ATLAS project – Part II

ATLAS: Part II
We were so excited to receive the second step in our ATLAS project! Ioanna, our Instructional Designer, delivered to us a Powerpoint with Narration, Development Suggestions, and Comments in the notes section, and some graphical ideas based on the initial template on screen. She also agreed to create several slides in Raptivity. We enjoy this part so much. Now we get to get in and get our hands on developing creative imagery and animations to illustrate the content. How can we engage our learner and make their learning journey a trip they want to be on?
So Darla gets to go first. She gives the graphics her treatment, making sure everything works within the original template. She looks for interesting ways to display text, such as this chalkboard, which is a recurring theme throughout the module.

Other factors Darla incorporates are making sure all elements ‘work’ within the color scheme. She chooses an appropriate font and develops a uniform look and feel to any objects that are not images, such as shapes that hold text, video, etc.
We like to pass our work back and forth a few times. Now it’s my turn. I like to go through just to enjoy the graphics Darla has created. Then I go back to see if there is enough (or too much) happening on screen, and that it is reinforcing the main ideas. After setting up the animations, I go on to create the Engage interactions. I need some graphics for those interactions, so I’m sending it back to Darla. While she’s doing her thing, I’ll record the Voiceover.
In the mean time, Ioanna has created three Raptivity slides. I’m particularly excited about the Crossword Puzzle ‘quiz’. Taking a quick quiz is helpful in moving concepts from short term memory into long term memory, but why take a quiz when you can do something more fun!
Well, after several days of synching, publishing, troubleshooting, more finessing of graphics and animations, with e-mails coming and going at all hours over the weekend, the module has come together. Overall, the process was quite smooth. We’re definitely believers in the philosophy ‘Go slow at first to go fast later’. It really works!

Click on the image below to view Module 1.

eVision-Design is selected to build training for Child Fund’s ATLAS project

ATLAS project Blog

The most difficult thing about starting your own business, well to me anyway, is marketing. Do a web search and you’ll come up with so many hits you won’t know where to start. And how do you tell what works and what doesn’t? Everyone thinks their method is the best – at least that’s what they want you to believe so you’ll buy their product. It’s all quite intimidating.
When we started eVision-Design a year ago, it turns out that one of the best things that we did for marketing our service was to enter the Articulate Guru awards. We didn’t win, but we did receive an honorable mention and our work is featured on their Community page. We’ve received many inquiries as a result, several of which have turned into clients!
So when we read about the eLearning Guild and LINGOs sponsoring a similar competition, 2010 Global Giveback, with the winners being featured at the eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions Conference in Orlando. I immediately checked it out. LINGOs promotes sustainable global development by increasing the skills of workers that deliver programs around the world. Because of limited resources, the key to reaching those workers is online learning. There were some really intriguing opportunities, and being a teacher, I gravitated towards Child Fund’s ATLAS project . ATLAS stands for Active Teaching and Learning in Schools. I contacted ChildFund, and after an interview, eVision-Design and Ioanna Fergadiotou were selected to be the team that will help Child Fund develop this project. Ioanna is an Instructional Designer in Athens, Greece. We are thrilled to be working with a colleague in the eLearning community. Working digitally as we do, we sometimes feel a bit isolated. The community forums such as Articulate, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter do provide some contact, but actually working with Ioanna, and seeing a different process has expanded our horizons in a very positive way.
The Active Teaching & Learning Approaches in Schools (or ATLAS) Project is a partnership between Christian Children Fund-Zambia, Child Fund New Zealand and the International Reading Association.
ATLAS seeks to improve the quality of teaching and learning through:
• In-service teachers training in using child-centered, participatory, active methods of teaching
• Teachers exchange program with New Zealand teachers
• Professional development activities: development of a coaching program and creation of Teachers Quality Circles (TQC) to allow teacher to share and reflect on their practice and support each other’s progress in applying new methodologies.
We have been tasked with designing an eLearning course that will supplement the existing teacher training.
We’ve had several conference calls between the eLearning team and the various members of the ATLAS project. That in itself has been quite an undertaking as we are all scattered across the globe. Trying to coordinate those calls required some members meeting very early and very late in the day. Darla Wigginton (of eVision-Design) has developed a look and feel that is engaging and fun. We feel that intriguing graphics provide an environment that draws the learner in. Ioanna is now developing the storyboard which will provide the content and flow for the course. Soon that storyboard will come back to eVision and we will begin building out the graphics and interactions.
Well, that’s where we are right now. I’ll be continuing this thread as we progress on this journey. We are so honored to have been chosen to be a part of this very important project – bringing quality education to all the world’s children.

Make Your Own Avatars

Animating Clip Art for Custom Characters

http://evision-design.com/ClipArtDemo/ClipArtDemo.html

I know a lot of people have been resistant to using clip-art in their trainings, mostly because the clip art out there was poor resolution and didn’t have enough graphical value. But current clip art is worth a look. There are some fantastic vector images that can be ungrouped to offer more flexibility. And it’s free! In this economy, that’s hard to pass up.

