Four ways to move your learners from clueless to confident

13 May 2009 By 19 Comments

I climbed onto the tram, folded my ticket, and with some trepidation stuck it into an unmarked metal box. A happy ding announced my success. I did it! I correctly rode a tram in Amsterdam!

Small victories like these make me love to travel. Every day I move from clueless to confident as I tackle questions like, “How do I peel and eat this hardboiled egg using only this tiny spoon?”

I find the answers through experimentation and observation—there’s no one telling me what to do at every step. And as a result I love the learning I’ve done and want to learn more.

How can we help our learners feel the same sense of achievement?

1. Let them figure some of it out [Read more...]

Filed Under: Instructional design Tagged With: ,

Mac users: Avoid Keynote 09 for Flash

11 May 2009 By 21 Comments

Some questions from blog readers have alerted me to the fact that when Apple “upgraded” Keynote 08 to create Keynote 09, they removed the ability to export slideshows as interactive Flash files. I’ve written a bit on this blog about how great it is that you can export from Keynote to Flash but…now you can’t! So:

  • If you currently have Keynote 08, don’t upgrade.
  • If you’re new to the Mac, you’ll get iWork 09 by default, which contains the unfortunate Keynote 09. You could buy iWork 08 through eBay or a similar outlet. Current prices appear to be $16-55.

Some posts in discussion forums suggest that you can export Keynote 09 slideshows as QuickTime files and then save those as Flash, but apparently you lose all interactivity, so there’s no point.

Shame on Apple for again removing useful features during an “upgrade.” iMovie recently suffered a similar fate. I don’t understand Apple’s reasoning at all.

Some more complex alternatives could be Adobe Captivate for Mac, which is looking for beta testers, and Techsmith’s Camtasia Studio for Mac, which is scheduled to be released in mid-2009.

Filed Under: Instructional design