Adobe eLearning Suite - Captivate 4

First off, I would like to thank Reagan at A&R Edelman for providing me a review copy of the Adobe eLearning Suite. I had posted about the release of this powerful eLearning toolkit some months ago and have just got around to looking at some of the new features specifically in Captivate 4, which is one of the core rapid eLearning tools found within the suite. I have used Captivate 3 to create a number of training and simulation videos for the work that I do and wanted to dig my heals in and see what was new in Captivate 4. From the onset there are some small but significant changes to the interface when capturing your screenshots which gives the developer more freedom and control when you start a project. I found the new interface to be intuitive and really enjoyed the control it gave me when shooting my video. For the past couple of weeks I have been reviewing MindView 3, and wanted to see how I could create a training video for someone who was new to using the Gantt View. In the training video the user will be prompted on the screen to change the duration of a task, create resources and then assign the resources. Click on this link to view the training video.

One of the new features which was integrated into Captivate 4 is Text to Speech (TTS). As a consultant in the field of assistive technology I have been using TTS for some time now and was excited to learn that Adobe Captivate 4 would include this feature. Adobe now supplies the Kate and Paul voices from NeoSpeech, two high quality voices which I have used in the past with students. I wondered how I could use the TTS in the training module and was pleasantly surprised just how good the voices sounded in my video. Inserting text to speech was extremely easy to do- you simply type the text you want Captivate 4 to say in the Slide Note area, and click, on the Covert to Speech button. Once the text has been converted you can then instantly listen to the instructions from within Captivate 4 by clicking on the Play button. As I went through my slides I found that I could copy the text that Adobe Captivate 4 created when I set up the simulation and paste it into the Slide Note area to quickly transform the text to TTS. The speech sounds very clear and is a very fast way to at times, circumvent having to use voice narration. I will let you be the judge of that and I hope you will add comments with regard to how you found the TTS in the video.

One of the really nice feautres that you will not see is the way that Adobe Captivate 4 handles the production of the files. In the past if your video included real time video captures, Adobe Captivate 3 would create multiple videos which made it more of a challenge to upload and manage. With the release of Adobe Captivate 4, things have changed and now regardless of number of real time video captures there is only one final production SWF file. This is a great feature which I know you will enjoy. Likewise, with the release of Adobe Captivate 4 you can now output your training or simulation videos as a PDF file which will run perfectly with Acrobat Reader 9. This is truly a very powerful feature- being able to distribute your digital eLearning assets as a PDF file. In future posts, I will take a look at how you can incorporate Variables and Widgets into your Captivate 4 training videos and simulations. With the release of Captivate 4 as part of the Adobe elearning Suite once again Adobe has produced a quality software applicaiton for rapid elearning.

The Many Faces of Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional

I have written extensively about the new features in Adobe Acrobat 9 over the past several months and continue to be very excited with all of the possibilities. In fact recently I have done several presentations with a focus on using Adobe Acrobat 9 for digital asset distribution. As a faculty member, I have found the ability to create PDF Portfolio's indispensable for the work that I do. Now that I am able to embed videos, SWF files, Word documents and deliver it as one unified PDF file it has made my life that much easier for posting materials onto BlackBoard.

As much as Adobe Acrobat 9Professional has helped me, I have found Acrobat to be extremely important in the work that I do with students with motor impairments. For the past several years I have relied on Adobe Acrobat to allow me to create accessible worksheets and documents for students that have difficulty using pencil and paper. Whether, if I am converting a worksheet that was created from Microsoft Word or scanning a worksheet into Acroba,t having the rich feature set in Acrobat has allowed the students that I work with to complete the worksheets on the computer as their peers would. With Acrobat's Form Recognition feature I am able to quickly set up the worksheet without too much touching up. The Form Recognition feature automatically looks for underlines and will place field boxes so that the student can type into the worksheet. This feature alone has saved teachers an incredible amount of time as they set up the worksheet. Teachers can also manually add form fields as well as create dropdown boxes, radio buttons and checkbox buttons for students to respond with. Using the tabbing function the student can move from one field to another quite easily. And lets not forget that Acrobat 9 also supports text to speech which can be enabled within the document which can be turned on from the View menu. Adobe Acrobat 9 also makes it easy for students to zoom into an area without any degradation in the clarity of the fonts. Likewise, students can use the various annotation features built into Adobe Acrobat to markup the document. I have had students use the arrows to complete worksheets that have involved telling time as well as some who have used the stamp feature to respond on the worksheet. All told Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional can provide students with a way to access a worksheet or page on the computer that can be filled out. With the release of Adobe Acrobat 9 it is now possible to have the teacher set up the document and email it home so that the student can access it with the Adobe Acrobat Reader 9. It is important to note that if the teacher wants the student to have access to the annotation features, then when the PDF file is created you must select Extend Features in Adobe Reader.. from the Advanced menu.

While I'm sure the folks at Adobe did not intend to develop an assistive technology tool- Adobe Acrobat 9 has proven to be an incredible tool to provide students with a way to make worksheets accessible on the computer. To view a quick Jing screencast on using the Form Recognition feature in Adobe Acrobat click here.

Export as Mindjet Player Tip- Linking Documents

I for one am having a great deal of fun experimenting with the new Export as Mindjet Player feature that can be found in MindManager 8. I have begun to export all of my MindManager maps to this format so that I can share them with my students on their Blackboard accounts. I have all of my lectures mapped out with links to web sites which I use for every class. Back in the days of MindManager 7, I would export my MindManager maps to PDF and post them to Blackboard, but the links were no longer live which always presented a problem. Now with the new Export as Mindjet Player I can put the maps on Blackboard and ask my students to open it and they can quickly jump from web site to web site as we talk about different topics. This has been a tremendous time saver for me. If you have taught using the internet- it is cumbersome when you have to stop and write the URL on the board and invariably some of your students are going to misspell the link and have trouble getting to where you want them to be.

One of the limitation of the first release of Export as Mindjet Player is that you can not embed your attachments. After thinking about this for a little while, I realized that while you can't attach documents that are stored on your computer, however, what about your documents that are stored on Google Docs or Acrobat.com? Instead of attaching documents to my MindManager maps I could simply hyperlink them to my documents. Yes- this does limit the number of attachments but it gets the job done. It was certainly worth trying and in fact my solution does work. Here is how to do it. In Google Docs open up your document that you want to be able to share and click the Share tab and select Publish as Web page. This will automatically create a unique URL that you can share with other to access your Google Docs. Now just create a link in Mindjet MindManager with that unique URL and you are ready to go. Remember you can also upload your Microsoft Word documents and bring them into Google Docs and be able to accomplish the same thing.

I have been using Acrobat.com for a lot of the consulting work that I am doing and it is just as easy to link your documents (Word, Excel, PDF's, etc) in your Acrobat.com account to your MindManager 8 maps and then Export as Mindjet Player and retain the attachments. In fact you will find the process a lot easier. Once you go to the MyFiles directory- simply select the file you want to link and make sure that you have selected Open Access which will let you share your files with others. Now simply click on the Copy URL button. Once you are back in MindManager 8 select the topic you want to link it to and bring up the Add Hyperlink and paste the link in. Now when you Export as Mindjet Player you will be able to access your documents from anywhere when you are connected to the internet.

While I hope that at some point in time we will be able to attach documents that can be embedded into the Mindjet Player for now this is a workaround that should serve us well for maps that we would like to share with others. Let me know what you think of this strategy. You can preview the file that I created by clicking here.