KerryJ's Neotenous Tech

As e-learning is now mainstream and initiatives like Skills for All is encouraging people to seek out training, I’m finding a significant number of our new students undertaking e-learning lack some basic skills.

When we endeavour to troubleshoot issues, it seems to take longer to help people, they are getting easily confused and can’t always get to where they need to go.  

Some of this can obviously be chalked up to brains going into panic mode, lack of experience, cognitive overload – but it was happening too often for these to be the only reasons.

I changed tack with some of the learners who lived locally and invited them come into the office.  I found that there were two issues I hadn’t considered.

One, was that people lacked the basic vocabulary that would allow them to interact with the people attempting to help them.  When a support person asks a client or student what version their browser is and the students do not know what a browser is – you are lacking a valuable shared vocabulary.

Another bizarre issue I’ve had is students telling me they can get to our web site just fine from the email link – but not when I am talking them through typing it into their browser. Even allowing for spelling errors. I discovered there are people who might say on their pre-course IT skills surveys they’ve used the internet for years — but have been using their browsers incorrectly.

So, I’ve created a video that I hope will help my fellow e-learning designers, online facilitators and their learners and clients. The video introduces the very basics of using the top three browsers used by laptops and desktops: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla FireFox.  

In making the video for The Klevar Group, I learned that all three could do a better job for n00bs in terms of navigation and common settings. I also decided to make one video showing all three browsers because I feel it’s important for people to see more than one in action. There are some web sites that don’t work well with Google Chrome but do with Internet Explorer and vice versa so I know I need both.

I hope you find this helpful.

There is a really sloppy habit creeping into rhetoric used by so-called authorities that is not only sloppy but manipulative.  It is going unchallenged and it needs to BE challenged by the public where possible and journalists whenever it comes up in interviews or stories.

Read the rest of this entry »

The not for profit that I work for is doing some research into gambling and gaming (for background see Crikey’s article from 15 November 2012http://blogs.crikey.com.au/game-on/2012/11/15/gambling-on-a-game-fifa-13-and-virgin-gaming/ ). They could really use some first person perspectives on this to wrap their heads around what’s happening. 

• Have you or any gamers in your life run into advertisements for gaming in your games? 
• Has gambling actually been a part of game play within a game you tried? 
• What about any apps or snack/short games? 
• Have you or a friend/family member made or lost real money in these games? 
• Is there someone in your life that has become addicted to gambling through gaming? 
• Or, have you researched gaming and gambling and have resources you’d be willing to share? 

Please leave a comment below and please share it if you know someone who could share some insights with us – and via Twitter if you’re comfy doing that. We’d really like to get some conversations started. If you’d like to share some info but don’t want to do it publicly, send an email to c.ralfs@rasa.org.au

PHOTO: PKR.com Screenshot by John Seb Barber, CC (by)

Another messy blog post that’s all about things I want/need to remember…

1) It caches like STEEL TRAP. If you make changes, you need to click Preview to see them. Just changing, saving and hitting play will not always show your new edits.
2) To bring in bullet points one by one, you need to choose an animation type in the animation tab – then select – by first level paragraph.
3) Video embedded in the slides will not provide the option to expand to full screen. If you have small details, you will need to upload your video and may be able to embed the player – YouTube works a treat. I was unable to do so using our proprietary media server Viostream as its player requires javascript be embedded in the header tags of page templates. Just trying to trigger Javascript didn’t work.
4) CTL Z doesn’t work as expected. I found I bounced back to previous slides. Not sure why this happens, but don’t assume it will work as expected.
5) Don’t assume the sound quality you hear as you edit or preview is the final version. It is a compressed preview version – you need to publish to hear the full quality.
6) Javascript doesn’t work in Preview mode. Test slides with Javascript by copying them into their own project and publishing.
7) Set text boxes to “Do Not Autofit” – this sometimes doesn’t seem to stick between computers.
8) If using a line in mic for screen captures, go to screen capture mode, Turn off mic (line in won’t come up as an option anyway, I disabled my mic in Windows 7 just to be sure), select your line in as SPEAKER.
9) When timing several objects on screen to audio, where possible, record audio in chunks and match up to events.
10) Watch for events that aren’t timed to last until end of screen if you want them there. Some are set to appear for a set length of time and won’t allow you to adjust slide duration. Others cut out just before the end and disappear.
11) When shortening the length of a slide, if an event has a fixed time it will blow past its cue point so that it can stay on for its set length of time.
12) Set up a name for the variable you want to change that you’ll remember – the more generic, the more margin for error. Ensure you’re changing a T/F value or text as relevant.
13) Trigger order matters! Where possible, find a template that does what you want and backward engineer it. There are loads out there programmed by clever people.
14) To pull out MP4 vidoes when using Storyline for screen captures, you should set up a New Project first, just for your screen capture. Once a screen capture is complete, you’ll insert it into a slide – pick the single slide option – then need to go back up to screen capture, act like you want to insert it again, but this time right click on the video you see and save it as MP4.
15) If you plan on publishing Storyline as a SCORM package in an LMS, you will need to program the Next key on your last slide to Exit.
16) If you plan on publishing Storyline as a SCORM package in an LMS,the end message “The content has ended. You may close this window” isn’t useful for Moodle courses. To change it, publish it but DON’T EXIT THE PROJECT and DON’T ZIP. Go to the folder where the output was published, open the named folder, go to te LMS folder, right click on the Goodbye.html file and open in your fav editor (I use Notepad ++). Edit the message to something like “To return to the main course page, click on the course name in the horizontal text navigation at the top left of this page.” Save the file and close it. Go back to the Articulate project and THEN zip the project using the options in the publishing window there. Then, upload the zip to Moodle. You could of course get fancy and program a button or link to link directly back to the course page…

A very quick post to share an issue we just uncovered this morning.

I’ve had 3 students complain that since the upgrade to Moodle 2.3, they aren’t seeing their course correctly. With one student, I spent half an hour going through her browser set up, ensuring Javascript was enabled, content settings weren’t restrictive – nothing.

The course uses the Collapsed Topics course format.

Then this morning in a face to face session, one student showed a second student the issues she was having. The second student logged into the web site using the first students’ computer and had no issues.  A third student in the session is also having issues. Our facilitator came to me, very excited and told me about it and I looked at each student’s profile. The ones having problems both had Screen Reader marked as YES in their Profile Settings.

I changed the user settings on my test student account to match and logged in using Google Chrome, then FireFox then Internet Explorer. Sure enough, the page layout was askew.  I changed it back, no issues. So, I’ve updated the profiles of all the students who were having issues!

Yay and what a relief! My facilitator really likes Collapsed topics as a course format and I would have hated to switch students over in their first few weeks.