Trainers Talk Tech

There have been reports leaking to the web that hint of an April release date for the Adobe CS5 suite of software. Although Adobe goes out of their way to keep these release dates a secret, reports keep coming out. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've had lots of buggy situations with Flash CS4 and with Dreamweaver CS4 on my Mac, so I'm hoping that in addition to those new features which are coming, Adobe has taken the time to clean up the code a bit.

And, because I cannot wait, here are some CS5 Videos and a dedicated CS5 website that should keep you enticed:

Flash CS5 : Export to iPhone
Flash CS5 : New Features

Photoshop CS5 : Sneak Peek
Photoshop CS5 : Patch Match
Photoshop CS5 : Spot Healing

GREAT CS5 Site: http://cs5.org/

I'm proud to say that I've witnessed a couple changes in the conference this year...all for the best.

1) Free Wireless - FINALLY, after 10 years of squawking, ASTD heard the masses and are providing free wireless throughout the conference center. As you may or may not know, many of us were tweeting non-stop about this last year. Its good to hear that someone was listening.

2) Expo is PACKED with vendors - 61 to be exact. That's the largest Expo we've ever had. In 2003 and 2004, we were struggling to get 20. So nice to see.

3) Seeing lots of people from previous conferences - does this mean that TK 2010 is turning into a repeatable conference? Data showed that for most folks attending this conference, it was their FIRST educational technology conference. Maybe not anymore! This is my 10th conference as a speaker, 11 total. I feel so old...someone called me an old timer yesterday...Hmm....

It's that time of the year again, when Vegas calls the educational technologists out from their dark work rooms, and when instructional designers and facilitators alike decide to figure out this eLearning stuff and come out to Las Vegas for the ASTD TechKnowledge Conference.

This is going to be another great year with ASTD, and I wanted to let everyone know that I will be presenting three separate sessions regarding Flash CS4.

I'll be presenting a "Getting Started with Flash" pre-conference session on 1/26/10! Its a fun primer to get you up and running using Flash, but is targeted towards the eLearning professional. It's for the new learners, but will be a full day of Flash related fun. (Can you say "Flash Related Fun" ten times fast?)

Also, I will have two Creation Stations on Flash called "Flash Animation: Basics of Making Things Move" on Wednesday the 27th and Friday the 29th of January. This is a 90 minute hands-on session where you will learn the basics of symbols and tweening in Flash CS4. Yes, it's pretty basic, but will be a blast, especially if you are brand new to Flash CS4.

I'll be blogging and podcasting from the General Sessions and sometimes from the concurrent sessions I'll be attending.

I am coming into Vegas on Monday night and leaving on Friday afternoon, and I am usually walking the floor or expo when I'm not in session. Feel free to say "hello" if you see me wandering around! Also, I will be attending the "Meet to Eat"sessions in the evenings, so if you want to connect with me ~ I'd love to talk tech!

I have been hunting for a way to test my SCORM packages before sending them to my customers for review, and with the help of one of my clients, I found an excellent resource.

SCORM.com has an excellent tool called Test Track. It allows you to upload your SCORM .zip file into a working/testing location that gives you everything you need to evaluate and debug your SCORM packages. The link is:

http://www.scorm.com/scorm-solved/test-track/

I always get so freaked out when sending SCORM packages to clients without testing...the debug process can be a pain. This tool, which is FREE, found a silly "&" in my .xml which I was able to fix before sending the final versions to clients.

Did you catch that this tool is FREE!??!

SCORM scares and frustrates me, but this is an awesome tool from Rustici Software that made my life so much easier today. I set up my free account and will be living here as I develop eLearning for my clients. Thanks scorm.com!

I wanted to announce that I just installed the Flash 10.0.2 update for Flash CS4 and my bugs are fixed! I have been crabbing about it for months, and after downloading the patch, all the slowdowns, errors, font issues and interface bugs are no longer there!

Thank you Adobe for letting me fall in love with Flash again. Maybe now I can uninstall Flash CS3...

Download the patch here: http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html

I've been on the road this year teaching for an amazing client. The content I'm teaching isn't eLearning related, but leadership and management related. I do quite a bit of work in the leadership arena and speak often on topics of performance, people management and change.

