Caddickisms

I Googled my head off for help with this last night and couldn’t come up with anything, so I thought I’d put this out there for those of you who want to put your head through your monitor because Captivate is driving you insane.

Yesterday I was editing a recording I made in Adobe Captivate 2. It was only 18 frames, about 7 minutes long, and is a demo of a system we use at work. Should have been a slam dunk.

The Problem

For the most part, everything went fine until I published the file to SWF with HTML. But when I played back the published file, at about the 5th frame, the audio gained a very pronounced echo which lasted a couple frames, and then left the rest of the audio sounding like it was in a tin can.

I figured, “hmm… must be a glitch,” so I published it again. Same thing, but this time the problems happened on different frames.

I tried publishing again after changing a couple publishing settings: same effect - screwed up audio on different frames. Each time I published (about 8 times total) the audio was screwed up in a different way, and I never edited the file between publishes.

Needless to say I was a bit frustrated.

The Solution

I tossed out a rather annoyed email to a co-worker, who responded this morning with the answer (and it’s at this point that I have to say to her again: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!).

Apparently she had run across the problem before. I don’t know how she figured it out, but the answer is to adjust the slide timing slightly using the Audio > Edit Timing… feature.

The Edit Audio Timing window lets you grab a slider indicating the start time for an effect or frame change. Grab any one of those sliders and move it slightly (my suggestion is to be more zoomed in than shown here so you really are only moving it slightly). Click OK, then republish and everything comes out fine.

One thing you might want to do is verify that none of the timing of objects on your slides changed. It could happen, so make sure you check.

Why this works is a mystery to me, but there you have it. Hope it helps someone.

Related posts

• Video games and simulations (0)
• Training Mistakes (1)
• Tips from CommonCraft (0)
• SkillSoft buys NETg (1)
• Replace Adobe Captivate for free? (0)

Were you paying attention in those psychology classes?

Do you remember the experiments where a rat was trained to press a lever to get food?

It’s amazing how relevant experiments on rats can be to parenting.

In pursuing my psychology degree, I took a lab where I had to perform that experiment myself. I had a rat of my own, which I named - very appropriately, I thought - Rat (hey, if it’s good enough for George of the Jungle, it’s good enough for me).

The first goal of the experiment was to get the rat to understand that pressing a lever meant getting food. There were other goals once that was accomplished, but let’s focus on that goal for now.

Rat was just not getting it. Either that, or he was just really, really stubborn. I spent many nights in that lab until well after midnight faithfully recording him doing nothing of interest (which eventually translated into a graph that crossed enough pages of graph paper to run the length of our dormitory hallway). Eventually, however, he started to get the picture. When he made a move toward the lever, I dropped him a food pellet. If he moved a little closer, he got another pellet. Brushed against the lever? Another pellet. Touched it intentionally? Another pellet. Pressed it completely? More pellets. This process took a long time - but when it worked, it worked. Eventually, getting him to stop pressing the lever (phase 2 of the experiment) was even harder.

That process of rewarding Rat for each progressive step closer to the goal is called “successive approximation.” At first, he didn’t have to press the lever to get food, he just had to look at the lever. Once he got that, he had to make progress toward the larger goal before he’d get his food. Looking at it was no longer enough. He had to move close to it. Eventually, he’s feeding himself by pressing the lever. This teaching method, it has been proven time and time again, works.

Flash-forward almost 20 years. I don’t think about Rat often. But I did today.

My three-year-old daughter has become a very picky eater. It’s gotten to the point that it’s commonplace for my wife to make two different dinners every night - one for “Little Mommy” and one for the rest of us. Last week we decided that would stop. Little Mommy was going to learn to eat what we gave her.

It didn’t go so well for the first 4 days. We had a complete meltdown just getting the compromised 1/8″ square piece of grilled cheese near her mouth. Much drama ensued at that meal. Food flew; screams were loosed. The next day we were visiting friends and despite some earnest attempts at cajoling on all of our parts, no progress was made by us parents (she succeeded in manipulating us, however, which was a setback). The following day we were back at it, though there was much less drama. Finally, today, at lunch, Rat came to mind.

