drawing attention to an object

16 July 2010

Highlight Boxes added to a Captivate project provide an excellent way to direct a user's attention to a specific area in your Captivate project.

If you have spent any time in Captivate, you have likely added at least one Highlight Box to your project. If you haven't, you'll find that you can add them easily enough via Insert > Highlight Box.

After the Highlight Box appears on the slide, you can drag it to a desired location and resize it appropriately. You would then use the Timeline to control when the Highlight Box appears on the slide. Assuming you haven't made the Fill Transparency too high or too low (80% is typical), when a user interacts with your published lesson, the area in the middle of a typical Highlight Box will darken just enough to command the user's attention. While the middle of the highlighted area gets darker, the rest of the slide remains unchanged.

There is a Highlight Box feature you may not have realized is available... I call it "the old Reverse Highlight Box."

When inserting a Highlight Box, there is an innocent-looking option at the left of Highlight Box tab: Fill outer area.

Fill outer area option

Audio In Captivate 5

16 July 2010

Adobe Captivate 5 is released and available in market. Adobe Captivate 5 comes up with great new features which helps improve the usability and productivity of Captivate users. At the same time every existing feature is important too and has been looked into for improvements.

One of the main features of any e-learning tool is its AUDIO recording and editing capabilities. This post will introduce you to the new layout of Audio dialogs in Adobe Captivate5. Further we will run series of posts to showcase many new enhancements, features and tips and tricks in AUDIO feature.

Menu items has been revised and this is how Audio menu items look –

Adding Flash Video to an Adobe Captivate Project 2

16 July 2010

Once you have successfully imported flash video into Adobe Captivate, the final step is to upload the files associated of your Captivate project to a remote server. When you accomplish this you will be able to integrate the interactive project into your online and/or face-to-face classrooms.

This tutorial will cover:

Step 1: Publishing the Captivate project to a remote sever
Step 2: Changing the first letter in the skin file to lowercase
Step 3: Viewing the Captivate project in the web browser

In Part I, if you tried to upload the .swf or .html files to a remote server you would have discovered that the Flash video did not appear/function properly in the web browser (see image below). This is caused by a known naming convention issue of the video player skin. Step 2 will discuss how to fix this problem.

Adding Flash Video to an Adobe Captivate Project

16 July 2010

With Adobe Captivate, faculty can add Flash video (.flv) files to their captivate learning object. It can improve communication and students' comprehension of online learning. Adobe Captivate is a powerful and engaging software tool that will allow educators to create interactive demonstrations and simulations for e-learning in Flash format. With this tool, faculty can easily capture and record screen actions, create quizzes and tutorials as well as integrate audio and video within the presentation and much more. The best part about this software is that there is NO programming or multimedia experience required

Step 1: With Captivate open, select Flash Video from the Insert menu.

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Captivate basic

16 July 2010

Getting Started

Preparation and Choreography (Workshop files)

What you will need:

Script - A script is a tool that assists the author to choreograph a Captivate presentation. A script should include (sample script):

Description of slide

Spoken script

Actions performed on slide (mouse-clicks, etc.)

Text displayed on slide

Application(s): Document(s) and/or windows from which slides will be captured, text copied, and/or audio recorded.

Captivate Template (optional but recommended - sample template)

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Creating eLearning Applications in Captivate 2

16 July 2010

Standards and Learning Management Systems

There are a lot of Learning Management Systems that range from "off the shelf" software to custom applications. The key to any system is how the scoring data moves from Captivate, for example, into the LMS. How that happens is the role of standards. If they weren't in place, organizations switching from one LMS to another would also have to change all of their courseware.

LMS standards, therefore, describe the metadata involved in the course definition. This data, containing for example, the author, objectives and course structure, is usually contained in an XML document referred to as a manifest. These standards are not independent of each other. In fact they are interrelated because the members of standards organizations are usually members of the other standards organizations. There are four major LMS standards:

Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL or ADL SCORM): This is a U.S. government sponsored initiative to facilitate instructional content development and delivery using current and emerging technologies. SCORM- Sharable Content Object Reference Model- focuses on the next generation of open architectures for eLearning applications.