During class, I reference books and materials that augment the particular topic I'm working with, and during last week's class, several students asked to see that list. As I do get quite a bit of non-tech visitors here, I thought I would share the list with my eLearning audience as well.

Leadership Books I Recommend

The Leadership Pipeline
Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel
This book describes the phases of leadership and describes them as separate, interlocking “pipelines”. The author speaks about the varied responsibilities necessary at each “level” of management.

The Oz Principle
Roger Connnors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman
Primarily focusing on business ethics and personal responsibility, this book introduces the concept of “above the line/below the line” when taking personal responsibility in the workplace.

The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
Patrick Lencioni
This book tells a tale of a dysfunctional team and the steps the new president takes to unite her team. It’s a good business parable with some tools at the end of the chapter that can be directly applied to a dysfunctional team.

Leadership Gold
John Maxwell
John Maxwell is a leadership guru, and this book is a series of his most important leadership lessons. The concept of “ducks” and “eagles” comes from this book. I also recommend reading any of John Maxwell’s extensive library of leadership books. He is amazing.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Dan Millman
A parable about a student who’s life intersects with an interesting mentor. The concept of “No ordinary moments” comes from this book.

Emotional Intelligence
Primal Leadership
Daniel Goleman
These two books introduce the concepts of Emotional Intelligence and how they can impact job performance and leadership in the workplace.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
Marshall Goldsmith
Similar to the Leadership Pipeline, this books look at the specific skill sets necessary to move up the ladder, based on the premise that the behaviors that made you successful in one job, won’t help you be successful as you move up the ladder.

The Speed of Trust
Stephen M.R. Covey
This book identifies 13 specific behaviors that managers can use to improve trust on their teams.

The Tipping Point
Blink
Outliers
Malcom Gladwell
Three great books that make you think about “normal” things differently.

Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability)
David Marcum and Steven Smith
This book is a powerful examination of ego in the workplace – its positive and negative aspects as a manager.

Quick Note: If you liked my Podcast interview with Roger Courville, then you will love his new book: The Virtual Presenter's Handbook. The book just got released and is available for you to purchase.

If you are looking to improve your ability as an online facilitator, or if your company is considering bringing synchronous learning to the firm, this book is fantastic.

A full table of contents is available here!

You can get more info and order the book by clicking here!

As I've spoken about in the past, almost all of my eLearning is programmed by hand using the Adobe suite of products and creating interfaces, buttons and eLearning elements from scratch.

As I get ready to roll out my new business venture (Catapult Training Group...YAY), I'm debating about whether I should advertise on the new web site and in my promotional materials that I use/have used/can use the off the shelf eLearning development tools like Unison, Lectora, Articulate and Captivate. As an eLearning developer, I've always prided myself on the fact that I write from the source and do not use these tools when developing. Several of my clients have asked me to use these tools and help them to learn these tools, however should I be advertising that these tools are within my capability?

Does it diminish my reputation as a developer to talk about my company using these tools? Even though most of these tools are great, they have serious limitations when it comes to high degrees of complex interactivity. I feel that I shouldn't want it featured that I sometimes use them on behalf of clients...am I right to feel that way?

On the other side of the coin, some of my current clients are using them and I've been able to offer my assistance to those folks and make a little money to boot. In fact, one of my clients ONLY uses these tools and has required me to design within the confines of these applications. Is that a value to other companies? Should I advertise it?

I'm seriously interested in knowing your opinion! Please comment or shoot me an email to let me know your opinion. Thank you in advance!

I was reading this article in Wired Magazine The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time and started to think about all the traveling I am going to do over the summer. I'm not concerned about being able to work from a hotel room, as I've outfit my MacBook Pro with a fully licensed version of the Adobe CS4 suite. Yes, its expensive to have such a nice laptop AND such nice software just to work remotely, and the idea of a Netbook and that article got me thinking about the potential of taking my online learning development completely, well, online. Through a browser. With NO installed software. Could it be done?

