Logitech BRIO Unboxing

I've decided to upgrade my webcam to a new Logitech BRIO. The BRIO offers up to 4K video and has a detachable USB-C cable, which gives me greater flexibility in how I connect it to my laptop. Please note, for the first portion of this video, I was using my Blue Yeti microphone. When I detached my old webcam and connected the BRIO, I forgot to check which microphone I was using. Turns out, I was just using the internal microphone built into the BRIO, so that might be of interest to those considering this webcam. Generally, though, I use a different microphone than what is built into the camera. The history of my channel with equipment is fascinating (well to me at least). When I started my YouTube channel, I didn't use webcams at all. I simply made screen recordings of my software and narrated them using a headset/microphone. The first improvement I made was purchasing the Blue Yeti to improve the audio of my videos. The first time I used a webcam along with my tutorials was likely just my internal webcam on my previous laptop. I don't know if this is the first time, but this is my earliest Livestream:

🎞 https://youtu.be/bEpLQleFobs You can clearly see the quality difference between this and what I use today.

The first time I used a webcam in one of my video tutorials was in this video:

🎞 https://youtu.be/RDda0gbBM3g

Again I believe this was my internal camera on my old laptop. At the time, I was using Adobe Presenter Video Express, and this workflow remained for hundreds of videos. I've since abandoned PVX as it's sometimes called since one of its major limitations is that it only records 15 fps for webcam recordings.

How To Create a Storyboard for eLearning | Monday, October 21, 12:00 EDT, 14:00 UTC

In this eLearning Livestream, I will be sharing with you some of the practises I follow when writing an eLearning storyboard. You will learn...

• how much content needs to be included,

• what're the most important things for your stakeholders to review,

• how to write narration so that it can actually be spoken, and

• what elements need to be included.

Join me over on YouTube if you wish to participate in the Live Chat.

Show Different Character Reactions in Your Adobe Captivate Quiz

Inspired by Timothy, who wrote a question in the Adobe forums, I decided to take this on as a challenge. In this video tutorial, I show you how you could create a series of multi-state objects that will be triggered by the success or failure action of a quiz question. You will get a caption and image of a character who is positive when you get the question correct. Adversely you get a negative caption and reaction when you select the wrong answer.

Close Your Adobe Captivate Table of Contents on Each Click

In this Adobe Captivate quick tip, I show you how you can close the table of contents each time you click on one of the items and jump to that particular slide.

How to Design an Adobe Captivate Project for Your Organization | Oct 14th, 12:00 EDT | 16:00 UTC

In this eLearning Livestream, I will be taking you through the process that I go through when building what is actually known as a Captivate Theme. I hesitate to call this a template because that is something else in Adobe Captivate. However, this template would be based on the branding requirements of your organization or the organization of your clients.

Join me over on my YouTube channel if you wish to participate in the live chat: https://youtu.be/0oymGjENLrs

Custom Advanced Answer Captions in Adobe Captivate

In this video tutorial, I show you how you can create your own advanced answer captions by using a really helpful system variable in an advanced action that's run when your learners submit their answer. This addresses several issues that are caused by advanced answer captions and gives you much greater control over what happens.

Create a Secret Help Slide ...Even Better Than Before!

Last week I did a tutorial that was an easy way to have your course jump to a unique slide that was hidden from the regular navigation. This would be a great way to provide your learners with some optional information like course instructions or a help page. The problem with that solution is that every time you returned your learners to the slide that you started from, the slide would start from the beginning of the slide. In this tutorial, I introduce a couple of easy advanced actions that you can add to this project. These advanced actions will return your learners not only to the slide they were on but to the exact position on that slide as well.

Patreon subscribers get to download the Adobe Captivate 2019 project files for this video

💾 https://www.patreon.com/paulwilsonlearning

Create a Secret Help Slide in Adobe Captivate

In this video tutorial, I will show you how to set up a slide that isn't part of the regular navigation of your course. This slide will instead be accessed from any other slide in your project using a small icon in the corner. This is useful if you want an optional page that includes course instructions, or perhaps a special help page that learners can only access if they need it.

What to Expect at the Adobe Learning Summit 2019 | Sept 2, 12:00 PM EDT | 16:00 UTC

Sorry for the short notice. Originally I wasn't going to livestream on Monday because of how much work I needed to get done before the Adobe Captivate Specialist session on the 11th, my vacation on the 18th and the Adobe Captivate Specialist session on October 2nd and the Adobe Learning Summit on the 3rd, but I figured this would be a fun topic to cover about one month before the actual summit. 

