This week I'm getting some online training ready for my current client and discovered that Adobe Captivate and the Paul voice from Neospeech had problems with the following sentence:

"Numbers are also present on signs throughout the building."

At first I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with the way this was being said.  I listened a few times and realized that the word present sounded like the noun present that you would give on a birthday or at Christmas, rather than adjective that I am present in this situation or the sign is physically present in the building.  Technically the words are both pronounced the same, but there is a stress difference between the two.  Clearly I meant to say that the signs are physically located throughout the building.  I could rewrite the sentence but instead I did a little research and discovered a better solution. 

I wondered if there was a way to let the text to speech engine correct this.  I've discussed before the need to inject pauses using either additional commas.  You can also add pauses with more control using commands such as or .  The 500 in the first example means 500 milliseconds, while Break level 2 is similar to the pause that a comma produces. 

Turns out there is a solution for changing the pronunciation or stress on certain words that change depending on the parts of speech used.  Here is the syntax:

text

In my specific example, I entered:

present

This ends up changing the pronunciation ever so slightly from a present as in a gift, to the state of being present time or physically here right now.

Two Most Important Questions To Ask Your Clients

When I'm at the analysis stage of developing training, there are two most important questions I ask of my clients.  These two questions are often confused with one another, but there is a difference between them.  The first questions is as follows:

"What will the learners be able to do or know upon completion of this course?"

I think you can see that this leads to my ability to build my objective.  The rest of the course design and development will stem from this very simple question.  For example, if my client responds to this question with "learners will be able to change a flat tire" than that is my objective for the course, at least for the most part.  I will likely break it down into sub tasks as needed and add the conditions, such as "given a car with a flat tire, a spare tire, a jack and a tire iron, you will be able to...."

The other question is:

"What do you hope to accomplish with this training?"

Now they sound like similar questions but they're not.  The first question was to answer was the learner was going to gain from the course.  The second question is what the client, the stakeholder, or business for that matter, will gain from this course.  For example, I might be designing a customer service course.  The learner's objectives might include items such as learning the proper steps to greeting the customer, and identifying their needs, and so one.  The business will get out of this course, more sales, happier customers and less complaints.

I think we often over design a course because we have failed to ask these types of questions.  If you identify was the client wants for themselves, their business, and the objectives for their learners, you should never have any questions popping up in the eleventh hour about course content.

Seven Top Authoring Tools

Check out this list of the seven top authoring tools for e-learning development.  Nice to know I'm using number one.

Seven Top Authoring Tools for e-Learning

Captivate2HTML5

I saw this blog entry over at the Adobe Captivate blog and thought I would share:
Link
I haven't read it yet, but this could be really good news for Captivate users.  We are starting to here HTML5 this, and HTML5 that, and less about technologies like Flash.  If the future has less Flash based web pages, then it goes almost without saying that the future will have less Flash based eLearning as well.  Having another publishing option can't be a bad thing.  I'm very interested to see how this all plays out.

More Than a Smartphone, Less Than a Computer

A month or so ago I was looking for a solution to a problem.  It was a minor problem, but a problem none the less.  I was considering a mobile computing solution that would allow me to do some very basic things.  I wanted more than a smartphone, but less than a large, bulky, and expensive laptop.  I already have the laptop for when I need to be a power user.  The purpose of this device was to stay connected in my downtimes and a little entertainment.

Essentially I wanted an iPad, however part of my reason for not bringing my laptop into these situations, especially on a vacation, was that I didn’t want an expensive piece of equipment that I was putting at risk of being stolen while away.  Especially considering my laptop is not only a wonderful tool, but contributes to my livelihood.  Losing my laptop would have a major impact on me and I don’t want to risk it.

I considered an Android tablet.  There are two problems with Android tablets right now.  The expensive ones are closer to the price of an iPad.  Honestly if I’m going to drop $500 on an Android tablet, I may as well purchase an iPad. Again that defeats the purpose of this machine.  If someone steals this mobile solution, I want to say “Oh well, at least it only cost me $_____.”  On the other hand, the inexpensive Android tablets are pretty awful.  They either use inferior hardware, or an old install of Android that doesn’t offer the latest refinements.  Even those in the $300 - $400 price point make me cringe at their price. Once you are at the $400 price point, again you may as well get an iPad for a $100 more.

I ended up landing on an Acer Aspire One Netbook.  Now I know what you are thinking.  These things are cheap, low powered, slow, and can’t run power user applications.  That’s fine with me.  This thing comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition, and runs it surprisingly well.  I have installed a couple of basic applications on it including the suite of Windows Live software.  I’ve selected Google Chrome as my browser of choice, and again there are no problems with this.  The screen and keyboard are a little small, however considering how little space there is on airplanes for full size laptops, this should be fine.  I’m not going to write my great novel on this thing.  I am going to have no problem watching movies on the plane and in the hotel room at night, logging into hotel Wi-Fi hot spots, checking my email and Facebook, and all the while knowing that my primary workforce computer is safely at home.

Oh the best part of this purchase is this - $179 at my local big box electronics retailer.  I’m not so well off that I would shrug my shoulders if I lost this netbook, but it would be far less painful than my $1000 plus  laptop.

Mobile Phones Used for Learning

This is a really neat article on how kids are using mobile phones for learning.

http://tiny.cc/e1h21

Part two is also here:

http://tiny.cc/dmq3l

Teaching people to type with video games.

This is an excellent example of how you take a mundane task and turn it into a game.  Typing skills are crucial to anyone who uses a computer.  The people at phoboslab.org have a neat little game reminiscent of Asteroids, except that you must words on your keyboard to fire your lasers.  Sure it seems like a game when you play it, and it is! However, every time you play, you are really practicing your typing skills.  


http://www.phoboslab.org/ztype/

A Plan for How to Learn Anything in Fun, Discrete Steps

A long but very interesting article on making learning intriguing.

Selection level feedback on multiple choice questions

Selection level feedback on multiple choice questions

Really good information from Adobe for a more advanced form of feedback for Adobe Captivate.

Text To Speech for e-Learning

Text to speech technology has come along way from when I first heard a computer speak. The following video is a TED speech by Roger Ebert. Roger lost the ability to speak, and for that matter eat, when he lost his lower jaw to cancer a few years ago. For part of his speech he is using the Alex voice on his Macbook. Take a listen. It's not bad, but still far from perfect.

I've learned that one of the difficulties is the fact that a computer doesn't breath. In addition to naturally pauses indicated in sentences by commas, we also pause elsewhere in our speech to simply account for our need as humans to breathe. I have been experimenting with this in Adobe Captivate's voice narration capabilities. the North American voices included with the product are from a company called Neospeech. Their voices use a text to speech programming language known as VTML. In addition to the text you want to be spoken, you can include VTML tags which will indicate items like speed, pitch, pauses, and a few other items. As I experiment with this, I find my narrative is sounding less and less like a robot and more and more human. It's not perfect, but it is getting better.