#DevSit down away from computer, with paper or whiteboard, and visualize and draw out what you want to do. A la Dan Roam…need to do this in my group. When we get a project, visualize and brainstorm some ideas.

• Graceful in form or movement
• Simple, effective
• Compliment Your Content – Make sure it matches what you’re trying to teach.
• PPT ’03: Use multiple slides instead of multiple animations on one slide.
• PPT ’07: Use the selection pane.
• If someone can look at your elearning and says, “oh, that’s powerpoint,” you’ve failed.
• PPT ’07 has smart art – we need to upgrade at my office.
• Check Clothier’s site for more info.
• Nice samples of using PPT instead of flash for really nice, dynamic intros, transitions, animations.
• PowerPoint Heaven

Wrap up. Creating elearning animations in power point, make sure they’re concise, simple, effective. They need a purpose. Don’t animate just to animate. Get imaginative – get away from the computer before you start developing. Brainstorm away from computer. PUSH THE ENVELOPE – USE YOUR IMAGINATION.

First, I wonder if Articulate has filed a lawsuit yet.

• Embed video easily
• Reviewing is easy
• Editing is simple, not very robust, but good for the basics.
• Attendee feedback: audio editing is poor. (New Articulate has good audio editor).
• Import quizzing (more app crashing).
• This presenter did not handle questions well – I think she was only ready for her scripted presentation, not being grilled on the app’s shortcomings

Aside: I see a lot of issues with software that’s embedded in PowerPoint. Articulate Presenter crashes for me all the time. I currently have Articulate and WebEx embedded. Does it slow PowerPoint’s performance and cause it to be slow and crash? If it’s not crashing, it can sometimes be very slow. Is this on the embedded App or on PowerPoint not being built for embedded (or overlay) software?

Q & A:

• Q: How to use Captivate within Presenter (like we do now with Articulate Presenter)
• A: Integration is a little tighter with Presenter

• Q: Developing quizzes in Captivate, why can’t branding can’t be carried over to Presenter?
• A: Captivate quizzing is very different than Presenter quizzing (Wrong Answer: WHY?)

• Q: Presenter slide shows inside Acrobat?
• A: Yes. Simple.

• Q: Can you record video across all slides, or do you have to chunk it?
• A: No, you have to record video in segments. Same with audio. It’s possible in future.

• Q: Collaboration – does it only work with Acrobat.com
• A: Will not work without Acrobat.com (probably a dealbreaker)
• —My Note: I need internal collaboration. Legal is not going to let us upload docs to Acrobat.com

Quote of the session: “it’s not really that sophisticated right now.” That explains a lot.

I’ll add links to the actual presentation decks as soon as they are available.