Aviation Industry Computer-Based training Committee (AICC): The AICC have developed the most widely accepted interoperability standards for computer based training (CBT) or eLearning applications. AICC compliant applications meet the guidelines for deployment, delivery and evaluations of digital training materials.

IMS Global Consortium (IMS): This organization sets the standards for K-12 and Post secondary education. Their focus is maintaining an open standard for locating and using educational content, student progress and tracking and the ability to exchange student records between various administrative systems.

IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee: This group focuses on software components, tools and technologies used for digital learning.

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Creating eLearning Applications in Captivate

16 July 2010

To consider Captivate nothing more than an "industrial strength" screen capture utility would be, to use a computing term, a "fatal Error". The simple fact that you can add interactivity through the use of click boxes and add Question slides that integrate with a Learning Management System (LMS) moves Captivate into a software category of its own.

Before I dig into the various eLearning aspects of Captivate, let's just get clear on what eLearning is and why it is suddenly so important. If you talk to book publishers, you will hear that any book with the word "eLearning" in the title is destined for a paper recycling facility. The reason is simple: until a couple of years ago eLearning was a fad.

If an institution, in either the public or the private sector, wanted to hang itself out there as being one cutting edge institution, they instituted an eLearning or Distance Education program that, in many respects, was nothing more than a digital "in basket". The student who enrolled in these courses would write the papers or take the tests and then email them back. I remember one institution getting really angry with me when they proudly walked me through their eLearning efforts and I told them they could have saved a serious number of development dollars by simply sending their students a bunch of stamped envelopes.
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Creating a Movie in captivate 3

16 July 2010

To set the capture area manually

You aren't limited to the area defined by the red capture box when you start the recording process. You can change the size of the recording area. Here's how :

Select File > "Record or create a new movie" if you are working with a previously recorded movie, or click "Record or create a new movie" on the Start page. The New Movie Options dialog box opens.

Select Application and click OK. The Recording window opens.

From the "Record specific window" pop-down list, select the application in which you will be recording. (Figure 10). The application window to be recorded opens.

Image 10: The window to be recorded is selected.

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Creating a Movie in captivate 2

16 July 2010

To add new slides to an existing movie

1. Open the Captivate movie to which the slides will be added and open the application in which you'll do the recording.

2. Do one of the following:

In the Storyboard View panel, either click the Record button on the Main toolbar or select Record Additional slides from the Slide Tasks to open the Recording window.

Or

In the Edit View panel, click the Record button on the Main toolbar to open the Recording window.

Image 4: You can record additional slides anywhere in the movie

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Creating a Movie in captivate

16 July 2010

Creating a movie in Captivate is both uncomplicated and fast. Still, there is a work flow that follows these general steps:

Plan your movie using storyboards, scripts, and any other organizational material such as written notes or project planning software. Storyboards are especially useful because they can show the frame-by-frame progression of a movie, including audio, animations, mouse movements, and so on that will appear in the frame. Storyboards range from hand drawings on paper to PowerPoint presentations, for example, that lay out the content in the slide and describe its purpose.

Determine the playback media. Captivate movies can be played back from CDs, from hard drives, and through the Web. In each case, the final playback media will have a major role in determining the assets and recording of the movie.

Gather your assets. You can add images, sounds, animations and even other Captivate movies to your movie. Make sure these assets are readily available to you.

Open Captivate, set the recording options and, if needed, set the movie preferences.

Record your movie. The flexibility of Captivate enables you to record a movie from "scratch", utilize slides and animations from previously recorded movies, and even re-order the slides you have just recorded.

Adding the captions, images, sounds, and other assets called for in the storyboard.

Generate and preview the movie.

Save the movie as a Flash SWF file and export it in the format best suited to the media being used for playback.

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