Time is running out to receive early bird pricing on the 2012 Lectora User Conference! When you register today, you’ll receive the discounted price of $495 and will have the opportunity to network with hundreds of fellow Lectora® users at this one-of-a-kind e-Learning event. The 2012 Lectora User Conference takes place on May 22 – 24 in the heart of Chicago at the world-famous Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile.

The much-anticipated 2012 Lectora User Conference features an exciting agenda packed with dozens of valuable breakout sessions, workshops and presentations that are sure to improve your e-Learning expertise. In addition, you’ll meet Trivantis team members and work with hundreds of Lectora users and e-Learning professionals from around the world. You’ll also get to experience all the excitement that downtown Chicago has to offer. And, this low price even includes the cost of breakfast and lunch on the days of the event.

Sign up today and receive the early bird price of $495 before it expires on December 31, 2011. Also, don’t forget to submit your proposal to present at the conference and gain recognition in the e-Learning community. For more information about the 2012 Lectora User Conference, including registration details and hotel reservation information, please visit: 2012 Lectora User Conference.

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Jessica is Manager of Global Marketing for Trivantis with 8+ years of e-Learning and writing expertise. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Journalism from the University of Cincinnati.

When authoring rapid e-Learning courses, Snap! by Lectora has your back by providing you with the necessary building blocks for fun and easy content creation. From pre-made design templates to exciting Flash animations, you’re set with everything you need. Even so, we know that there’s something imaginative, innovative and rewarding about adding your own personal touch to our already-awesome building blocks. Today’s Friday Finds allows you to do just that by providing free, downloadable “eyedropper” color-picking tools, as well as great tips on how to use them. 

Use these free tools to hand-pick the colors you want to add to Snap! by Lectora from just about anywhere: digital photographs, websites and even elements within your presentation. Then, save your selected colors and use them when working in Snap! by Lectora. With the help of these easy eyedroppers, you’ll be able to add a unique touch to your next e-Learning tutorial or PowerPoint presentation. Click on one of the three programs below to download and get started:

Color Pic

Instant Eyedropper

Color Cop

Fun Tips for Color Creativity:

1) Don’t limit your color palette

Although PowerPoint provides users with a wide variety of color choices, you are still limited to a set color palette. Using an eyedropper tool completely changes this by allowing you to choose your own colors outside of PowerPoint, creating endless possibilities.

2) Never guess when color-matching

Trying to match the exact color of a logo or website is difficult if you’re guessing. Using an eyedropper tool means that you’ll never have to guess; you’ll be able to pick the exact color you need every time.

3) Be creative and have fun!

Just because eyedropper tools operate on a computer doesn’t mean that you’re limited to the colors on your screen. Let yourself be inspired by the world around you by taking your own photos, uploading these photos onto your computer and using your eyedropper tools to hand-pick your favorite hues.  Choosing colors from your very own photos is fun and will make you even more proud of your rapid e-Learning content.

Friday Fan

Our Friday Fan of the week is Mark Simon. Check out this quote from his article Making Sense of PowerPoint Pandemonim in Learning Solutions Magazine:

"In one bundled package, Snap! has the ability to create all of the essential ingredients of a solid eLearning lesson."

Thanks, Mark! Want to check out all of the exciting features that Snap! by Lectora 1.1 has to offer? Watch this video for an overview, or see for yourself by upgrading for FREE to Version 1.1!

Haven't tried Snap! by Lectora? Get a FREE 30-day trial by clicking here.

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Jessica is Manager of Global Marketing for Trivantis with 8+ years of e-Learning and writing expertise. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Journalism from the University of Cincinnati.

This is a Part 4 of a guest blog series by James Anderson. Read below for his full bio.

Easy user navigation is an important feature of rapid e-Learning courses, which is why adding hyperlinks is a perfect solution in Snap! by Lectora.

Creating Hyperlinks for Course Navigation in PowerPoint

Text, imported graphics, clipart, photos, and drawn objects are all able to be set-up as hyperlinks in PowerPoint presentations.  You can find the hyperlink (highlighted in red below) button in the Insert Ribbon within the links section.  There is also the actions (highlighted in orange below) button, right next to the hyperlink button, but my workflow generally prefers just working with the hyperlinks.  Note: Hyperlink and action buttons will only be active if you have selected an object on a PowerPoint slide that can have a hyperlink or action attached. 

Creating a Hyperlink

This slide is a rather bland splash screen for an e-Learning course.  The appearance is definitely not a best practice. However, we have a button to “Continue” – the graphic itself is static and just provides a visual, therefore the shape needs to have a hyperlink added to it.

Step 1. Click the image, text box, shape, etc… that you want to add a hyperlink.

Step 2. Click the hyprlink button on the Insert Ribbon.

Step 3. Insert your hyperlink using the Insert Hyperlink dialogue box.  You can hyperlink to a specific slide, a new PowerPoint presentation, an email address, web-page, or a document.  Depending on how you are publishing your course, I don’t recommend linking to another PowerPoint, also use caution if linking to a document.  However, links to documents or web-pages can be very effective for the “library” where you can send users to job aids, standard operating procedures, policy, or other support documentation.