Oddly, it was grilled cheese again. This time, instead of reducing the size of the task, my wife tried something different. She put some soy-butter, Little Mommy’s favorite - on a small part of the top of the sandwich. While that was promptly licked off, I decided to start eating crackers I knew Little Mommy liked. When she asked for one, I said “Sure. Just lick the sandwich - but not on the soy-butter part.” After some whining, she did it, and I gave her a cracker. The next step was to get her to eat just a bite of the sandwich to get another cracker. She couldn’t have gotten a smaller bite if she used a laser scalpel, but she did take a bite, so she got another cracker.

Now we’re at the breaking point. Lots of accolades went along with that last cracker. She’s all proud of herself. Now we push. “Okay, if you take four bites, you can have another cracker.” She likes counting, too, so we all counted the bites, which - without any prompting - got bigger, and bigger, until bite number 4 was actually too much to have in her mouth at once. But as I gave her the cracker, I knew we had finally prevailed. She herself suggested the next goal would be five bites, which she attacked with gusto. With almost nothing left to the sandwich, and praises all around, she had finally eaten the same lunch as everyone else.

I guarantee that without using that successive approximation of licking, to infinitesimally small bites, to larger bites, we’d still have no progress.

Have we won the war? Nope. We’ll probably be able to get her to eat grilled cheese again with minimal effort, but I’m sure that any other “new” food she tries will take at least some degree of that same process.  But we now have a strategy that works. After 4 days of failure with alternate strategies (yelling, bribing, punishing, & others), I’m thrilled to be making progress.

Related posts

• Whatever you do… (0)
• Woman grows onto toilet seat (0)
• Who’s that wall-crawler?! (0)
• What I’ve been thinking (0)
• We are insignificant (0)

The Learning Circuits Blog: Scope of Learning Responsibility

What is the Scope of our Responsibility as Learning Professionals?

That’s the question of the month, and it’s clarified a bit in the above linked post:

• Do educational institutions and corporate learning & development departments have responsibility for supporting Long Tail Learning? Do they have responsibility for learning beyond what can be delivered through instruction? If so, what is their responsibility? Where is the edge of responsibility?
• Similarly, does the instructor have a responsibility to help students make sense of or deal with content he or she did not teach the students? In other words, if a student finds information on the Internet or some other place, how much time and attention should the instructor allow for the discussion of such content? Should it be discussed at all if it is non-conventional or generally thought of as not credible or contradicts the instructor? Who determines credible research? Is all non-referred research questionable?

I’m taking “Long Tail Learning” as meeting the ever expanding niche development needs of ever smaller populations in an organization. For most organizations, the training department is stretched pretty thin and has to concentrate on those development needs that either meet the needs of the largest populations or have the biggest impact on either costs or sales (that’s currently where the line of responsibility is set for most organizations). That means some departments are on their own for development needs - sometimes even their most important needs - because the training department doesn’t have the bandwidth to help. Then you’ve got the training topics that fit into that large group, but have variations for each sub-group within the larger population. Where does the training department’s responsibility fall for these groups? How do you design (and should you design) training that covers those needs?

Ideally, obviously, the answer is that in a perfect world the training department would be able to support the learning needs of everyone in the organization at all times. So I’m taking that as my starting point. Ideally, everything an employee needs to know in an organization, from literacy to how to run a business unit, would be the responsibility of the training department.

Realistically, that’s not going to happen, but that would be my ideal goal.

Now, we need to consider what “responsible” means. To some that might mean the training department directly owns and delivers all the content. That’s not what I mean. I mean that the training department is responsible for enabling the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities through any and all means necessary. That could be as simple as making sure an authoritative source for a given topic is available to someone - a book, a website, a mentor, a trainer, a vendor, etc. - to as complex as training a person or persons to be that authoritative source or creating a new course. If someone has a question about where to get training on something, the training department should be able point to a source for that training, whether they created it or not.

