning player is a building block for more conventional [one with back and next for navigation buttons] eLearning courses. What’s an eLearning player? It’s a simple wrapper having global level functionalities like -
- Core logic for navigation features like next, back, menu etc.
- Communication logic to talk to the LMS (standards complaint)
- Global level functionalities like Notepad, add favorites, appendix, etc.
Earlier this month, Tom Kuhlmann talked about 10 things to do before your eLearning course goes live. His post makes great sense but what really caught my attention was the statement he began with.
“It’s amazing how fresh eyes can find things you might have overlooked during production. So, before launching your elearning course, it’s a good idea to have others review it. You want to discover any hidden issues before the big launch.”
When eLearning came into being through its early predecessors in the form of CBT and then WBT one of the primary reasons and its drivers was increasing acceptance of its potential to save costs due to the inherent advantages in centralizing (more with WBT) content, the reduction in logistics costs, persistent storage and to an extent uniformity in content delivery. It soon caught on as a medium which is now used as a part of learning strategy (in context of workplace learning) and not only helped companies save costs on a recurring basis but it evolved as a ‘learning’ delivery medium.
