Flash For Learning

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.

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

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