This is where the power of community software (or Web 2.0) comes into play. The training department obviously can’t keep track of all those training needs for themselves. Once you reach a critical mass ratio of training professionals to employees, the job just becomes too much to track for the training department by itself to meet the ideal goal. But if the training department can work with the IT department to create and structure community/networking software to enable those connections to be made with input from other departments, with oversight by the training team, then you’re suddenly much closer to the ideal. It’s important that the individual departments feel empowered to make contributions to this site, otherwise you’re back to the training team needing to come up with everything. If someone has a question, you look it up on the community-driven “solutions” site and either point to the right resource, if it exists, or begin to create the plan for getting it.

Now, how do you make sure the sources/solutions derived from the site are authoritative? To some extent you can probably rely on the community to police that itself, but that’s why the training department has oversight of the community site. They should validate the sources, or have the sources validated by a Subject Matter Expert.

To get to the second bullet of the original questions, how much time do you spend discussing information found on non-approved locations? That’s a pretty hard question, because it could be perfectly valid, and possibly even superior, information. I would say that if you’re in a course, you’re generally on a schedule and are teaching a “standard” practice of some kind that has been vetted and agreed upon. Challenges to that standard should be welcomed, but shouldn’t interfere with class time. If a short discussion isn’t enough to smooth over any discrepancies, I’d drop it into a “parking lot” or into the discussion forum or community software for evaluation and validation. If a change to the standard is warranted based on the new information, it should be implemented with thanks.

The really short version of what I’m saying here is that it’s the training department’s responsibility to enable learning, but it’s the individual departments and employees who truly have the responsibility for learning. The training team should make avenues available, but it’s up to the individuals to use the tools and opportunities provided to take responsibility for their own learning.

I think there’s one other thing implied in the original question: how do you prove that you’re meeting your “responsibility” to provide quality sources? What’s the measurement? It’s certainly not “butts in seats,” which is what many executives ask for. I honestly don’t have a quick answer for this part, though. I’m more in the camp of, “if it’s working, you’ll know” but that’s not generally enough for most executives.

Related posts

• Training vs. Learning (0)
• SkillSoft buys NETg (1)
• Media and technology issues for learning and persuasion (0)
• Interviewing for creativity (1)
• I’m a casualty of war (0)

I had the opportunity to visit the blog connected to Oprah’s “A New Earth” course on Eckhart Tolle’s book. I’ve been looking at this training experience over the last few weeks from the perspective of a corporate training professional. You can see my thoughts on the recorded sessions and the live sessions as well.

Something that is hard to get across to executives who see blogs as strictly online personal journals is how a blog can be used in a training setting. I’ve not found any good examples of blogs being used for corporate internal (or external, really) training either — probably because those blogs would be internally accessible and blocked from outside access, but I’ve also not seen much usage indicated in industry surveys, so I think blog usage in training is relatively small, unfortunately.

Oprah’s course is the first example I’ve seen of a blog being used for training purposes, so I finally have an example of at least one method of using a blog for training. The method they’ve chosen seems to be a “summarize the session” format, though it’s a bit early to tell how it’s going to go long term.

The good

• They’re using a blog! The advantage of this over just a discussion board is focus and (hopefully) expertise - at least the way it’s being used here. While a discussion board has it’s strengths, a new reader can get overwhelmed with the number of new topics and responses potentially created at any given time, and it may not have an acknowledged expert participating in each thread. A blog has a focused “article” written by someone who has some involvement with the course, or at least subject matter. So a new user not only has a relatively linear path to follow, but a set of expert thoughts along that path.
• They’re pulling some of the comments from previous entries to incorporate into subsequent posts. This is a key to involvement and investment of the student reading the blog. If there is no acknowledgement that the author is reading the comments, they run the risk of becoming faceless and uncaring in the student’s eyes. Using reader comments pulls the readers into a community where they’ll feel more like openly sharing because they’re involved in the conversation.
• They keep the posts at a reasonable length. This is obviously subjective, but the longer the post, the fewer people will read the whole thing. Posts that are too short are meaningless. Finding that middle ground of covering the points you need to hit while not blathering on is hard to do.
• The writing is conversational. Cold, impersonal writing, of the kind typically found in many training materials, frequently saps the energy from the material and makes it harder to read. People like to feel like they’re in a conversation, so they’ll typically pay closer attention to relaxed writing and will forgive a grammatical mistake here or there. (Won’t you?)
• They are extending and expanding on the main points of the session being covered. This serves both to provide more ways to think about the material, and simply as a reminder of the main points.

