Trivantis takes the fight to Articulate with Snap! Empower
Its going to be an interesting year in the world of e-learning authoring tools. Trivantis has released Snap! Empower for the extremely competitive $99 and is aggressively targeting Articulate users with a very powerful set of features that go well beyond the capabilities offered by Engage at a fraction of the price. What will be more interesting is how this product will compete with the iminent Articulate Storyline which offers similar powerful functionality but seems destined to be offered at a significantly higher price.
One question all these e-learning authoring tools have yet to answer is how to move from flash based publishing to fully featured HTML5 based publishing (as required by iPad and iPhone). Snap! as with other similar tools takes the easy option of publishing to video to provide a limited form of HTML5 compatibility. This simple approach fails to include the rich interactions and opportunities for self exploration and pacing that the flash published versions can embody. We know it is these very aspects of our resources that are most valuable in promoting learning. I wonder how long it will be before we see an e-learning tool which truely tackles this thorny problem… perhaps it will be Storyline and that may just justify its greater cost?
Articulate Custom Skins presentation – 2nd European Articulate Users Conference
Yesterday we had another fun and inspiring day at the Second European Articulate Users conference. Congratulations to Dragos and the team from SDDU at the University of Leeds for organising this great event. I now have a whole heap of new ideas spinning around in my head for new Articulate Presenter custom skins which given time will get to see the light of day soon… In the meantime here are the slides from my very brief presentation introducing these skins that I gave yesterday. Hope these are useful and see you there next year!
Articulate custom skins – bespoke development and development training
Webducate is pleased announce the availability of Articulate Presenter custom skin training and bespoke development services. Articulate Presenter custom skins allow e-learning resources created with the popular Articulate authoring system to be delivered within a customised player. This player can be designed to include branding and functionality not available within the default Articulate player helping to meet a target audiences’ specific needs and providing a unique learning experience.
Webducate offers two distinct services relating to the creation of Articulate presenter custom skins:
- Training - If you are an experienced Flash developer and want to get started creating your own skins, Webdcuate offers intensive hands on training with related Flash source files provided to get you up and running as fast as possible.
- Bespoke development - If you would like to use a custom skin but lack the time and/or skills required then Webducate can develop a skin to meet your needs.
If you are interested in either of these two services please see our related page and/or get in touch…
Dragster & Articulate example – Know your europe
Another excellent piece of work from the team at the University of Leeds which demonstrates how a series of Dragster 3 activities can be delivered within an Articulate Presenter presentation. Particularly effective is the use of audio to introduce each of the drag and drop activities. (View the Know the European Union presentation).
Embedding Dragster within Articulate presentations
Please Note – an improved embedding method for Articulate presenter is now available.
Integrating Dragster 3 activities into an Articulate presentation is an great way to construct a rich and seamless interactive e-learning resource (see the link to an example presentation at the bottom of this post). View a movie illustrating the authoring and integration process.
Key steps:
- Author the activity checking the Landscape activity layout and Scale size of activity with browser settings options.
- Publish the Dragster 3 activity and upload onto a web server. View the published activity in your browser and copy the activity web address.
- In your Powerpoint presentation use the Articulate > Insert web object option to add the activity to a slide (use the activity web address and the default settings provided by Articulate presenter when adding the web object).
- Publish the Articulate presentation.
View a simple example Articulate presentation incorporating a Dragster activity.
Dragster 2 – activities authored with Dragster 2 can also be integrated using the method described above, but as there is no activity setting to scale the activity with the browser, the view of the activity within the articulate presentation can become cropped when displayed on small screens.
