W4_Basecamp

Basecamp

PE5_Basecamp

Welcome to Hanger Way Productions! The first interface is typical of any log-in website. The user must provide their user mane and password.

Once you enter the website, you will enter the dashboard which compiles a summary of scheduled events and projects. The visual presentation is simple and clean. It is easy to read and navigate. The dashboard has a To-Do tab and a Calendar. In order to add a new person or company you click on the all people tab and it will take you to a screen that allows you to add a person or company.

Click on the button that you choose and fill in the information requested .

 
The person/company is sent an email to invite them to the website, the person accepts or not accepts and then an invite is sent back to the website to create a communication link between the two entities.

If you want to create a new project, you click on to the new project tab. The projects are listed to the right. Once you click on to the project it takes you to the Project Dashboard. Within Project Dashboard, you can add messages to the team members, create to do lists (and give the list a name), create new events within the calendar, and add milestones of the project. There is also a Writeboards tab. This helps the team create documents and share ideas within written literature that tracks all of the composers’ ideas and thoughts. There is also a time tab that tallies how much time is spent on the project. The files tab allows team member to share files, documents, images, movies, screenshots, presentations, designs, or any other type of file.  Overall, this looks like an excellent collaboration tool to control and manage projects. It gives the team the ability to collaborate over long distances and not have to worry about taking notes, faxing, scanning, emailing, or sending by snail mail.

PE4_Basecamp

Basecamp

This is a project management tool. I've been looking for something like this for about a year. To keep track of all the projects we do seems extremely difficult at times. What I find is that when two different organizations track a project together something usually goes awry.

Today is my first day of setting up an account and getting the basics going.

We have several projects going right now. This would be a great way for those involve in the projects to keep on track together. So far I have set up three people and myself to have access to this tool. Once I set them up inside of Basecamp the program automatically sends out notifications to them to sign up. I also posted a message in the message board to all of them. Hopefully everyone will respond and we will be able to move forward with this tool.

What I like so far is the ease of inputting a new project. It only takes minutes to do this function. Once a new project is set up it only takes a few minutes to add new people to the project. No matter what time of the day someone form the project can add to it. If someone wants to add notes or appointments it's just a few minutes of work. Also different files types can be shared through this tool. So far it seems very useful.

BP7_Xtranormal

Embedded Video for Xtranormal

BP6_Debbie's_Blog

Follow this link to my comments on Debbie's blog.

BP5_Joe's_Blog

Follow this link to my comments on Joe's blog.

BP4_Xtranormal

Xtranormal

This is a tool called Xtranormal. It is another animation tool that I have discovered. 

  There are many different uses for this tool. What I'm going for is creating animated characters and adding voice overs. Then using a green screen background removing the green screen and placing any background  I want to behind the animated character. 

The process was somewhat annoying inside of Xtranormal. Although this is a great web 2.0 tool and I will definitely use it I'm looking more for real live looking face animations. I did find one called Alterego but it was only pc based, that sucks. Anyway like I was saying annoying, not difficult but annoying. It took awhile to figure out how to export it out of Xtranormal into a file I can import into Adobe After Effects. Once I figured this out game was on.

 Adobe After Effects

Once in After effects I use what's called keylight to remove the green background. Then I imported a picture file and used it as a background.

Once this process is done I'm able to export out of After Effects and place anywhere I want to. The possibilities are endless with this type of technology and creativity. What I will eventually use this process of animation for is when creating e-leaning environments for professional development the use of an animated character will give a more dynamic and engaging layer to the whole presentation.

I can vision many uses for this type of animating, for instance lets say we are creating a series for some type of specific procedure and we have shot the video for the project. Let's say the video is great but there is a specific part of the video that needs enhanced and demonstrated more. First we can create an animated character to pop in over the video an explain the need for this emphasis and now the lesson will be directed in a different way for awhile. At this point the character goes away and the video stops and the lesson may go to some type of flash animation to demonstration in further detail the procedure. Again when the enhanced demonstration is complete the animated character will pop back in and give the learner some new options, two of which will be to go back and review what was just went over or to continue back to the original video. 

There are many uses for this type of animation. Looking forward to implementing it very soon.

PE3.5_Captivate

Adobe Captivate

Here is another video of my lessons from Captivate. When I converted to an mp4 file it lost one of the functions of the click button to move forward. The learner is suppose to have to click on the button to move forward in the presentation but for some reason after the conversion it just automatically moves forward. Doesn't really matter at this point the publishing tutorial comes latter on, I just jumped the gun to get it on my blog.