The bad

• Only one post a week? I’d like to see a little more reinforcement of the points than that. Not a whole lot more, but one more post a week would certainly be an improvement. Keep the conversation and reinforcement flowing.
• No involvement in the comment threads. They pull some of the comments for the next post, as I said, but it would also be nice to hear from the expert mid-thread, just to let everyone know you’re invested. Especially if you’re only posting once a week. There’s no need to respond to every comment - that would be overkill once you pass a certain number of comments - but hit a couple every now and then.
• Formatting is not used well. In fact, there is virtually no formatting in the posts beyond paragraph breaks. Don’t be afraid to use headings, bullets, italics, or something to help the reader scan the posts. This would be especially helpful for responding to comments - figure out some way to set off the quotes you’re pulling from the comments. Most blog software makes that automatic, so it’s not hard, and it’s disappointing they aren’t paying more attention to readability.
• Use graphics. I fail miserably with this here, but the Oprah blog could benefit from something visual incorporated into the posts, too.
• The title font should be bigger. This sounds kind of picky, I know, but the title should at least be the same font size as the body text. It appears as if the titles are a smaller font, but bolded, which throws me off when I’m scanning.

In all, I’d say they’re making a good effort, and hitting some important usage points, but there’s certainly room for improvement in some pretty simple areas.

Related posts

• Oprah’s Online Training - live experience review (0)
• Oprah’s Online Training - experience review (2)
• The Simple Dollar - and other personal finance links (1)
• Links from Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations Day 1 (0)
• LinkList: Generic edition (0)

Well, I was on the live session tonight (read about my experience with last week’s recorded session). For the most part, as I expected, the experiences were the same. There were some bumps in the data stream early on (and once later), but it got ironed out within about 15 minutes, so I was satisfied with the transmission itself. I was very worried at the beginning because the resolution was dropping significantly at times to the point where I couldn’t make out faces. They took care of that, but then there were instances where the audio and video froze and I lost part of the conversation for 5 seconds at a time. As I said, though, those issues were pretty well hammered out quickly.

I loved that they ran segments from the previous session prior to the live session, along with a countdown to the live session. Excellent reinforcement and review, and great setting of expectation.

It’s a seriously slick production, visually, and I really wouldn’t expect any less from a TV production studio. There have to be at least 3 or 4 cameras in that studio.  I have to imagine they’re using at least the same amount of production staff for this that they use for Oprah’s TV show - probably more to accommodate the internet interface.

Overall, all of the “good and bad” points I mentioned in my last post are still valid, except the audio for the commercials, which were included in the stream - and only at the very top of the show, instead of sprinkled throughout as in the recorded session - so there was no volume incongruity.

I was disappointed that there was no back channel chat, though it can be distracting.

The interface for asking a question was imposing. You had to enter your full name, full address, email address, and phone number - all required. There was no “email” link that I saw, so it’s very possible that the producers would call you to ask your question on the phone (a possibility with which I was uncomfortable). That’s one way to cut down on the questions you get, which I suppose would be important for an audience of this size.

Oprah did plug a follow-up XM radio show immediately after the session for members with access to that. That’s pretty cool that they are extending the conversation that way, but really, as I said before, why not promote the online interactive pieces? They’re more widely available and easier to participate in.

I did spend some time on the discussion board today as well, in the Aha! section. There was certainly plenty of participation. Much of it was on point, too. There was some noise, and arguments flared up here and there, but with a topic this controversial that’s to be expected. I haven’t gotten out to the blog yet. It should be interesting to see how that’s being run.

