Trainers Talk Tech

I'm having such a dilemma and its driving me crazy. Here is what I'm struggling with: lately, several of my customers have asked me to create or bid on projects where they expect to be able to go in and edit the content, images and layout of the project after the launch. They want to be able to tweak every aspect of the project once its complete. However, they have no technical background and are not interested in learning the tech. As a result, I'm being asked to over-complicate the programming for ease of use later.

First example - a local area church has asked me to develop a web site for them that they can edit themselves. They don't want a CMS (even the free ones), they want to be hand coded. No problemo - I build it in CSS at a fixed width and height per the design from their team. After its built out and they want to start adding content, their editor (who picked up Dreamweaver specifically for this purpose), can't get the WYSIWYG screen to work with my hand coded CSS. Sometimes Dreamweaver, especially older versions, have a hard time rendering the CSS correctly in the WYSIWYG view. The code is solid and displays wonderfully in all browsers, but the client hates it and hates me because it isn't easy to edit in Dreamweaver. After a week of no luck with tutorials and phone assistance, I rebuilt it from scratch using old table code and layout techniques from 2005. They love it. It stretches how they want, its easy to add the content they want and they are super excited about their site again.

I, however, hate it and will not be adding it to my portfolio. It's filled with nested table tags, bloated JavaScript and is "old school" code that I rarely write anymore. However, the client LOVES it and loves me for making their lives easier. I have overcomplicated the "behind the scenes" so the WYSIWYG view works. What!!?

Case number two: I'm bidding on an eLearning project where the client wants all images but the interface to load dynamically and be stored outside the project, all video and audio to load dynamically and be stored outside the project, and all text and headers to be in XML and load dynamically at run time. OK...this is not rocket science, but in an effort to make their lives easier (they won't have to learn Flash to make edits), they are making it much more complicated to develop. It's so much easier to just dump it all into flash, export to .swf and deliver an HTML file and a .swf file and be done with it.

In an effort to avoid learning code or learning Flash, customers seem to be asking for "do it yourself" solutions, when I'm thinking that they should pick up a copy of Dreamweaver or Flash and learn it. It's much more complicated to dynamically load XML text than it is to type the text in the Flash interface. Now, there are very good reasons for using XML for text (I have another client who is going to offer multiple languages and wants to use the same .swf but load the different language XML which is cool), but for simple projects, why make it so complicated?

Couple thoughts:

1) They don't want to pay me to edit the files
2) They don't want to take the chance of me going away and not being around in 3 years when the files have to be edited
3) They expect lots of changes to the files
4) They expect to have to make changes in a speedy, real time fashion

I'm all about teaching a man to fish, but this kind of falls into the "just cause we can, we will." I am all about the straight line - get what you need accomplished in the easiest way possible. Learn Flash. Learn ActionScript. Who says editing an XML file is easier than editing a Flash file? Is this "Do it yourself" idea good for eLearning? Shouldn't it be "Learn the tool."

Am I alone here? Is this something I should just deal with? Since when do customers care about the intricate guts of a project, rather than its functionality, look and feel? Should I just grow up and understand that customers are getting more technical and are asking to "peek under the hood"?

Thanks for listening. Anyone else experiencing this?

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!

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!

Recently, several people have sent me emails asking how I've learned my web skills. I joke and talk about the painful process of trial and error, of late night hair pulling sessions and emails to online experts, begging for assistance. However, the reality is I am self taught - relying on books and projects to drive my learning.

I have never taken a single course on web design, graphic design or eLearning design. I probably could have been much better, much faster if I had, but the reality is that everything I've learned has come from a book or from a project. I never bothered to learn a technology until I accepted a project that required it. JavaScript, PHP, mySQL, SCORM, Flash and others were learned because I had received a contract to deliver a web application or site using these technologies and had to learn it or die trying!

I prefer to learn from books - nothing feels so good that to crack open a bound volume of knowledge and apply it. To me, its a rush to get a new book and then work through it.

Notice that I didn't say read it. I work through it. You don't learn web design or graphic design or eLearning design by reading a book. You need to use it as a workbook to push you into the learning and really DO the activities and projects in the book. In fact, when learning a technology, I seek out the books where the entire book is a series of activities and projects to learn.

So, what's my list? Here are my top publishers to whom I owe my success!

Friends of Ed
If you want to learn anything Adobe (in the past, Macromedia too!) you must, must, must visit the site and make a purchase. They are a small group out of the UK that publishes materials the way I like to learn - very project based. Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, generic Web Design, CSS... all of it is there! Their Foundation series of books are phenomenal. I highly recommend these books and this publisher.

Peach Pit Press
After I've learned it, I need reference materials at the tips of my fingers. While Friends of Ed teaches me, the Peach Pit stuff gives me the instant info I need to solve a specific problem or find a solution for accomplishing a task. Their Visual Quickstart Guides are amazing. They provide you with the info you need very quickly. When you are armpit deep in the code and its 2:00 am, the Quickstart Guides come to the rescue. Think of a web technology, and they have a Quickstart Guide for it.

SitePoint
Lately, I've been reading a ton of books from SitePoint. While most of their materials cover specific web technologies, I've been finding gems in their theoretical books. Things like Freelancing, Web Marketing, Project Management and Principles books have all rounded out my rough edges - provided the missing practical knowledge I didn't have by not going to design school. You can review their site and see what kind of things they offer (lots of webby stuff!), but their books are short, fun to read and incredibly practical.

There you go! That's my list. Of course, I have benefited from Adobe Press, RapidIntake (when they were producing books) and the Missing Manual books, but the lion's share of my learning has come from my three favorites above.