In this case, I am going to hyperlink the  START button to the “Select Your Door”.  Click the slide you would like to link to, and then click the OK button.

Hyperlinks and Master Slides

One final note on hyperlinking.  Sometimes you have controls you will want to appear on multiple slides, in this case you might want to create a slide master.  A visual of an actual elearning course is below.  The left side bar of this slide contains navigation links – these links are on the master slide.  So using slide masters is a great way to save time when doing rapid e-Learning design.

Putting it All Together

We covered a lot of territory in this blog series.  First, I worked to dispel the myth that PowerPoint is not a valid rapid eLearning development platform.  Next, I introduced an instructional design theory by Thiagi – the Four-Door approach – that will allow your e-Learning participants to explore, play, collaborate and assess their skills.  Then, we covered a couple of my favorite features of Snap! by Lectora – the newly updated branching scenarios, and the ability to integrate content from a website or learning management system (LMS) using the Snap! Web Window tool.  Finally, we looked at creating hyperlinks from within PowerPoint to provide eLearning course navigation.  As always, you are welcome to follow-up with me and ask me questions.  I can be reached on Twitter @jrandersoniii or by email at jrandersoniii@gmail.com.

James Anderson is originally from Michigan, but will soon relocate to North Dakota.  He brings common sense solutions to performance improvement, training and development and elearning.  James offers over 10-years of experience in the learning and development field with a performance improvement bias.  He brings improvement experience as an entrepreneurial coach and trainer to his learning and performance, which often provides a unique and simplified twist to training and performance.

This is a Part 2 of a guest blog series by James Anderson. Read below for his full bio.

Now, let’s dive in to the great authoring functionality of Snap! by Lectora Version 1.1.

Navigation

One of the biggest complaints about PowerPoint is that people insist you cannot get interactivity out of it, and it overly promotes the use of bullet-points.  This is definitely not the case with PowerPoint, and it is definitely not true when paired with a powerful rapid e-Learning tool, like Snap! by Lectora.  The free (for v1 owners) v1.1 update to Snap! by Lectora allows you to establish branching settings for each slide.

Let’s start by finding the Snap! ribbon and the Slide Explorer button so we can control branching.  Snap! by Lectora will typically be the last ribbon tab in PowerPoint (2007 or 2010), or as a menu option for PowerPoint 2003 (screen captures will align closely with 2007 and 2010).  When you click on the Snap! ribbon, you will find all of the goodies Snap! brings us for rapid e-Learning design.  The far right grouping called “tools” will have a button named Slide Explorer.  By clicking Slide Explorer, we will find all of the individual slide settings – including branching controls.

The Slide Explorer dialogue box (figure below) has a lot of information, so let’s dissect it.

1.     #: slide number, corresponds to the actual PowerPoint slide number.

2.     TOC Slide Level: This is a thumbnail view of your slide.  You can click on this to see the slide, behind the dialogue box.

3.     TOC Slide Title: The name that will appear in the table of contents, when published (if you include a TOC).  If the name that is imported from the slide is not what you want on the TOC, you may edit this box.  The original content will stay on the slide, but you can modify just what is shown in the TOC.  Also, you can hide a slide on the TOC.  Hint: I typically hide all slides that are not the first slide of a section.  For instance, if my Library has multiple slides for content – I only display the first slide of my library section in the TOC.

4.     Presenter: Here you can select which presenter will be presenting content on a slide.  You can choose to show or not show the presenter when publishing.  The Options button to the right of the Slide Explorer button allows you to manage presenters.

5.     Navigation: Here you can set the pacing for a self-paced presentation, like you might see on a kiosk, or you can set slide advancement to manual or none.  For eLearning that I develop, I typically set slides to Manual.

6.     Branching: This is where the interactive magic happens.  By default the Snap! player will allow the user to move forwards and backwards with built in controls (which can be hidden), and via key strokes (e.g., space bars or right arrows will advance to the next slide by default).  By using this custom branching button, you can help the user best use your eLearning course on a slide-by-slide basis.  More on this in the next section of this blog post.

7.     Narration: Snap! allows you to record a narration for each slide.  Further, Snap! allows you to synchronize slide animations to your narration.  If a slide has a recorded narration, you will see that indicated in this column.  My example has no narrations, so each row of this column is empty.

The Slide Explorer Dialogue Box:

Branching – Allowing User Control While Providing Course Structure

Some e-Learning advocates believe a course should be designed with few barriers, and users should be able to navigate wherever and whenever they want.  I’m mostly for that.  However, good navigation allows us to create structure and help make sense of the content.  The fact is, we are forcing a linear product like PowerPoint to produce a non-linear e-Learning course.  Therefore, sometimes we need to put up invisible stop signs to keep users from following slides in an illogical order.  Snap! by Lectora gives us the tools to do this.

To dig even deeper into the branching and e-Learning software capabilities of Snap! by Lectora, look out for Part 3 of this blog series.

James Anderson is originally from Michigan, but will soon relocate to North Dakota.  He brings common sense solutions to performance improvement, training and development and elearning.  James offers over 10-years of experience in the learning and development field with a performance improvement bias.  He brings improvement experience as an entrepreneurial coach and trainer to his learning and performance, which often provides a unique and simplified twist to training and performance.