Overall, looking at this experience from the perspective of a corporate training professional focused on online delivery, it has been an interesting ride so far. I’m picking up some ideas for how I’d like to run a program internally that I hadn’t thought through previously. The online workbook is an “aha” experience for me, for example. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. There are obviously some things I’m not going to be able to do - the multiple cameras and nice studio, for example (heck, even live streaming video is out of my reach at the moment) - but there are also things I think our team can do better. Structuring the sessions and moderating the discussion forums come to mind.

Technorati Tags: Oprah, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle, distance learning, e-learning, online

Related posts

• Oprah’s Online Training - experience review (2)
• Re-igniting passion (0)
• Oprah’s Online Training - Part 3: The blog (0)
• Free Online Corporate Learning Conference (0)
• Corporate Learning Forum - why? (2)

I’m currently watching the recorded version of Oprah’s first session of her “class” on A New Earth, which is about “new spirituality”. For the purposes of this post, however, the topic is irrelevant. What I’m interested in is how it’s being pulled off as an example of a massive, live, online facilitated event.

This is, I believe, the single largest event of its kind (Oprah says there are over 700,000 people connected to the course), and it’s being run by people who undoubtedly have the resources to pull it off, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

I had to download a proprietary player, which isn’t unusual for this kind of event. When I tried to get into the event (late, because I had some other commitments) for the live broadcast, everything launched, except the video/audio. Later I found out that was a common issue, because they ran into issues with so many people simultaneously trying to access the ‘class’. Nice to know the huge boys (not just the big boys) have the same problems we all do.

So I gave up.

Now I’ve gone back and am watching the recorded version in preparation for part 2, which begins tonight. I’m actually glad I got blocked out, because now I get to contrast the live vs recorded experience. As for the recorded experience:

The good

• I’m getting no problems with the video or audio. Very smooth. Very clean. (I’m running through a cable modem, and the player reports I’m getting 706kpbs.)
• The integration of Skype video phones is nice, and done very cleanly. (There’s a whole production staff making that integration happen, I’m sure, but the technology is out there and available.)
• The presentation style is obviously interview, call-in show style, which is pretty engaging, though it’s still a presentation and not an interactive format (well, there are punctuations of interactivity for individuals, but not group-wide interaction). Still, I can understand doing that for an initial session. It doesn’t hurt that the presenter is an extremely talented and experienced interviewer (Oprah).
• Nice integration of the callers’ inputs - Skype phone, phone, and email (though it’s funny that there was apparently a problem with getting an email to Oprah’s private screen at one point).
• Extra-session activities: this is where the whole thing really gets exciting. Behind the “Talk with Others” link on the player, you get to a page that points you to discussion boards, a course-focused blog, and a way to find local reading groups. There are even links to specific discussions (Favorite Quotes, and Aha! Moments, specifically) to really focus your involvement for those who aren’t comfortable just browsing through aimlessly. This is such an important part of the experience - this is where the interaction and personal investment pays off, and likely where the most actual learning occurs. Providing these tiered ways to get involved (watching, reading, commenting, discussing) is what is going to make this a success.
• Workbooks and exercises: Questions are presented, suggestions for ways to apply the concepts are given, and there is a place for you to respond and record your thoughts privately, in addition to the public outlets. It’s a directed study-guide. So important.

The bad

• Commercials. Don’t put commercials in my classes. It makes it feel even more like a TV show.
• Lack of audio control (or consistency of audio) for the commercials. I have my computer’s audio turned up because of some other audio programs I use. I turned the volume down on the course player to an acceptable level. When the commercials come on, there are no controls, and the audio jumps back to default levels. The first time that happened it almost blew my ears off.
• Not mentioning the “extra session” materials during the session (except for one off-handed mention of the discussion boards). An orientation to the overall structure of the course, not just the presentation, would have been a great add to the first session. That’s a lost opportunity that could have helped involve those who are a little less internet savvy. Tell me how to get involved and make the most of the experience!
• Along the same lines - the lack of an agenda hurt as well. I’d like to see an agenda for the overall class (i.e., topics for each of the 10 sessions), as well as an agenda for each session. How long is the setup/intro? How long are we going to have for Q&A?
• The lack of live interactive moments: polls, for example, would have been of tremendous use in this session. There may be ways to get more interactivity that aren’t obvious in the recorded session (back-room chats, for example), but I’ll have to wait to see if they do that tonight.

