LMS in this learner-centered world? You must be joking!

Well, I would not state it that harsh, but never the less I have the feeling that LMS does not really fit into the picture of contemporary learning.

So I put together a small presentation as an introduction to what I hope will be a very nice debate at Online Educa Berlin 2009 in room Potsdam 1, starting at 14.00h.

Any remarks you might have, send them, I will be happy to take them into account.

Just a quick ppt: using an LMS in learner-centered courses does not fit contemporary learning

View more presentations from ignatia.

eLearning mash-up follow-up: Articulate presenter and Flash 10 compatibility

Just a quick note: a useful fix for those working with Articulate presenter and are upgrading to the Flash 10 player.
A couple of months ago I wrote a post about a combination of Articulate presenter, Captivate, Camtasia, social media incorporation and a high definition webcam. It was a quick mash-up, but it resulted in a useful combination of tools that simply look cool.

But when the Flash 10 player came along, that presentation no longer loaded in my browser. This was due to a swf file that was not correctly decodable by any of the browsers that used the new Flash 10. Luckily Articulate came up with a solution, the Flash updater for Articulate.
For all of you that are experiencing the same problem (articulate presenter not loading in browser after upgrading to Flash10) a detailed problem solving page was written.
After installing the updater for Flash, I scanned my swf-files build by articulate. This resulted in Internet Explorer 7 working again. After this I only had to erase the cache in Firefox 3 and Opera 9.64 and Safari 4.

Instructional Design: What do you get when you mix articulate presenter, with captivate, with camtasia, with webquiz ... you could get THIS

How can you mix all kinds of software's AND social media apps? That is one of the questions I have roaming about in the back of my mind. On the verge of my vacation, I wanted to test a new software (Articulate Presenter) and see if other software that we use to build courses with can be implemented.

If you want to, you can see the result following this link (it is an nice mashup for different educational goals). It works with Flash, so sometimes he preloads to buffer the multimedia files.

The final product was produced by Articulate Presenter, but I mixed in Del.icio.us, Camtasia, phpBB, Captivate, QuickCam pro movies, a Ning community, Articulate Quizmaker quizzes, hotspot quiz and even a Canadian Bear!

If you are interested in the production specifics, you can click on the tab 'notes' inside the articulate presenter course.

The font size of the Articulate Presenter is rather small but at this point you cannot change the font-size, but this is a feature Articulate Presenter's developing team is tackling and hopefully they will program a solution soon.

I really enjoyed the first half of the year and so now.... I am off on my vacation (more specifics in the presentation).

Electronic Health Care/Medical libraries: a student instrument created with Articulate Engage

At ITM we are dabbling with Articulate Engage. One of our main concerns is trying to figure out whether Articulate Engage is something we can use in low resource areas.
Articulate Engage is producing Flash content and as such is cross-platform, but the files are still very heavy. This list of Electronic Health Care/Medical Libraries on the Internet was inserted into Articulate Engage by Carlos Kiyan and is almost 13MB. Nevertheless it works with dial-up connections as well because of the swf-technology of prebuffering.

Articulate Engage has some nice features:

• it is indeed really easy to use and it generates Flash content (swf) with just one push on a button.
• It has a really neat 'search' function which does pick-up text that is included in the different chapters.
• It allows you to insert different media, which of-course increases or decreases the volume of the generated swf.
• it demands some actions from the learner.
• the helpdesk is quick and they really helped us out with more extensive examples we are trying to develop. A great helpdesk is a huge surplus.
  

On the down side: the fixed animation is rather dull and you just know that this type of animation will look dated after a couple of years.

This list of medical libraries was made to make it easier for the students to find relevant medical resources. The response on the use of this type of instrument was very positive. At first the list was more limited, but thanks to the input of the students it grew (this adding of relevant sources was part of the learning process they had to go through). This list is used in our online course of eSCART (Short Course in AntiRetroviral Therapy) which is currently successfully being taken by a group of international students.

If you know of other libraries, feel free to add them, we will gladly add them to the list.