Flash For Learning

Links for 2009-03-27 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 PDT

35 Free Fonts to Enhance Your Designs | Fonts | instantShift

Links for 2008-12-29 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

The End of Year Rant
obedit - Flash-Based Rich-Text Editor :: oblius.com ::
obedit is a Flash-based rich text editor. It will allow a user to edit text much like you would in an office-like application, with simple editing features like bold, italic, justification, block indents, text color, font and size selection, links, bullets, background color, and spell checking.

Links for 2008-11-07 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 PST

What Makes Great Apps
If you have a team that knows the medium it’s going to play in, here are some attributes that Apple seems to share about what constitutes a great application

Links for 2008-11-02 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:00:00 PST

November Reign

Links for 2008-10-18 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Why LETSI Matters
SCORM 2.x will layout how open standards will work together — but it will spurn off an open source community to develop interoperable services for learning.

Links for 2008-10-16 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Twitter Friends

Links for 2008-10-13 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Life in Perpetual Beta

aaronSILVERS.com = Flash for Learning

Aaron — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:45:09 +0000

It’s been a busy month. My workload at… well, at “work” has increased both in scale and diversity of projects. My involvement with LETSI has increased quite a bit in the last month as I read and continue to comment on the over 90 white papers submitted (so far). I’m picking up contracting work from Facebook, of all places. And there’s real life, which has lots of interesting and pleasant distractions from activity online.

Which is ultimately why I’m merging my two main blogs, Flash for Learning and Gen1us into aaronSILVERS.com. There’s two main reasons: convenience and evolution.

I’ve been actively maintaining three blogs and a music podcast, as well as a presence on my company’s wiki. I just don’t have the time to keep up with all these different online activities. Family blog and everything else is one thing. Personal blog, Family blog, Professional blog… I love the sound of my own writing voice, but not that much

Plus, after three years of active blogging, I’m at a place where I’ve learned a bit about my writing style. Between Gen1us and Flash for Learning, I have over 600 posts. Not that many are about Flash, which makes it hard to be honest about a site called “Flash for Learning.”

Twitter has thankfully given an outlet to be weird. Yammer has given me a new opportunity to share and read project activities in a way that’s easy for me to write and consume. My need for a “personal” blog has been satiated by Twitter. I’m wanting to write geekier about a wide variety of subjects — but not so different and off-kilter that my rambling on technology has no basis in knowledge sharing.

There will still be irreverent posts on the new aaronSILVERS.com, but I’ve scraped all my content (the 600+ posts over the last three years), re-categorized my writing into the five major themes that dominated my blogging: Flash, E-Learning, SCORM, Nerd and Personal.

I’ve even called out the categories so you can subscribe to each by email or your RSS reader, in case going to the site isn’t your thing. This way, if you don’t want to read about my quests for world domination, or you just don’t want to read about my adventures in distracting my three year-old with my iPhone — you don’t have to (they’re filed under “Personal” and “Nerd” respectively).

This site and the other one will stay up at least throughout the year, and then we’ll see. You’ll still for the time being be able to find everything you’re looking for here. Anything new I write is going to be on aaronSILVERS.com — so if you’re not subscribing now… consider doing so before I start blogging about SCORM 2.0 work… and my plans to rule the world.

The Timeliness of SCORM 2.0 Discussions

Aaron — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:20:31 +0000

Last Friday, I submitted two white papers forged with considerable ideas and suggestions from professional colleagues (Tom King), fellow professionals (Ethan Estes and Steve Flowers), and new colleagues from around the world (Martin Ebner).

Like Philip Hutchinson, I began the efforts with a serious attempt to produce a formal and very “serious” (read: academic) body of work. I additionally tried to take an informal, yet collaborative approach to writing the papers through the use of Google Docs. Like Philip, even though I turned in my papers on time, I don’t know that I got it all written exactly as I want to express my thoughts. Without ample review of the papers prior to their submission, I must accept that they’re conversation starters (hopefully), and that the discussion that should follow will take the initial ideas proposed and give them life and definition.

My papers are here:

I would ask (beg) regular readers and other interested parties to read and discuss the papers on the LETSI pages. But if these papers don’t strike your fancy — there are plenty more to poke your sticks at. At the time of my writing this blog post, there are 70 papers submitted for review, and more are coming in as I write. To say the call for white papers is a success is underscored by the overwhelming (and seemingly unmanageable) response.

