Need Professional Voices for eLearning Videos?

If you're putting together your eLearning or online training content and you can't stand the sound of your own voice, or you just need a professional voice of a different accent or language to narrate the audio, look no further than www.voice123.com. Voice123 is a really cool site that has hundreds of thousands (!) of  voice producers and voiceover professionals waiting to audition for the part.

How it works is that you either search the database for that perfect voice or post your requirements up on the site. If you choose to 'Post a project' you'll need to outline some criteria (female, middle age, British etc) and put your custom script up for different voiceover people to audition. They say you'll start receiving auditions within an hour and you can also invite talent you like to submit their audition.

One of the coolest things is that the casting part is free. It's essentially up to the voiceover professional to audition, then you can assess their proposals which means you can always make sure to stay within your budget.

I listened to quite a few of the voice professionals and recognized a number of the voices from various TV commercials, radio advertisements and airline videos. It's amazing what a good voiceover can do for an otherwise dull training topic!

@Schnicker

iTunes U for Learning Content Distribution

Today I've been checking out iTunes U for the first time. It's been around a few years so I'm not sure why I hadn't looked at it before. But if you haven't checked it out either it is a specialized area of the Apple iTunes store that enables Higher Ed institutions to make audio/visual content available for download and subscription.

According to Wikipedia the service was 'created to manage, distribute, and control access to educational audio and video content and PDF files for students within a college or university as well as the broader Internet.' Wikipedia says that 'an advantage iTunes U has over traditional podcasting tools is that access to content can be restricted because of the use of the iTunes infrastructure end-to-end' and apparently there are now over 75,000 files available to download.

If you have the technical / professional infrastructure to support and market your own eLearning system and you're looking for a content distribution tool for your institution, rather than a full-blown Learning Management System, it's worth checking out. With iTunes U you can create a 'single home for all the digital content created or curated by educators, which can then be easily downloaded and viewed on any Mac, PC, iPod, or iPhone' (from the website).

While mobile learning (mLearning) adoption rates continue to increase I can only see this becoming much more popular, especially for some of the smaller institutions. Already the big guys like Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and UC Berkeley distribute their content publicly using the iTunes store, so it is already a 'success'.

Here's some more information from their website: Let the learning begin

@Schnicker

Microsoft Asks Litmos about their BizSpark Experience

The guys from Microsoft NZ dropped by our office last week to film a short interview with Litmos Founder, Rich Chetwynd. They asked a few questions about the Litmos Learning Management System (LMS) and were keen to hear how our experience in the BizSpark program was going...

Here is the finished product:



Rich will also be doing some radio interviews during February but those dates are yet to be confirmed.

@Schnicker

10 Tips to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro

I've been reading Tom Kuhlmann's eBook as pictured on the right. Tom is the author of The Rapid E-Learning Blog (part of the Articulate website) and although the book has been around for a wee while, there are some really great ideas and relevant tips in there. I extracted a few of the ones I liked the most for this post:


10 Tips from 'The Insider's Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro':

1. The difference between a novice and pro is that the pro knows how to contribute to the organization’s bottom line. Remember, while training is important and e-learning is vital to effective training, the organization’s true goal isn’t to create more training. Instead, the goal is to meet performance objectives. E-learning is just a means to an end, and performance results are the pot of gold at the end of the e-learning rainbow.
   
   
2. The more relevant the course is to the learners, the more engaged they would be, even if the course isn’t “best in breed” multimedia.
   
   On content authoring tools...
   
   
3. START WITH A TOOL THAT LEVERAGES POWERPOINT. PowerPoint is a very flexible application and most people have access to it, and there are many products that leverage PowerPoint to create Flash-based e-learning.
   
   
4. The secret is to step away from the PowerPoint look. Treat it like a blank canvas and you can do some really nice things with it.
   
   
5. Effective e-learning requires assessment, and there are many similar quizzing tools on the market. What I’d look for is SCORM compliance, ability to publish to flash, and ease of use.
   
   
6. To get the most out of your authoring tool you need to leverage multimedia to make quality e-learning courses.
   
   On images, audio and video recording...
   
   
7. One of the main considerations is whether the image can scale without losing quality. Those that can are called vector images and are preferred when working with most e-learning tools.
   
   
8. When it comes to audio, start with the best quality you can, because you’ll never have better quality than your source file. [Here are some more tips on recording audio]
   
   
9. Before you commit to using video, ensure that your organization has the infrastructure and investigate the technology available to your end users.
   
   
10. Make it a habit never to exceed 3-4 minutes on a single video and you’ll avoid losing viewers.

I would definitely recommend giving the full eBook a read as it's free to download here.

Photo courtesy of www.articulate.com

@Schnicker

10 Findings from a New Youth Media Study

A recent report conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation has some surprising statistics on youth media usage (well, for me anyway). The report which is the 3rd in a series conducted every five years, shows youth media use is still increasing despite experts in the second report (2005) believing that it would not be possible as there was not enough time left in the day.

This is the report overview:

'Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Foundation about young people’s media use.  The report is based on a survey conducted between October 2008 and May 2009 among a nationally representative sample of 2,002 3rd-12th grade students ages 8-18, including a self-selected subsample of 702 respondents who completed seven-day media use diaries, which were used to calculate multitasking proportions.'

Here are 10 stand-out findings from the report:

1.  Youth aged 8 - 18 spend more than 7.5hrs a day (equivalent of a work day) using a smart phone, computer, tv or other electronic device - 7 days a week
   
   
2. Less than five years ago the above number was less than 6.5hrs per day
   
   
3. The above times do not include daily use of computer for school work, texting time (1.5hrs) or talking on their cellphone (30mins)
   
   
4. Taking in to account multi-tasking, on average those studied can pack 11hrs of media information in to those 7.5hrs per day! In 2004, multi-tasking brought it up to 8.5hrs.
   
   
5. Youth media consumption has grown far more in the last five years than in the previous five year period: 1999-2004
   
   
6. Contrary to public opinion that media usage displaces exercise, the heaviest media users reported spending a similar amount of time exercising or doing physical activity as the lighter media users of the same age (a particularly positive finding I would say!)
   
   
7. Almost 9 out of 10 users surveyed reported participating in some physical exercise the previous day
   
   
8. Heavy media users report getting slightly lower grades in school than lighter users
   
   
9. Overall most users reported being very content and having lots of friends. But those users that felt less personal contentedness tended to be heavier media users.
   
   
10. 46% of users surveyed reported sending text messages during the day and this averaged out at 118 texts on a typical day

I must be a little out of touch because I find these results to be unbelievable.

Last week I wrote about a Sheffield (UK) school that reported very positive results with the increase of ICT and mobile technology in their curriculum on student behavior. But when I read this report I immediately wondered about the implications on mobile learning - is there room for more media in the already media-filled lives of these youth? Should there be something else more outdoorsy and wholesome filling the other 7.5 hours of their day? It would be a shame not to integrate mobile learning, but what will the long-term effects be on their eyes squinting at little screens all the time? I think once again, the responsibility lies with the parents to inspire kids to get outside, exercise, have fun with others outside of school time and moderate media usage with some simple rules as this report also covers.

Click here for the full report: Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8 to 18 year olds

@Schnicker