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.
Adobe Flash Professional is undoubtedly the most popular tool for custom eLearning development. With the help of its inbuilt programming language ActionScript developers can code interactions, communicate with servers, program animations etc. The latest version of ActionScript- ActionScript 3.0 [AS 3.0] was released in 2006. It has many new APIs and better performance which were not available in the previous versions of ActionScript [AS 1.0 & AS 2.0] and is well backed by a great Flash developer community that has contributed in developing many open source frameworks/classes/APIs.
Recently we’ve made the UpsideLMS compatible to mobile devices and also launched a new version – UpsideLMS Version 4.0. While ensuring compliance, we encountered some interesting issues in the implementation of SCORM and found very little help online about implementing SCORM for mobile devices. So we thought sharing that experience might help.
Mobile devices have limitations:
- Screen size
- Availability of required technology/software like J2ME, a compatible browser
- Availability of consistent internet connection
That the LMS needs to incorporate social learning elements is no longer a point of debate but both a question of survival for the LMS itself and also a test of how the LMS handles the balance of both the elements of training and the ‘networkedness’ of the social learning. We’ve been hearing of experts commenting that LMSs today don’t come with appropriate social media technology built in.
We’d like to differ; the UpsideLMS comes with a unique social learning framework that lets users actually access such social tools from within the LMS in a robust and secure environment for connecting to and sharing with fellow users. Letting users move beyond routine training, into actual personal development.
As social technology growth continues to march on and dynamic learning grows to be the need of the day, it is little surprise that social media has now become an integral part of learning as well.
Various elearning development companies are integrating the popular social media services like Twitter, YouTube etc. right into their courses and LMS. A couple of months back, the Adobe Captivate blog demonstrated a twitter widget that can be integrated within a Captivate Flash output to send a tweet (as questions/suggestions/comments etc.) about the content of a learning module and get answers/opinions from others following the course tag. This is just one example. The options, however, are multifold.
As we knock on 2010’s doors, it’s a good time to look at what we did on this blog in 2009. We started this blog in March 2009 and in its 10 month existence has more than a 100 posts. The blog now has about 500 subscribers and has received more than 53000 page views and more than 200 comments.
A lot of companies today face a resource situation that’s not unique in this age. A few key individuals holding important technical and project management knowledge is quite common.