Ironically (or just coincidentally depending on whether you’re a fan of Alannis Morrisette or not), the transparent and completely open formation of what is to become SCORM 2.0 is happening at the same time as we learn about the dissolution of the ECMAScript group and the CSS-WG in the W3C. Plenty of good discussions of what went down here, here, here and here.

It’s pretty crazy to me that all the reasons being cited as to why these two groups fell apart all boil down to similar root causes:

Trying to take on too much by doing innovation by committee instead of codifying exemplars of best practice.
Working behind closed doors.
Losing the “vision.”

LETSI is starting off well. Everything is out in the open. You don’t need a login to read any of the goings on — it’s all there for the public interwebs to see. You can read the white papers. You can sign up on the site and add commentary and contribute your thoughts into the fold. You can blog about your opinions and just by mentioning SCORM or LETSI, someone is bound to pick it up with Google Alerts, and even in passing, your constructive feedback is going to get rolled in. Many of us are on Twitter (I’m @mrch0mp3rs). And look at the response so far: 75 white papers submitted for review. I don’t know how many submissions were expected — I figured ~30 would be a success, so the number we have (and more are coming in daily) is just a resounding signal of the interest and the resounding success of transparency.

At least, that’s how I see it.

Managing that level of response is proving to be challenging. The rewards, however, are so worthwhile. Each member of the Program Committee has a “Bird Dog” — which means we have a paper we’re going to actively promote and raise awareness to. I have ten (they’re small ones — like a page each). That also means ten times the discussion (suckas!!!)

We’re going to swipe at these white papers by tagging each of our bird dogs to help us wrangle them into the requirements that will ultimately come together at the SCORM 2.0 Workshop in October (see the LETSI site for details — I’ll be there). The first stab we’re going to take is tagging a paper as proposing a SCORM “evolution” or “revolution.” It may seem simplistic, but we have to get a handle on the wide scope of ideas by starting to categorize them.

Evolution – SCORM looks like relatively the same animal as before. It has the about the same scope and it solves very similar problems, but perhaps in new and innovative ways.
Revolution – SCORM is a new beast entirely. It tackles new problems, increases the scope or completely changes the conceptual model.

The papers I’m particularly fielding are all by Yannck Warnier. I would encourage you to read them and discuss them (topics and links below):

Avoid SCORM Profiles

Cross Domain

Cross Platform Test Suite

Database Structure

Documentation License

Interactions Objectives Example

Technorati Tags: scorm 2.0, letsi, standards, css 3, ecmascript 4, w3c, white papers, transparency

Spanning Sync

Aaron — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:42:01 +0000

Both SCORM 2.0 white papers have been submitted, so I’m doing my weekly review (GTD style) and wanted to clear the plate with something lighter than pedagogy or DITA or IE 7 rollouts.

Don’t get me started…

Anyway with a month of using the iPhone, I’ve had one lasting annoyance and that’s synching my calendar information with Google Calendar.

I plunked down $20 and picked up Spanning Sync to sync calendars between Google and my Mac. If you’re a Mac user and you normally use Google Calendar to expose your calendaring information from “the cloud,” it’s worth the $20 for the lack of drama.

It just works. The Google CalDAV deal is great from iCal by itself, but you can’t write from the iPhone using only Google’s CalDAV exposure.

I’ve been using the iPhone like a fiend for organizing my consulting, work and home stuff, so after the 15-day free trial period, I bought it. Spanning Sync usually costs $25/year, but you can save $5 by using my discount code if you decide to buy it:

DYHBSH

In full disclosure, if you use my code I’ll get a $5 referral fee from Spanning Sync. Once you’re a subscriber you’ll get a code of your own so you can make money every time one of your other friends subscribes to Spanning Sync.

Every time I synch the iPhone to the Mac, it syncs with iCal. iCal synchs flawlessly with Google. In version 2.0 (coming soon, I read), they’ll also be able to synch contacts — again it should be no fuss.

More on LETSI and SCORM 2.0 coming next week.

Technorati Tags: iphone, ical, google calendar, spanning sync

SCORM 2.0: White Paper Topics I’m interested in collaborating on

Aaron — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:28:06 +0000

Aside from rocking out, quoting movies and tv shows incessently, cooking, troubleshooting a wide array of technical issues… one of the things I do really well is start things I’m excited about. I’m getting better at finishing them.