 Many of you may be attending the Adobe Learning Summit in Las Vegas for the first time this fall. You may also be undecided if you want to go. In this eLearning Livestream, I'm going to talk about my experience as a presenter but more importantly, I will be discussing my experience as an attendee. I can give you some hints and tips for making it a truly rewarding and productive experience. Also, I will answer any questions in the live chat. 

Join the livestream here if you wish to use the live chat: https://youtu.be/hRwbvQl7Zi0

Updated Adobe eLearning Community,

If I recall correctly, Adobe announced The Adobe eLearning Community web site at the Adobe eLearning Conference in Washington DC in 2016. Users often criticized Adobe for not having the most up to date information available. It was positioned to be a hub where users could easily find the answers they were looking for but also interact with one another, thus the name community.

Adobe recently gave the community a facelift. As a frequent contributor, I found this a little jarring. The items I was used to using were no longer in the usual location. I've forced myself to learn the new site, and I thought I would share my thoughts.

Adobe has now divided Blogs into subcategories. At first glance, this makes sense, unless you are looking for content that may not be easily identifiable. For example, if you were looking for content related interactive video, you might expect to find that content under Video-Based Learning. However, you might also find that content under Interactive eLearning. To me, the greatest sin a web site can commit is forcing users to go looking for content in multiple places.

The next section is the Webinar section. While this is a great item to include, there is no opportunity to notify the community of your webinars that you might be hosting. I frequently run a weekly webinar or sorts called the eLearning Livestream. I fairly consistently run this on Monday's at noon eastern standard time. I would love the opportunity to post the details in this section, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. For right now this seems to be just for Adobe sponsored webinars.

The next section is the Tutorials section. The Tutorials section includes a series of tutorials that Adobe has produced. Great content but again there is no obvious way for me or others to contribute.

The next link brings you to what will be relatively static content related to the Adobe Captivate Specialist Certification Program. I believe this is a great program to get new Adobe Captivate users up and running. It would be nice if there were a section for Cp Specialist to communicate with one another, share ideas and perhaps ask questions of the instructors of the course. It would be a great way to build that sense of community.

Next is the Quick Start Assets. These are links to download the same ready-to-go slides and projects that are available in the Assets window of Adobe Captivate version 11.5.1.499. When you click on one of the project thumbnails, three icons are displayed. The function of the three icons is to allow you to view the slides from that project, preview the project, or download the entire project.

Next is Discussions. By default, Adobe displays popular Discussions; however, there is a search functionality to find discussions using keywords you enter. When you reach the bottom of the page, you can click on more to see presumably additional popular entries. I sort of wonder if a user asks a question that is not popular does that discussion even show up in this list. I'd like to know the answer to that. There used to be an exact duplicate of the questions asked on the Adobe eLearning Community over on the more traditional eLearning forums found here: https://forums.adobe.com/community/adobe_captivate. I found it useful because if I answered a fellow users question in one spot, I was also answering the question it in the other location as well. It seems that the forums are also about to under a change. It will be interesting to see what happens to the connection between these two sites. As an experienced Captivate user, I'm not interested in having to monitor two websites for information, updates, and to help other users like myself.

Next users like myself have an opportunity to Post a Blog entry, Sample Project or Free Asset, Video, Discussion, or Testimonial or Case Study. I'm assuming if I post items except for discussions that all these items will show up in the Blogs section. I'm curious how the subcategories work. The choices here do not match the subcategories in the Blogs section. The option for thumbnails for blog posts remains from before the changes. Upon searching through the site, it seems those thumbnails have been removed and replaced with generic thumbnails. I'm disappointed as thumbnails are the first impression of what I either write or create. Generic thumbnails give the site an unfinished feel. Perhaps Adobe wants the site to look more consistent. If so, my suggestion is to allow users to select one of the generic thumbnails when we post new content.

Notifications still seem not to work as expected. I continue to see notifications for discussions I was not involved with. I'm not sure if this has something to do with the fact I'm a moderator or not. But it would be nice not to be notified for what seems to be every post on the community site.

Perhaps this is my perception, but the improvements to the "community" page seem to mostly be about giving more of a voice to Adobe to continue to market their products and events. Of course, they should have this ability as it is their website. It would be nice to improve the areas where we as users contribute rather than to reduce our visibility and ease of use. It feels like less of a community and more of a marketing tool.