Trainers Talk Tech

My friend Ginger sent me another cool note with more online applications - this time focused on the world of flow charting.

From a web design perspective, flow charting can be an excellent way to "map" the user experience through your site. From an eLearning perspective, flow charting can be a way to visualize complex interactions or simulations, making it easier to program these necessary elements.

I recently completed a very complex interviewing simulation : You (the learner) have to interview four different candidates using the same set of six questions. When you click on the question, the interview candidate responds. You then rate those responses on a scale of 1-5. You then interview the next person with the same rating scale until all four candidates are interviewed. The person with the highest score gets "hired" in the simulation. Hire the best candidate who gave the best responses and you get an "email" from the president of the firm congratulating you on your hire. If you hire the worst candidate (by rating their bad responses highly), that person leaves the firm after two months. The simulation is awesome and the client went crazy for it!

Which brings me back to flow charting...without a flow chart, a complex simulation like the one above can be very painful to create, both for the instructional designer and for the programmer. Lots of diagrams and communication needs to occur to make sure that every moving part is tracked and everyone understands how all the elements interact. It's no fun to go through a simulation without it impacting the learner somehow - flow charting can help tremendously.

Gliffy
Gliffy is a true application working "in the cloud." Its free for 30 days and if you want to purchase it, a single user license is just $5.00 per month. For an online app, it is very robust - most of the common functions you'd find in a Visio or Omni-graffle are all here. Some of the cooler functions I didn't expect to find were fill and stroke color adjustments, lots and lots of shapes and images, and the ability to upload your own images. You can share the flow chart online, as well as export to .png, .jpg and the Visio .svg file. I was VERY impressed with this tool.

Flowchart.com
Flowchart.com is in BETA, so it's a bit harder to get access to it. You give them your email, and they send you credentials to log in. The have an interactive demo online, but it doesn't show much from a development perspective. As they get closer to launch, I'll edit this post to include my opinions. (I haven't been approved as a beta tester yet). Sign up and tell me what you think.

I'm getting close to finishing this series of Netbook software items. I have two categories left to dig up: online image editing and online animation software. I hope I don't have to rely on download and launch software (like the HTML software), but if I find some items with small footprints, I'll be sure to post.

Let me know if you have found this series useful! Post a comment or send me a note. And again, thanks again Ginger!