The audio and and video portion of the Captivate tutorial unleashes the power of this e-learning creation tool. Voice-overs can be added along with any type of video that can be created. The creativity is endless as to what can be created. Audio and video can be edited to match slides or other components that can be added into the presentation. There is a function that video can be synchronized with any other element that can be input into Captivate. Also you can create closed captions inside Captivate.

There is still at least 3 to 31/2 hours left to go. In addition to the training left on lynda what I have found from my previous experience is to get as many different training tutorials as I can. I have found that there is always something different to learn form one trainer to the next even though they are training on the same software.

PE3_Captivate

Adobe Captivate

Even though I'm a little over 3 hours into the captivate training it still feels like power-point to me. I know it can do way more, I've seen the demos and it's incredible. There is still over 4 1/2 hours of training to go. The next chapter to go through is adding audio and video. This will be one of my most exciting features to work with inside of Captivate. 

I did have a strange experience with Adobe help. Inside of captivate there is a feature called roundtripping. This means that you can move the project currently being worked on in Captivate to other Adobe products. For instance if you want to make some changes to a photo inside of 

captivate you can send it directly do Photoshop make the changes and it will automatically be updated inside of Captivate. This is a great workflow solution to help speed everything up. 

The catch is you have to purchase what is called the Adobe e-learning suite which is a little over $1300.00. What I find strange is that everything in the e-learning suite with the exception of Adobe Presenter is already installed on my MacBookPro with Adobe Master Collection. So I tried this roundtripping feature with the idea that I already have these Adobe products installed. it did not work. I called Adobe help desk and they told me that I would have to buy the e-learning suite for the roundtripping feature to work, the code is built into the system you buy not the individual programs. They went on to say I would have to uninstall my Master Collection and install my e-learning suite. I told them there are programs inside the Master Collection that I use everyday and I cannot do this. I even pointed out that it is impossible to have two different copies of the same program on my machine, they agreed. They had no answer at this point.

They said my ticket will be sent to sales and they may be able to help. After I hung up with the help desk I received an e-mail from that specific thicket that said my case has been resolved and it's been closed. So now I will have to do some more digging to see if there is a resolution for this issue. Regardless this will not be a hindrance for my ability to use Captivate with other Adobe products. I will just have to go the traditional route of taking one project to another program.

PE2_Captivate

Adobe Captivate

Here is my second post for captivate. At this point it looks a little like power-point but I'm still at the beginning and there is a lot to go. I've learned how to create text and add different text styles. Learned how to add shapes and different types of images files.  You can align anything in Captivate that you want to. I really like how it feels and acts like other Adobe products. While you are creating a project you can preview it at any time. What I did to get it up on my blog was what Captivate call publishing. This seems like another word for export, make a movie, render and I'm sure there are many more names to come up with. The default file type is .swf which is flash. I chose to go with mp4. There is much more to go, at this point I'm really excited about the potential for this type of technology.

PE1_Captivate

Adobe Captivate

Hello to all, this is my learning experience with a new program from Adobe called Captivate. I'm familiar with other Adobe products so the interface was not so intimidating. This is a screenshot taken from a tutorial inside of lynda.com. At this point in the tutorial I'm only on chapter 3 beginning of 3rd video. I must say even though I am not intimidated by the interface it was a rough start. I took me about 2 hours to figure out how to link the filmstrip slides with the master slides. I went through the part of the tutorial on lynda that I believed was suppose to explain this process but did not get this process to work. I then turned to adobe tv and found a specific video labeled how to work with master slides. I saw the same thing here as I did on lynda. So then I called adobe help desk. At first I did not know if they were going to charge me there $39.95 on time incident fee but because this is a 30 day free trial of the software I get some free help with it. Anyway After the help guy asked me a bunch of questions we finally got to my problem. The way he explained it to me seems a little different than what is on the tutorials. Nevertheless he helped me figure it out and I was able to move forward.

To make it easy to quickly understand what Adobe Captivate is I took this right of the Adobe Captivate website.

What is Adobe Captivate 5.5?

Adobe® Captivate® 5.5 software is the industry-leading elearning authoring software for rapidly creating and maintaining interactive eLearning content. Import your existing Microsoft PowerPoint content and make it more engaging with rich media, application simulations, branching scenarios, and quizzes. Easily publish to leading SCORM- and AICC-compliant Learning Management Systems and track key performance metrics.