There are at least two ideas I’ve had brewing that I’d like to write a white paper on, but I probably won’t have the gumption in me to finish both of them by myself by August 15. I’m posting them here in the hopes that you or someone you know might be interested in collaborating on a white paper topic through helping edit, research, add some other ideas and/or even to help write.

I think there are many people who feel a little nervous about the idea of writing a whole paper on their own. I’d feel a lot more comfortable myself if someone else thought I had a decent idea before I submitted it.

So if you’re interested in either of these ideas, let me know. I’m going to really try to draft up a brain dump on these topics by the beginning of next week, and we can take a stab at collaborating through Google Docs or the web 1.0 way of emailing Word Docs as an attachment.

My interests…

Exposing a content authoring feature as a service to support subject matter experts and user-generated content, resulting in XML with media attachments packaged that can be “skinned” according to LMS-administered settings for organizational presentation rules.
- DITA has a schema proposed for Learning and Training content.
- Having E-Learning content that validates to the same schema helps with interoperability.
- A standardized content authoring platform allows user-generated content to conform to organizational norms.
- Separating out the “content” from the “presentation layer” allows organizations to control the presentation of interoperable content.
- A market for LMS or service vendors opens up to compete on the strenth of the user-experience in authoring such content.
- Services are already proposed to package content for SCORM “from the cloud.”
Expose a service for tagging content (a la del.icio.us) and elevating the relevance of content (a la Digg/Pligg) to engage a community of learners to both assist in the metadata collection on content.
- Metadata is still important, even if the implementation has been crap to this point.
- Elevating the relevance of specific content over others in a repository helps with connecting to talent management systems, automated intelligent tutoring agents, etc.
- Martin Ebner helped spark this specific idea and has agreed to help, but there’s room for a couple more collaborators if there’s interest on this topic.

Shaping Future Learning, or Why You Should Be Writing a White Paper for SCORM 2.0

Aaron — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:22:06 +0000

Several weeks ago, a call for white papers was announced to provide the broadest possible input into shaping SCORM 2.0.

We have this framework that most E-Learning content and Learning Management Systems use as a basis for their data tracking, communication and delivery — it’s called SCORM. You may not know how SCORM works, but if you’re involved in any way with E-Learning, you must know that its very existence affects you; specifically in how it sets the parameters for the learning experience you can provide in Learning Management Systems and Learning Environments (like Moodle or Blackboard) that support the framework.

10 years ago, it was a sketch on a chalkboard (literally). Today it permeates every way in which organizations of all kinds approach distributed learning and its technologies.

And we’re going to do it again with SCORM 2.0. We’re willing to start from scratch and solve future learning challenges. And we’re willing to fix what’s broken.

Much has been discussed (for a very long time) about what’s wrong with SCORM. It is a subset of the greater discussion about what people feel is wrong with E-Learning. What the community is missing are the solutions… how do we fix it? How do we transform the field into something better/appropriate/right/good?

This is the opportunity I present to you. SCORM affects you as a purveyor of E-Learning, whether you create it, manage it, believe in it or loathe it. There is a real honest-to-goodness effort to bring in voices from outside the mainstream of standards development and produce an open (read: source) model for how learning takes place.

I am chairing a Program Area for LETSI, which means I’ll be helping to field, promote and review ideas presented about Interaction, Collaboration and Community.

I ask you with the whole of my heart: if you have a gripe about E-Learning, write it down and send it on — that is the basis of a White Paper for our purposes. This is not the academic or government world “white paper” — you don’t even need to propose the solution — just help us define the particular problem you want solved.

If you have a solution (but can’t figure out the problem exactly) — at least capture your pondering about what scenarios your idea could address. Direct me to your blog post — that works, too.

Your voice NEEDS to be heard. I/we at LETSI need to hear it.

Please consider the following…

State the business, learning, or technology problem you want to address.
Identify an existing or new service, specification, model or standard that should be incorporated into SCORM 2.0 to solve your problem.
Explain how the solution could be implemented and tested by early 2009.

There are no constraints on format. We’re calling this kind of briefing a “white paper” — but if you want to produce a video or audio podcast to get this information to us — hey, that’s awesome.