And so begins my quest...over the next few days, I'm going to attempt to find online software solutions that do everything I need to build eLearning programs so I can buy a Netbook and just go. Here is the types of software I will need to find:

• WYSIWYG HTML Editor: I use Dreamweaver in split view: code and design view. Is there browser based software that will allow me to create web pages?
• Graphic Editor: I use Photoshop to create graphics. The article refers to FotoFlexer as a browser based Photoshop alternative. I'll try it out and let you know this week.
• Animation Editor: As I've said in the past, Flash is my primary creator of content for my eLearning clients. Is there something out there that's browser based that will allow me to create Flash like interfaces, interactions and programs? I'm doubtful that any web based app will allow me to create like I do in Flash, but let's see what I can find!
• Content: My clients and I use Pages, Keynote, PowerPoint and Word to create our static content. I lift the content out of these pages and paste into Dreamweaver or Flash. Google Docs is out there as a browser based alternative, but I haven't tried it...I will and tell you how it goes.

That's the major functionality I will be looking for in online applications. I want to get a Netbook purely because its new and cool (and I have a problem with wanted all the tech I can get my hands on), but if I can validate it by finding these online solutions, well, then its a purchase worth making! I know...who am I kidding...

I'll keep you posted all week with what I find.

I am so excited that the Kindle 2 has been released! I am completely in love with anything tech and anything new. I haven't ordered mine yet...something about the $359 price tag that is making me hold off. I did get to spend lots of time with the previous iteration as a colleague had one and he left me alone with it for a while.

I buy LOTS of books...they are all over my house. My wife calls them "droppings", as in "Thomas, you've got book droppings all over the bonus room." For me, the $359 price tag isn't worth it yet - even though I spend that much (and more) in books every year, most of my purchases are web based, tech books (ActionScript 3.0 guides and Michael Allen eLearning books). Kindle doesn't have any of those yet...and, do I want to have a reference guide on the Kindle?

So what does this have to do with eLearning? I starting thinking about the possibilities for this kind of tool in the training world. I would love to be able to use something like this to shoot course materials over to my learners, give them prep work or use this as a part of my hybrid solutions. Instead of "Download this PDF, print it out and use it as we work through the online program", it could be "Download this document to your Kindle and use it to work through the program."

I'm building lots of programs where the learner downloads and reads a PDF file and then answers questions in the eLearning so that they are stored in the LMS. Imagine being able to push this to a Kindle-like device and the learner doesn't have to print it out.

Of course, Amazon would need to do a few things to the device to make me really happy, so here is my wish list for Amazon:

1. Please Amazon, make me a Kindle that can connect to my network and allow me to push my content onto the device - more than just the PDFs you allow to come in from eMail
2. Please give me a color version...I understand the 16 shades of gray, and that the device is so thin because of the UFO inspired technology driving the screen, but please...16 bit color?
3. Please let me connect up to my network wirelessly and then download content to my computer
4. Please let me connect up to my network wirelessly and then upload content from my computer - you kind of do this already...but...
5. Come up with a cool, non Apple infringing version of iTunes for Kindle - let me sync up with my computer
6. Offer a deep discount for educators or people buying lots of them for their employees
7. My big one - please install a version of the Flash player on the Kindle - I know it isn't a multimedia device, but it could be...

That's my wish list for Amazon regarding the Kindle. Laptops and the new Netbooks offer our learners portable access to our online modules, but something as thin and sleek as the Kindle can really be a future eLearning device. Maybe the device isn't as good as the PDFs we are using now? Maybe I should be happy to view PDFs on the Kindle..Maybe Amazon doesn't ever want to open it up to users and developers and keep the books, the connection and the content locked down?

Am I asking too much? Is it designed to be a book replacement and that's it? I hope not. I think it would be very cool to deploy eLearning on a device as elegant as the Kindle. Once I get my hands on one (soon, oh yes...so very soon) I'll tell you what I really think!

People have mixed reviews: Read them here.

David Pogue Video Review: View it!

I wanted to give a heads up that I am interviewing another amazing expert for the Trainers Talk Tech podcast tomorrow morning. If you've ever wondered about the secrets of good synchronous learning, this is the podcast for you! Tips, tricks and secrets to maximizing your synchronous learning experience as an instructional designer and facilitator will all be discussed. It's going to be great!

If you want to subscribe to the podcast feed, use this link:
http://dwebstudios.hipcast.com/rss/trainerstalktech.xml .

I'm conducting the interview in the morning and after production, it should be up before noon MST. Be sure to subscribe or come back to this site to hear the podcast.

If you missed the first edition covering online social networking with Jenna Papakalos, you can read about it and listen to it here.