Those are my thoughts on the recorded experience. We’ll see how it differs from the live experience I (hopefully) have tonight.

Technorati Tags: Oprah, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle, distance learning, e-learning, online

Related posts

• Oprah’s Online Training - live experience review (0)
• Oprah’s Online Training - Part 3: The blog (0)
• Links from Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations Day 1 (0)
• Free Online Corporate Learning Conference (0)
• Corporate Learning Forum - why? (2)

My company has recently shut down all access to YouTube. I get that. I completely believe that many people are using company time and bandwidth to watch all sorts of inappropriate — or just plain time wasting — content. From a certain perspective, I can support the decision to prevent that from happening.

There is a war between those who would waste company time and resources, and those who are tasked with keeping that from happening.

I am collateral damage.

Part of my job within the training department is to research new content creation and distribution technology, and to integrate that into our training delivery. YouTube is, for better or worse, an important part of that responsibility for two main reasons:

1. It is itself one of the most popular examples of that new technology.
2. Due to it’s popularity, it is used by many other people to showcase their own discoveries and new uses for content and distribution technology - thereby making it a valuable resource for me to do my job.

Information sharing is critical to my job. The ability to see what other people are doing/have done in converging technology and training is a significant way for me to not keep reinventing the wheel. The ability to create and deliver training products that appeal to a culture steeped in these new technologies requires me to have access to these technologies to begin with.

Is YouTube the only way for me to keep up with these advancements and new ideas? Not at all — far from it, actually. For example, blogs are actually a great source for these ideas as well (in fact, here are two that I keep a sharp eye on: e-Learning Technology, and Corporate e-Learning Strategies and Development). The interesting thing about these blogs, though, is that they frequently use embedded movies from YouTube as examples of what they are talking about! I can’t see these things when I’m inside the Corporate firewall, so I’m missing a significant portion of the point!

I’ve also used YouTube videos to help me explain the concepts and technology that I am trying to ’sell’ internally. For example, I used this video to help me showcase the concept of a wiki - and even embedded it in my wiki for the pilot group to see. Now it’s just an unexplained blank space on the page because the video is blocked.

That same video, and others like it, are also good examples I can use with our training team to help think about other ways to create training that may appeal more to a large portion of our employee base. Now I can’t share those examples anymore.

Collaboration, sharing, and openness - that’s where we should be going. That’s what would help us work more efficiently, smarter, and more effectively, in many cases. But the barriers to doing this at a large organization (like mine) are hard to overcome. There are times it feels like I’m fighting an uphill battle. This is just the latest setback.

Blah.

Technorati Tags: corporate IT policies, YouTube, productivity, training, development, new technologies

Related posts

• Media and technology issues for learning and persuasion (0)
• Corporate Gaming: Recruiting and training (1)
• Tips from CommonCraft (0)
• Links from Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations Day 1 (0)
• Defining e-Learning (1)

How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free - New York Times (You may need a free account to read that article)

Okay, I’m on Facebook. I have a love/hate relationship with Social Networking sites. I see the benefit they could offer (though I don’t think it’s truly being realized), but I also see huge opportunities for abuse in multiple areas, including security.

There have been commercials lately, targeted at teens, mostly, that warn about the permanancy of things you post online; once you put them out there, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully take them down. This is another example of the same principle.

The network is still trying to find a way to monetize its popularity, mostly by allowing marketers access to its wealth of demographic and behavioral information. The retention of old accounts on Facebook’s servers seems like another effort to hold onto — and provide its ad partners with — as much demographic information as possible.

