Philly Download – My biggest takeaways from mLearning DevCon 2012
I spent the better part of the past week in Philadelphia attending mLearning DevCon 2012 with Greg Gardner and Michael Sheyahshe. Below is some of the great stuff I picked up on.
Titanium Studio is a free (depending on the licensing you chose) mobile development tool for creating content across multiple platforms – Very much like FlashBuilder. My comparision is both a compliment and an insult. It's complex, but then again a software package that publishes "native" apps to IOS, Android, Blackberry and WebOS was not going to be simple. In addition to having a similar interface to FlashBuilder the code is very ActionScript like. So far it does not have the complexity of Sencha or the unfamiliar aspects of jQuery.
I have been trying to get it up and running and have run into some snags. I contacted Jeff Batt of Rapid Intake who gave the presentation. He provided a link from Lynda.com to help get me up and running. I have only just started looking it over but seems like it will be a big help.
Before you can get to the tutorial though you will need to install. That can be problematic. There were a ton of updates to install before you could even get rolling.
Another cool tool I heard about at eLearningDevCon. It's an HTML5 animation tool from Adobe that uses an interface a great deal like After Effects. It does provide for interactivity, but just based on the whole timeline set up of the interface, it's an animation tool, not a heavy programming tool. The best part is it's FREE! At least to try out. I was able to pull up something at the conference about a licensing deal where if you signup now for the current version, that license will transfer over when a more official version come out. Unfortunately I have not been able to navigate my way back. All I can currently find is Edge available on Adobe's Creative Cloud. You will need an Adobe ID to sign in.
This is a cool plug-in for photoshop. I don't see as much use for this but, I think it could be very useful for proof of concept and quick prototyping. Kwik will turn a photoshop document into a mobile app, including events and gestures. To me it's biggest strength is also it's biggest weakness - it's a PSD. I think it's going to produce large files. That said I have not had a chance to look at it very well. You can get a free version that will support projects up to 6 pages. Thanks to Orlando Rivera (http://digitalsummit.tv/) for cluing me in on this one.
A more powerful, easier to use SCORM? That's an idea I can get behind. This one might have the biggest implications but so far as I can tell it's also the most nebulous. Tin Can API is the newest flavor of SCORM. They did talk a lot about what it can do and the kind of things you can track now but both the keynote and the hands on sessions were light on "this is how you do it". To me the idea of SCORM where you do not have to be connected to the LMS is pretty cool. You can turn almost anything into something trackable. Looks like they are using "activities" as the basis now. I don't know how many action words they have set up but its based on things like learned, attended and that sort of thing.
I was able to learn a bit more about the API from the site but I am still digging into the details.
I also got my reeducation in mobile video courtesy of Nick Floro (http://nickfloro.com/). Biggest takeaway there? That is was long overdue.
The low key conference was very interesting. I learned a great deal . Not so much actual techniques but just whats out there and tools I was not aware of. Thanks so much to Jason Bickle, Rapid Intake, and all of the sponsors (including ICF) for putting on a very educational week.