I hope this helps you on your learning journey. Remember, good eLearning programming comes from a strong foundational knowledge of web technologies.

This past week I finished up my last ASTD Essentials Webinar Series and again had a "virtual" room full of highly engaged, highly interested learners. It was interesting hearing from this group: they are all going to be the eLearning Obmudsmen I commented on in an earlier post. As I was going through the software examples and demos, I started getting some really good questions about process. I have a standard routine that I use when building my eLearning project from scratch, and I thought that it might be of benefit to my reading audience.

After meeting with a client and getting my first installment check (!), we start the following process:

1) Instructional Design Phase

Some of my clients have at least an outline of the content to the site, some have complete storyboards, but most are somewhere in between. Its my team's responsibility to take what they have and build out a storyboard for their review. We use a PPT based storyboard to document screens, activities and simulations in a way that makes it easy for the client to see how their program will function and flow.

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While conducting the ASTD Essentials webinar this week, I encountered a bit of a shock. Well, perhaps shock is too strong a word, but I definitely got rattled a bit. Let me tell you what got under my skin.

Part of my first day of training is a big session on my idea of an eLearning development "Dream Team":

• Project Manager: The project manager is responsible for ensuring that benchmarks are hit and that everyone is working together to create a fantastic finished project. This person should create a project plan to make sure that time lines and responsibilities are visible to all and that everything runs smoothly.
• Instructional Designer: The ID is the person who is a training professional and has taken the time and energy to follow an instructional design process to come up with the training program. This person creates the templates, storyboards and diagrams necessary to facilitate training through the electronic medium.
• Graphic Designer: The graphic designer is the person who creates all the graphical elements of the eLearning program. This person makes the buttons, the background pictures, and anything else that isn’t explicitly textual.
• Multimedia Designer: Sometimes called the “New Media” designer, the multimedia designer is the person who is responsible for creating and editing digital movies, programming Flash movies, or working with 3-dimensional animation software to create simulations and other effects. Many times, the Graphic Designer and the Multimedia Designer are the same person.
• Developer: This person receives the information and training program information from the instructional designer, the graphics from the graphic designer and the multimedia from the multimedia designer and programs the training.

Read more »

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.

During my ASTD Essentials webinar series this past week, several people asked about the fundamentals of good eLearning design and where they could go to learn the basics of good eLearning design. I joked that I can teach you to mash buttons in Flash, Dreamweaver and Photoshop, but I can't teach you to have that "eye". However, there are some resources that can give you a jump start.

Technology for Trainers
by Thomas Toth (Me)
Yeah, I have to start with my book. Sorry about the shameless plug. It's really a great foundational book that's easy to read. It's only 182 pages and I have a whole chapter dedicated to the elements of a good interface. However, if you want to dive into a monster of a book, then:

Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime
by William Horton
This is a monster book - 640 pages - but its really good stuff. This book has been called a good reference book, I find it chock full of ideas on developing good eLearning.

Multimedia Based Instructional Design
by William Lee and Diana Owens
While a bit dated (original printing was 2000, this is the 2004 update), this book provides you with the templates, storyboards and other paper-based tools to help you organize your multimedia and online learning elements. I used this quite a bit during my early years.

Anything by Michael Allen
Michael Allen is widely considered to be an eLearning guru. I find his books excite me and challenge the way I think. Although I challenge some of the things he says, suggests and does, I find that anyone who can make me think is someone I enjoy associating with.

There are also some very good books on web design in general, but from an eLearning perspective, these are good places to start!

Would anyone be interested in videos, tutorials or seminars on the elements of good eLearning design? I hope to put some of this stuff on myelearningguru.com (the stinky Joomla project...still in development...grr...), but what about synchronous sessions? Maybe an online class or two? Let me know if you would be interested in something like this. Post a comment or contact me directly!

Now, go build something cool!

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.

Since the ASTD TK show, people have been hot on these three software packages: Articulate, Captivate and Lectora. On my webinar series, with email and via twitter, people have been asking me about these packages. Here is my summary of each - I actually replied to someone on LinkedIn about a month ago. Here is a copy of that interaction.

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I have been fascinated by the Joomla and Drupal development environments for a long time. I just never took the plunge and learned either. In my business, I do all the design work, the graphic work and the multimedia work and if the back end programming gets to sticky, I turn it over to my developers.

Joomla and Drupal have created web applications that become your content management system and back end plug in system. Anything that makes the back end programming less painful is great for me. If it is great for me, then I'm sure that it would be great for eLearning developers who are intimidated by this web stuff.

So, last night I took the plunge and launched www.myelearningguru.com as a Joomla installation. I picked up a good book on Joomla (Beginning Joomla) and installed on my new web host. I did nothing to it yet, so if you visit it, you can see the standard installation files. Keep visiting, because I hope to blog about the changes there, as well as talk about my experiences with Joomla.

What do programs like Joomla and Drupal do for the eLearning developer? Well, hosted content management, over 100 plug-ins and integration with standard web technologies make me envision the rapid development of internal training portals. For companies that don't want to invest in a LMS or SharePoint platform, maybe these tools can be used in that situation. However, as I work with the tool, I will undoubtedly come up with lots of ideas. From a strictly LMS perspective, I will be talking about Moodle soon, but because I don't want the My Elearning Guru site to be purely LMS, I thought I'd try Joomla. Maybe I could have a Drupal site, and then have a Moodle installation to run the demos on the same site? If I try that, I'll be sure to let you know.

Well, wish me luck. Visit www.myelearningguru.com often and you can witness the development of a Joomla site and a Joomla learning experience all rolled up into one hot mess!