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, with whom ASTD and I have an ongoing copublishing relationship and who recently helped ASTD develop the digital version of the Handbook, will be publishing all of the chapters of the ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals as stand-alone digital whitepapers as part of a series they’re calling Fast Fundamentals. I'm Chapter 23: Authoring Techniques and Rapid eLearning!

The Fast Fundamentals series will have a dedicated page on the Berrett-Koehler web site, the centerpiece of which will be a unique search engine that will allow readers to find a digital whitepaper on a specific workplace challenge. This page is currently in beta-testing - take a few minutes to try it out!

After you click on the link and the home page opens, choose a Topic from the menu. A list of Challenges will pop up. Click on a Challenge, and a Solution—a list of whitepapers—will appear. Click on one of whitepaper options, and the first page of the whitepaper is revealed with an option to purchase the content. To try out this unique whitepaper concept click here !

Berrett-Koehler will be adding explanatory text and the ability to search by author name and by title of the whitepaper soon. The scheduled launch date for this service is February 19th.

The Fast Fundamentals whitepapers will sell for $3.95 to $9.95 depending on length, but for the first week—from February 19th to February 27th—Berrett-Koehler will be selling them all for the special introductory price of $.99 each. The book is huge - it retails $139.00 and has 49 chapters... but look - if you want to buy the entire book via this introductory price it could save you some serious money. The book has less than 50 chapters...that means for this 99 cent special, you can get the whole shebang for less than $50.

If you want to save some trees, this could be a great opportunity to pick up the whole book at a substantial discount. Here is the link again.

If this is your first time reading a web page, then let me introduce you to the upcoming generation that is causing everyone, everywhere to pause a moment and reflect. The generation is called Gen Y, or Millennials, and anyone born between 1981 and 2000 falls into that category.

Gen Y have been described as:

• Eager
• Impatient
• Type A stress machines
• They cannot make decisions on their own - they rely on their network of friends for input
• They are not loyal to any firm - the view themselves as perpetual independent contractors
• They have unrealistic expectations from the workplace - they adapt their work to fit their lifestyle
• Have an "everyone wins" mentality - they want a ribbon for 14th place
• They have an intimate relationship with technology

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Leo Lucas is an eLearning consultant who has made a series of SCORM templates that are inexpensive and easy to implement. I talked about his site at ASTD TK all last week, and I wanted to link to his site from here. I spent about $500 here and it has saved me hours and hours of work around simple SCORM implementation.

Thank you Leo!

Visit the software section for Flash, HTML and developer toolkits which make SCORM less painful to implement.

http://www.e-learningconsulting.com/

As always, ASTD put on a great show in Vegas. I am looking forward to following up with all the new people I met and learned with. I cannot wait until '10!

I had three sessions I conducted: Two Creation Stations and a Tech Intensive. I have to say that the Tech Intensive was a blast. I had about 80 people in the room, and we talked at length about the Adobe CS4 Web Suite. 90% of it went well, but I had one SoundBooth snafu and one Flash ActionScript 3.0 snafu. Before the session, I said to myself that I'd create an interaction using ActionScript 2.0 because I know that cold, but then reminded myself that I made a pact to only program in ActionScript 3.0. I know how to get things built, but some of the calls are still new to me. I forgot to add the

(event:MouseEvent):void 

to my function call. Grr...Oh well. We laughed and got it working when I finally relaxed enough to think clearly. Building a site in the privacy of your office is much different than building in front of a room of learners!

Here are links to my materials from the sessions. If you were not able to attend, I understand! Here are the materials in PDF format:

Creation Station
Flash CS4: Get a Taste of ActionScript 3.0 Hands On! : PDF File

Tech Intensive
Integrating Adobe Creative Suite to Maximize E-Learning Development
PDF File
PowerPoint File

Also, if you attended my Tech Intensive, you remember that we built a "New Hire Orientation" online guide for Tommy Gun's Garage, a dinner theater and "speakeasy" out of Chicago. I thought you might like to see what I built for the client.

View the comp here.

Its just the prototype in a flat Photoshop file, but you can see what a little time and attention can do for good web design.

Thanks for talking with me, laughing with (at) me and having a great time in Vegas at the ASTD TK show.

Now, go build something cool!

P.S. I haven't forgotten to put the David Pogue Web 2.0 list up from the first day of the conference...It will be up soon...