“The thing they offer advertisers is that they can connect to groups of people. I can see why they wouldn’t want to throw away anyone’s information, but there’s a conflict with privacy,” said Alan Burlison, 46, a British software engineer who succeeded in deleting his account only after he complained in the British press, to the country’s Information Commissioner’s Office and to the TRUSTe organization, an online privacy network that has certified Facebook.

While I sympathize that the Facebook wants to get some profit out of their business, and they’re certainly entitled to it, there is NO excuse for them refusing to delete my personal data if I specifically request it to be deleted. Throw up any number of confirmations and warnings you want, but when I get to the end of that string, do it. While I’m on the system, do your best to make money off me (ethically, of course, and with full disclosure of methods), but if I want out, I want out of it all. I’m not signing up to be a member for life.

I’ve been hesitant to truly use my Facebook account, and this just reinforces that feeling.

Technorati Tags: social networking, facebook, invasion of privacy, bad business practices

Related posts

• What I’ve been thinking (0)
• The disfiguration of beauty (0)
• Oprah’s Online Training - experience review (2)
• Mind Map of Learning Technologies (4)
• Links from Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations Day 1 (0)

Wink - [Homepage]

Just ran across this free application that could be a replacement for Adobe Captivate, if you’re looking for a quick and dirty way to create software demos. Did I mention it’s free?

Just from the screenshots and incredibly short example, it looks like it does a pretty good job, but isn’t as polished looking as Captivate.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to soon. It might be a decent alternative for Subject Matter Experts who need to do something as a one-off, rather than purchasing a Captivate (or similar tool) license for them.

Technorati Tags: software demonstration, desktop capture, annotation, tech support, training

Related posts

• Video games and simulations (0)
• Training Mistakes (1)
• Tips from CommonCraft (0)
• SkillSoft buys NETg (1)
• Re-igniting passion (0)

Free Royalty Free Music Loops, Free Royalty Free Sound Effects

A couple months ago we completed the first four podcasts our company has produced, for internal training purposes. I’ve mentioned previously some of the testing we did to get them produced, and I’ll probably go into more detail in the future on what process we ended up with and how we intend to move forward. For now, I just want to point out one aspect that took us longer to agree on than I anticipated: music.

Music tastes are really subjective, so it can be hard to get people to agree on what to use. There were only two of us that had to agree, so it could have been worse, but we were trying to find something that wasn’t too intrusive, that we could use repeatedly across different podcasts (a theme, basically), and that wouldn’t drive people nuts when looped. Each of us grabbed our favorite examples off the web and we put them up to a vote. I chose mine from Partners In Rhyme (who have a pretty good selection, IMO - I’m considering getting one of their CDs). My co-worker got hers from the audio section of Microsoft’s Clip Art site. I also just found this site, off the MS site. All have some good stuff.

All of these sites let you hear samples (they’d be dumb not to), and all contain Royalty Free music, which is important if you don’t want to break the law or pay a lot of money. The PIR site has pre-made loops - the MS site is a crap shoot in that department. The link at the top of the post here takes you to a page on the PIR site where you can get free Royalty Free loops, which is nice. The MS site is all free, but you may have to make your own loop out of it (which I ended up doing, and it took forever to get it to sound smooth). You also have to watch that you’re getting the right audio format; stay away from MIDI unless you’re willing to download a separate tool to convert that to WAV or MP3, or some other usable format.

We ended up with a sort of soft “hold music” kind of loop that had just a bit of a future newsroom feel to it (at least that’s how I thought of it) that complimented my co-worker’s voice very nicely.

Does anybody know of any other sources of free music loops? Please share! Post any you know about in the comments.

[Update: found two more sites that are promising:  This one has free loops, and this one has one free score a month (though it looks like an ad banner on the site).]

Technorati Tags: podcasting, free music, corporate training

Related posts

• Podcasting for corporate training example - how I did it (2)
• Podcasting for learning Podcast (0)
• Tips from CommonCraft (0)
• Re-igniting passion (0)
• Odeo podcasting (1)