Category Archives: General Spew

Rustici Acquisition and Open Standards

General Spew, SCORM/xAPI

Open StandardsRustici is a reputable company with a lot of talented folks and deep involvement in eLearning standards such as SCORM and ‘TinCan’ (xAPI !). In fact, so thorough is their involvement and expertise, not only have quite a few other LMS products licensed Rustici’s engines but Adobe migrated Captivate’s entire SCORM (and probably xAPI) engine to Rustici’s implementation…and starting with Captivate 9, they included a specific publishing link to Rustici’s ‘SCORM Cloud’ site. I myself have recommended ‘SCORM Cloud’ countless times as a testing platform for developers’ eLearning content. All in all, Rustici creates industry-leading API engines for the eLearning industry, no doubt.

So I wonder if their acquisition by Learning Technologies Group (LTG) in January 2016 will have any affect on that expertise and dedication. Probably not. Per the Rustici blog, they will “continue to be agnostic, supportive of the standards, and generally the same company we always have been.”
That’s somewhat reassuring. Continue reading Rustici Acquisition and Open Standards →

Intern at Adobe!

General Spew

Adobe Summer InternshipsAdobe has opened the search for Summer Interns. I sure wish this program had been in place (or if it had, that I was aware of it) when I was in grad school. How cool…

The college tour dates started in mid-January, so check quickly to see if they’re coming to your campus or if you’ve already missed them. If so you can surely learn more at their University Recruiting page (and you can look for FT job opportunities there too).

From the page, “We’re looking for interns – undergrads through PhDs – who possess a variety of skills and are eager to make an impact at Adobe.” Continue reading Intern at Adobe! →

Community Connections

eLearning News, General Spew

Adobe-Community-ConnectionsAdobe has recently been making a push to significantly improve the user experience of their community support resources (likely, at least in part, to Articulate’s excellent user-group support forum). Adobe’s relatively new ‘Community Connections‘ page is a add-on to their revamped product communities (i.e. Photoshop, Captivate, and tons of other products).

Per the Community Connections page, Continue reading Community Connections →

eLearning Resources

Academics, eLearning News, General Spew

I have a few larger subjects to write about, but the time to do so is fleeting! eLearningArticlesCloudSo thought I’d do this quickie in the interest of spreading the news…

Education Dive is a great, free resource and daily digest summarizing a variety of articles daily. “The Education Industry in 60 seconds” they say… I like their daily email – it gives me a quick overview of a variety of news articles and related items, with links to those items for a closer read. Great resource for those in the education field.

Ed Digest is similar, but it’s not free, and does focus more more academic articles and research, as opposed to general news and articles per Education Dive. However, their summary page of monthly articles provides links to the external sites and resources they discuss, which makes for a good ‘pull’ resource.

Otherwise, personal blogs are often a great resource and fun read for the occasional downtime: Continue reading eLearning Resources →

The State of the MOOC

Academics, General Spew, Traditional/ILT

random datapointsSo after a couple of years since MOOCs become a recognized eLearning strategy (and for the sake of our readers, I’ll suppose you know what generally defines a MOOC), where do they stand? Still the possible future of education? Still a developing concept? Or perhaps a failed experiment?

I’ll stand in the middle, aligning myself with ‘developing concept’, as there is promise, hype, and both encouraging and discouraging results. Continue reading The State of the MOOC →

Lynda and Link get married; LynkedIn and skills training

Academics, eLearning News, General Spew, Traditional/ILT

The news that LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com (for a cool 1.5 Billion) has been full announced and increasingly expounded upon, but there’s always room for additional perspective, right?

First, congratulations and kudos to Lynda Weinman (and her team) on a great American success story; a small site started in 1995 to help teach her own college students, expanded to assist a wider audience, wrote a few books, grew the company, and sold for $1.5 billion 20 years later.
Well done!

LinkedIn’s mission is to “connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. When you join LinkedIn, you get access to people, jobs, news, updates, and insights that help you be great at what you do.”

So I guess they’ll be updating that access with “skills training” too, moving toward a wider professional development platform than simple networking and job-seeking. Continue reading Lynda and Link get married; LynkedIn and skills training →

Cloud Applications, Anecdotal Support

Academics, General Spew, Other Tools

I’m not 100% sold on ‘cloud-based’ (SaaS, whatever-current-term) applications. Generally, I want to be able to work with my installed applications without being dependent on an internet connection. Despite the ever-rising prevalence of ‘always on’ connections, such connections DO go down…or have unusable latency, or are just saturated, or the Cloud service is unreachable, or…cloud-what

Continue reading Cloud Applications, Anecdotal Support →

New eLearningChef Logo

General Spew, Other Tools

eChef-Logo_src2What do you think of our new logo?

I really liked the lighthouse, an ‘enhanced’ picture we took of the local , historic Thomas Point lighthouse…but it didn’t have much to do with eLearning…
(plus the lighthouse theme is one better suited for our CapeMedia website)

eChef-Logo_photo
So we whipped the new logo together last Sunday – took a pot, put in some related books I’ve had on the bookshelf for a few years, added a small tablet and a whisk (can you see them?)…then brought into Photoshop and cropped and cleaned a little, added a handle, overlaid a word-cloud, then some ‘simmering’ effects…

Does it work? I think it works well. And, hey, I’m an overall chef, not a sous-chef. If I wanted a professional logo, I’d have hired a professional graphic artist 🙂

TED Blog: video editing tips

General Spew, Multimedia

Very informative article on the TED Blog covering 10 tips for video editing. I’m surprised I’ve not come across this before, the post is almost a year old! While these are focused on edits of live sessions (i.e. TED), they’re timeless and certainly can apply to a variety of settings.

http://blog.ted.com/2014/05/12/10-tips-for-editing-video/

Cutting angles on movement and words is a long-standing principle, as is editing out mistakes. In this article, I specially like the interview example with Bill Gates.

Great suggestions overall by the author, Kari Mulholland, and an excellent use of good/bad examples throughout.