Our first Trainers Talk Tech podcast is here! The topic for this first podcast is online social networking. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jenna Papakalos, President of JRMP Enterprises, an expert on the topic of social networking. During this session we talk about Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, and how the HR or Training professional can start creating an online network of people.

Listen to it here:

Subscribe to the Trainers Talk Tech podcast here:
http://dwebstudios.hipcast.com/rss/trainerstalktech.xml

During the podcast, Jenna and I talk about various books and websites. Below are links to everything we discussed:

Websites

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Twitter

Books

• I'm on Facebook - Now What by Jason Alba and Jesse Stay
• I'm on LinkedIn - Now What by Jason Alba
• Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Talh Raz

Please enjoy the podcast, and if you like it, then please subscribe. I plan on interviewing movers and shakers in the eLearning industry, as well as create solo broadcasts.

Thank you for reading...I hope you enjoy the podcast, and thank you Jenna for sharing your expertise!

I'm very excited about ASTD TK 09 this year. I'm looking for some new ideas and new ways of thinking and programming, and I hope that you will tune into my daily reporting from the conference. I plan on writing each day, providing you with "on the scene" details, information and opinions.

Also, I am happy to be presenting on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning. I will be sharing my presentation notes and materials on this site. I have a fun ActionScript 3.0 primer and an analysis and demonstration of the Adobe Creative Suite 4, specifically Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Fireworks and Soundbooth. I know...the eLearning Suite just came out...why don't I feature that? Two reasons:

1. ASTD already published the conference materials
2. My MacBook Pro can't run Captivate or Presenter without Parallels and an installation of Windows. My Mac Pro has the Windows "Virus" installed on it, and I just cannot bear to subject my mobile silver brain to that kind of abuse.

More news: Tomorrow morning, I am recording the first edition of the Trainers Talk Tech's Podcast. I'm interviewing an expert in the area of electronic social networking. I'm interested in her opinions about the trend and the methods and implications for the eLearning developer. Look for links to the podcast links soon.

If you haven't seen it yet, Adobe has created an eLearning Suite and bundled my favorite software together. It's a really sweet suite:

• Captivate - great for screen capture and for recording software demos. Really good tool and the current version is top notch
• Flash CS4 - great tool, but I'm still fighting with Flash CS4 on the Mac...long story, but nested movie symbols in ActionScript 3.0 movies are slowing down the function of the application...on both Macs...I'm not alone in this, but they are finally elevating my issue...see here, here and here. They are working on it which is encouraging - I trust Adobe will make it right!
• Dreamweaver CS4 - the best coding tool in the world!!!
• Photoshop CS4- the best photo editor in the world, hands down.
• Presenter 7 - Finally available at an affordable price (used to be $1500), this tool lets you use PowerPoint to create eLearning. I'm not a big fan of PowerPoint, so its great news for some, meh for me. However, it works really well Acrobat Connect Pro (formerly Breeze), so if you have that tool, you will love the way Presenter works with it. Note: It works in Office XP, 2003 or 2007. Great news!
• Soundbooth CS4 - create and edit audio...I really, really like this software. It's the first thing that has started pulling me away from Audacity which is an amazing piece of free audio software.

So...my only question...where is Fireworks in the suite? Photoshop rules, but for web distribution, Fireworks has tools that could help the eLearning developer rapidly develop interfaces, convert to PDF and perform lots of cool navigation and button effects. The price point is a little steep ($1799) but worth it if you want to do be able to do everything (no seriously...everything eLearning!) The upgrade price is great ($599) if you have purchased any other suite. I have to say that, overall, I like it quite a bit. There is a lot of software here that can create anything you, the eLearning developer, can think up. However, if you have an extra $299.00 laying around, I'd pick up Fireworks too!

Now...if I can just convince Adobe to fix the Mac bugs in Flash CS4 and give me a version of Captivate for the Mac, I would go back to raving non-stop about their software. I'll rave about everything but Flash CS4, but really, really want to! If Adobe fixes the Flash CS4 bugs, I'll be their biggest evangelist yet! I'll keep running Captivate in Parallels, but it's not the same.

I will be presenting at the ASTD TechKnowledge Conference in Vegas this year. This will be my 9th year presenting. My first presentations were in October 2001. Yeah...one month after the world blew up. Needless to say, the conference was much smaller than expected but was still fantastic.

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