Exciting new online comms and collaboration tools from Adobe

I had planned today to continue my series on organizational learning and e-learning ecosystems, but I have become aware of an interesting new hosted productivity and collaboration suite from Adobe called Acrobat.com, so I thought I'd discuss that today. Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary is known to respond with the acronym "IMFA" (It's My Airline) when others disagree with his decisions, so in the same spirit, IMFB.

Now read on...

Aligning with their stated aim to become a major force in so-called webtop software, Adobe released two new products on Monday: Acrobat.com and Acrobat 9. Product manager Erik Larson has stated that Acrobat.com is another big step towards bringing more desktop-like experiences to the Web.

It is [Adobe's] intent to blur a lot of the lines of the past.

Acrobat.com is a combination of three online services:

• Adobe ConnectNow (a "lite" version of Acrobat Connect 7 for web conferencing and desktop collaboration)
• Adobe Buzzword (and online word processor)
• Adobe Share (online file sharing)

In my view, this represents a serious attempt by Adobe to compete with many of Google's Web 2.0 tools like Google Docs, YouTube and Picasa, as well as solutions like Microsoft Office Live Workspace, WebEx, and GoTo Meeting, usually associated with organizational collaboration.

Buzzword
Buzzword is the default word processor in the suite. it enables multiple collaborators to edit and comment documents. As well as providing a pretty nice WYSIWYG editor, tabs along the bottom of the UI represent the people who have accessed the document most recently, as well as their status (author, reviewer, etc.).

Uniquely for a web-based word processor, Buzzword paginates documents, supports a range of fonts, and lets you generate a pretty good equivalent to a PDF document. However, this is still in beta, so you will likely encounter some frustrations if you are used to creating documents in a desktop environment (i.e. during cut-and-paste operations) and there is no easy way to export a document to a blog or other Web publishing system other than via the previously mentioned cut-and-paste.

However, I have found this to be the case in similar apps such as Windows Live Writer (which I'm using to create this post); the software is still buggy - I'm happy to live with this in a beta app, though some might not be.

Adobe Share
This is a file-sharing application that focuses on document sharing.
You get one gigabyte of free storage, and it enables you to embed a Flash preview of your documents into any Web page (quite similar to FlashPaper). Adobe say that this enables anyone to download and print a PDF of the file (though I have yet to test this myself). I guess that you could describe this tool as 'Flickr on steroids', given Share's facility to make available a range of document types in an environment that those familiar with that tool can easily appreciate.

ConnectNow
I love ConnectNow. I've long been an advocate of online communication and collaboration tools as a powerful solution to the challenges organizations face, particularly if employees work in distributed teams, as well as for hosting training and non-formal learning interventions. I have to declare an interest here: the organization I work for relies heavily on Adobe Connect Pro (currently version 6) for training and informational purposes and I think that it's a great system, not least because it uses the Flash plug-in, so no large player downloads or quirky clients to be installed.



Even in it's cut-down form, making this functionality publicly available is going to be very popular (no more excuses not to talk to the relations in New Zealand!).
ConnectNow allows up to three people have free online meetings, with

• screen sharing
• desktop video
• voice conferencing
• IM-type chat
• white-boarding

Note that significant portions of Connect's functionality have been removed, including the recording facility, as well as the asynchronous meeting playback facility. You can also forget about hosting your on-demand e-learning content on the system, because that's been excised too, though that doesn't mean that you can't use the tool for synchronous learning, such as small-group online mentoring and so on.

Interestingly, ConnectNow (kind of) replicates Connect Pro's ability to integrate with telephone conferencing system via a fee-based toll line (currently only available in some territories like the US, UK, Germany etc). Now that the Flex-based UI uses Adobe Flash 9 rather than Flash 6, the screen looks great - a small thing, but it's attractiveness will certainly enhance users' enjoyment of the product.

Other commentators have suggested that the business model is clearly pay-for-what-you-use:

while right now the service is just a free beta, restrictions on things like file space and number of users will presumably be addressed by monthly subscriptions – moving Adobe from a licensor of desktop software to a web-based software-as-a-service company. We’ve already seen that with Photoshop Express, and with Acrobat.com, Adobe now has all of their major applications available in a Web-based version too.

I would assert that while this may be the plan at the moment, the ubiquity of other free-to-use applications (not to mention the competition in this increasingly hot marketspace) will force Adobe to either make these tools available gratis or include so many extra features to entice paying users that Acrobat.com will becomes a professional-level hosted solution, which presumably is not the consumer market that Adobe are attempting to dominate.

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End-to-end Development Process: E-Learning Course Development in an Open Environment: Project Lifecycle 8

Having discussed in some detail individual elements of the content development process, in this post we’re going to see how all the pieces come together in the Open Environment for E-Learning.