Please send your white paper to scorm2@letsi.org — and if you’d rather send it directly to me, I’ll be happy to handle it from there.

Technorati Tags: scorm 2.0, scorm, white paper, standards, letsi, interaction, collaboration, community

Question: SCORM on a Mac

Aaron — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:39:29 +0000

From the LETSI Wiki…

“Our company is starting to venture into creating SCORM modules.
What is the Best Mac software for developing SCORM content?
One option was Lectora? Any good?”

SCORM on a Mac… it’s tough. I assume you’re looking for authoring tools. On a Mac, there aren’t a lot of options at the moment. There’s no Captivate for the Mac. There’s no Articulate Presenter, no Lectora or Adobe Presenter for the Mac either. The only authoring tool I’ve seen that works straightforward on the Mac is eXe – http://exelearning.org/ — which produces standards compliant XHTML/CSS and a SCORM 1.2 content package.

The other option if you’re using a Mac is… and it pains me to say this as a longtime Mac user and advocate — is to run Windows on your Mac, and install one of the content authoring tools of choice (I feel best about Articulate’s suite of products if you’re not into “coding”). If, however, you are into actually coding, there are lots of options that are Mac native for beautiful multimedia — and if you have the requisite ability to tie everything together with HTML, JavaScript and feel comfortable using a packaging tool like Reload – I’d be happy to direct you to some fantastic tools.

And what tools would I point you to? I’m glad you asked.

ScreenFlow
Snapz Pro
Keynote
iMovie

Evie

Aaron — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:13:24 +0000

Evelyn Jeanette, or Evie, was born at 12:21 this afternoon. A very healthy 9 lbs, 10 oz and 21 inches tall… she has wavy brown hair and deep blue eyes. Mommy and baby are doing very well, and Daddy and big sister are extremely proud.

The next several postings to this blog will likely be authored in the middle of the night, likely in-between feedings

Halting States meets reality…

Aaron — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:16:24 +0000

Or at least it starts to.

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From the site:

“Enkin” introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services, and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices. Check out our web page enkin.net.

Charles Stross’ novel, Halting State is an interesting mystery/thriller recommended to me by Rovy Brannon back at Learning 2007, and the major technological device it employs is a world about 4 years away now where the phone is THE pre-eminent device that connects us to the internet. Bounded with glasses, the book shares an impressive vision of how Augmented Reality works in the context of gaming, commerce, recreation, work, productivity — everything.

Enkin looks a LOT like a predecessor to the vision Stross described.

Desiging for the iPhone? Check this out…

Aaron — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:39:18 +0000

Yahoo has a fantastic Design Stencil Kit in several formats, including OmniGraffle and Visio. I’ve recently started jumping on the Information Architecture bandwagon and found that visually planning out a web-based design with wireframes was not only helpful but saved me a bunch of time from the “let’s see what kind of layout I can code today” method.

As I continue to work on my pet project of building good SCORM content for the iPhone (just for kicks), this kit from Yahoo will be a big help.

Stuff I’m Playing With (This Week)

Aaron — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:39:26 +0000

Firefox 3 was finally released out of Beta, and it’s pretty sweet. I’m using a bunch of extensions that are helping out my productivity and workflow quite a bit.
I’m using the ScribeFire extension in FF3 to post this to the blog.
I’m using the Remember the Milk extension to flesh out a Tasks pane that’s available from my Gmail interface. I’m also using the RTM extension for Google calendar to keep track of my tasks by day, in case I’m in there, too.
I went through the tutorials for SproutCore, which is a Ruby application to produce RIAs using only HTML and JavaScript with OS X-like interface features. It’s the basis for Apple’s MobileMe applications. And, for once, unlike everyone else trying SproutCore, I’m having absolutely no issues (compared to the people on the GoogleGroup for SC who couldn’t get it to work until this morning).
I’ve been playing with JSON out of Flickr with jQuery to build cute little slideshows using Flickr’s API.
I’ve also been playing with some Flickr/MooTools/SlimBox for nice gallery features. This particular feature was helped a lot by Ted Forbes’ Satellite code.

Technorati Tags: firefox, firefox 3, scribefire, remember the milk, sproutcore, mobileme, json, flickr, jquery, mootools, slimbox, satellite