All the World’s A Stage….Including eLearning
We love using stunning, custom photography as much as any other company but that gets expensive. By using Clip Art characters we save on our budget and create custom characters that create a virtual world that everyone can identify with.

Clip-art is now made up of many, many individual pieces that can be ungrouped, rearranged or replaced with other pieces, depending on our needs.

The concept is still the same – change the hair, try on a different outfit, add some glasses or a hat – and you’ve got a new character. We do the same thing in theatre when we’re running short of actors. Time to improvise and get creative!

Tom Kuhlmann, from Articulate’s team, did a recent blog on this topic
that gives you a great “how to”:
http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/
what-you-need-to-know-when-working-with-grouped-clip-art/

So, speaking of the stage, in PowerPoint the slide is our stage. That is what our audience, the learner, sees. But the ‘wings’ are a great place to get your characters ready to come onto the stage, giving the illusion that there is more to the ‘world’ than what the learner is actually seeing.

Check out this demo to see a step-by-step demonstration of how to do this:

http://www.evision-design.com/ClipArtDemo/ClipArtDemo.html

By using a “freeform” motion path, you will bring your character ‘on-stage’, with a realistic walk. If you use a simple straight motion path the character looks a bit robotic. We can’t see his feet, but we get the idea that he’s walking, bringing us a little further into this virtual world.

Guru Awards Mention for eVision

http://www.articulate.com/community/showcase/?page_id=138

We were thrilled to be mentioned in the recent 2009 Guru Awards for our “unique vector graphics.”

Edu-Punk: In search of a new LMS

http://davidtjones.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/down-with-the-cookie-cutter-lms-the-edupunk-ideology-and-why-integrated-systems-might-go-away/

We ran across this great video discussion of the Edupunk idea, really just a punk-rock phrase for “shaking up the system”.  We’re all for it.  We are searching (for various clients) for great LMS products, web-based solutions, Moodles and other delivery formats that can deliver the content that we build in more robust ways.  Technical problems, slow-streaming video, server speed and other aspects of delivering trainings, demos & eLearning materials make it frustrating for all.

Can’t someone just build an awesome holodeck already, Star Trek-style?

We’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on great solutions.

“See and Say”: Why It Rocks

The term “See and say” was a fundamental and basic idea of  TV advertising.

The idea is that if you are trying to convey something to someone and you want them to actually get it then you’d better be “saying” what they are “seeing”.

If you want to keep your learner really engaged, have them really get the material and retain it, it’s a great idea to work with an instructional designer.  A talented instructional designer will be able to lay out material that was previously in PowerPoint bullet lists or print material in such a way that the learner can take it all in.  This involves breaking down thought processes in a linear way and relaying the information cleanly & clearly.

Be sure when you go through your trainings, that the text the narrator reads is what’s on your slide.  You’d be surprised how often a training involves reading one thing while looking at another.

Creating Interactivity in PowerPoint

Recently, we got turned on to some excellent advice about how to create interactivity within PowerPoint.  Wow!  We don’t have to hire an expensive Flash designer??

Check out Tom’s post here:

http://redirx.com/?0vkp

“Death By PowerPoint”

eVisionDesign is a strong proponent that PowerPoint slides are just blank canvases waiting to be drawn upon.

When using PowerPoint for eLearning development, we think of each slide as a storyboard transition, much the way a film director would shoot each scene.  Think of each idea that you want to convey and realize that each sentence spoken by your voiceover narrator needs some visual to cement the material for the learner.

Check out Presentation Zen to get a feel for these ideas.  Also check out Edward Tufte.  And while you’re at it, did you know David Byrne fell in love with PowerPoint and took it on the road?  Seriously.

Adobe Presenter & Articulate

For custom trainings, Adobe Presenter offers a few real high points:

• Ease of use – The interface is very intuitive 
• Using video in-slide is very easy in Presenter and has few bugs that I’ve found when you publish.  You can now insert .swf or .flv files with few or no problems.
• Before Articulate came out with their ’09 solution, the rendering was better in Presenter.  But now Articulate has stepped it up.
• The high cost of getting the Presenter stand-alone used to be daunting but the price went down this year making it an economical choice.  I just hope that with eLearning growing at exponential rates, we’ll soon see Adobe giving the Presenter program more love.  There are a few bugs that can be pretty annoying (though there are helpful tips at the new Connect Forum).  

Articulate ’09 has vastly improved its offering.  In the ’09 edition:

• Articulate does some really innovative stuff in both Engage and Quizmaker.  You can be somewhat limited in trying to customize the individual pieces (background images, button colors, etc.) but the generics they’ve created are so good you might not want to.
• Rendering is excellent and Articulate publishes Smart Art (from the PPT 07 version) with none of the problems we’ve experienced when using the Adobe product.  A huge bonus.
• The interface is also really easy to use and you can get a lot more support on blogs and with the Articulate staff than I’ve experienced with Adobe.  

Since both of these products are rendering PowerPoint into Flash, they can both have some bugs.  Hopefully as eLearning develops, they’ll get worked out.  It can be frustrating but the Articulate team is responsive and helpful:

http://www.articulate.com/forums/