Figure 1. Inputs and Outputs
[Click to enlarge]

Here’s the end-to-end development process (see Figure 1):
1. Content authors agreed course structure according to the structure outlined in the instructional design
2. XML text data authored with XXE and the DocBook DTD
3. Images created and in GIMP and imported in to XXE
4. Course developed in XXE
5. Content reviewed and signed off
6. Content stored on Apache/MySQL/PHP-based content management system (CMS)
7. Narration script text generated from signed off content
8. Using Audacity, voice-over narration for multimedia presentation is recorded
9. Voice-over narration is post-produced in Audacity, reviewed and signed off


Final integration
1. Content accessed from CMS
2. XML data imported into OpenOffice.org Impress and exported as PPT-formatted file
3. Audio retrieved from database
4. Separately recorded video content retrieved from database
5. Content integrated in Microsoft Producer 2
6. Content rendered to final compiled format for delivery via multiple channels (see Figure 2)

Figure 2. Overview of Integration Process
[Click to enlarge]

7. Content exported to open source LMS/LCMS such as Moodle, or burned to DVD for delivery to customers (see Figure 3)

Figure 3. Final Course Structure
[Click to enlarge]

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Introduction to Repurposing Content. E-Learning Course Development in an Open Environment: Project Lifecycle 7

Modifying previously-produced content using for use in an Open E-Learning Environment

A topic I’ve touched on briefly in the past is that of repurposing content already developed in a different format. In my view, one of the more common (and unsatisfactory) processes used to develop courseware is to use Microsoft PowerPoint as the primary courseware authoring application. While the reasoning behind this is practical – for example, instructors delivering training in a classroom environment typically use PowerPoint as their presentation tool of choice, particularly in the corporate environment. Similarly, courses authored in PowerPoint can also end up being used as the basis for hard-copy document generation.

A typical process includes:

1. Content (i.e. a series of lessons) authored in PowerPoint
2. Lesson text extracted from PowerPoint imported into Microsoft Word. The content text is reformatted to enhance usability in hardcopy form (i.e. slide header made bold, 14 point etc)
3. Slide images and text exported as WMF format images from PowerPoint and stored in a graphic assets folder for integration into the Word document version of the courseware.
4. Because of file size issues, WMF images batch converted to high-quality GIF format.
5. Images reinserted in Word document with adjoining text.
6. Typically 10 to 12 lessons then inserted into a Word template and saved.
7. Saved documents exported as PDF file in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

There are a number of significant inadequacies in this process, not least among them being:

• complicated editing
• difficulty revising materials
• lack of traceability
• versioning issues
• discoverability of keywords and terms in either the source Microsoft Office application files or the compiled PDF document
• severely restricted interoperability of content
• restricted ability to deliver content using multiple channels (i.e. efficiently over the web)
• use of proprietary formats to create content
  

Proprietary tools do not “play well with others” (Meyerding, 2004). For example, the Microsoft Office productivity suite has a long history of file format changes and despite the much-vaunted interoperability of Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) in Office 2007, it can be said that there are still issues with integrating MS Office-produced content into an open environment, and by extension problems using this suite if you need to integrate your content into another environment or platform.

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References:

Meyerding, H. (2004). XML and Content Reuse Systems for Instructional Design Part 2: Implementing Content Repositories & Selecting Tools Part 1 The eLearning Developers Journal 3(1) [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningguild.com/articles/abstracts/index.cfm?
action=view&CFID=822922&CFTOKEN=16828758 (Subscription required) Accessed 22nd October 2006

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Course Structure. E-Learning Course Development in an Open Environment: Project Lifecycle 6

Operationalizing a Shareable Content Object-based (SCO) instructional design:

Based upon the the instructional model discussed in previous posts, I recommend designing a course to the following parameters (see Figure 1):

• Section: a sequence of 5±2 Lessons related by core Learning Objectives
• Lesson: a sequence of 5±2 Learning Objects
• (Reusable) Learning Object (LO): a learning objective comprising a series of Learning Points; unit of assessment that measures the objective.
• Learning Point/Reusable Information Object: a unit of instruction that teaches a key element of a learning object.
• Knowledge Object (KO): a discrete piece of instruction or information represented textually, graphically, aurally, visually, by using animation. Combines with other KOs to create a Learning Point.

Figure 1. Course Structure
[click to enlarge]

Within the course, lessons are aggregated to the following order of granularity in the lesson structure (see Figure 2):

• Each Lesson has 5±2 Learning Objects
• Each LO has 5±2 Learning Points (aka RIOs)
• Each LP contains a number of relevant Knowledge Objects
• KOs/LPs are developed using appropriate media types

Figure 2. Lesson Structure
[click to enlarge]

Tomorrow: Modifying content created for different delivery channels for inclusion in an open e-learning environment

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