Posted by Brittany Dengerud on Mon, Aug 15, 2011 @ 11:49 AM
Early Adopters for Zebra Zapps,
There are small bugs and missing content, both known and unknown. We rely on your continued feedback to report any issues not known. Here is our working list of features and bugs that we will have an update for in the next few weeks. This is not an exhaustive list, but one including those issues you are most likely to encounter.
While using the ZebraZapps editor, you'll find a comprehensive feedback panel by opening the "Provide Feedback..." option under the ZebraZapps menu in the Editor. This is the new version of the old "QA Window." Feedback may also be given here for any errors in the main site which include the following sections: My Stuff, Account, Shopps, Support and About.
KNOWN ISSUES - 8/15/11
Account
- In My Information under My Profile, if you hit the Save Profile button, an error message will be presented (Firefox only)
- In Manage Account and under Company Profile and Billing Information, if you insert new values into the fields and hit the Save button, an error message will be presented (Please hit OK to get past it)
Shopps
- After clicking Details for any Zapp/Gadget and the Sharing options list (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), the Sharing Panel displays. It has been occasionally reported that a gray screen will cover the screen with no Sharing Panel displayed. If this occurs, please refresh your browser.
- Liking Zapps on Facebook and sharing Zapps through LinkedIn are both receiving updates to functionality.
- Single character searches return any instance of the single character rather than just the first character.
Editor:
Project menu
- There is currently no ability to "unpublish" a Zapp. So please take care when officially submitting a zapp to be published. A new workflow for managing which zapps are published and unpublished will be released shortly.
Objects
- In Buttons the Press and Release inlets (IN>DO>Press... Release) do not fire the Button Pressed outlet (OUT>TRIGGERS>Button pressed).
- Truth Tables have an effective limit of 8 rows.
- The trigger when a mouse leaves the boundaries of an arena is not reliably executed (Arenas>OUTS>POINT & CLICK>Pointer-out ).
- The arena position lock will lock the position of all objects within the arena. (This is an unintended feature that will be reworked shortly allowing greater flexibility)
Posted by Allen Interactions on Tue, Jan 12, 2010 @ 09:42 AM
Dr. Michael Allen speaks about the future of Zebra and the future of authoring tools.
From http://www.brandon-hall.com/workplacelearningtoday/?p=8820
DevLearn 2009
From Jay Cross
Posted by Allen Interactions on Fri, Nov 06, 2009 @ 10:20 AM
by Dr. Michael Allen, CEO
I've always felt tools guided design and had far more influence on e-learning project success than we realize. Having done some research in preparation for the upcoming DevLearn conference, I'm even more convinced of this.
I hope you're planning on attending and will come to my session:
"Exploring the Next-generation Interactive Media Authoring Ecosystem"
Thursday, November 12th at 10:45 am, PST.
We're going to look at:
How authoring tools impact design for good and ill
The importance of matching tools to process, and not letting tools dictate process
How object-oriented tools can revolutionize both process and end product
How you can build action-oriented training applications within the constraints that typically allow only the development of presentations and minimally-interactive e-Learning
How teams might be able to produce high-end e-Learning at "rapid authoring" speeds
Posted by Allen Interactions on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 @ 01:53 PM
by Michael Allen, CEO
I have a love/hate relationship with templates. Mostly hate, actually.
When I started my first project to build an authoring system as part of the CDC PLATO system, another group took off on a different path simultaneously. They felt templates were the solution to making course design and development easier. I felt that no matter how many templates you had, you’d always feel constrained by them. I thought templates would force you into continual compromises. For examples, you might not be able to make the contextual transitions from one template to another you wanted, there wouldn’t be all the options your content needed, you’d be drawn to making the learning experience more academic than authentic.
At that time, no one was proposing to make templates just starter structures which you could easily modify as needed. I think the ability to rework templates easily makes a big difference in the desirability of templates. But still, there’s the issue of academic versus authentic.
What I mean by this is that (as I’m sure you know by now) I strongly prefer e-learning that allows learners to perform tasks that are as close as possible to what they’ll need to actually do after training. In most cases, we aren’t training people to answer on-the-job multiple-choice questions. Multiple-choice questions are academic structures devised for testing convenience. They have their place, but were evolved basically for the same reason e-learning templates have evolved. They’re expedient.
Just as many abilities (e.g. conducting a sales call, interviewing a patient, structuring a business plan, rescuing a flood victim) should not be tested via multiple-choice questions, e-learning experiences need to have appropriate CCAF (context, challenge, activity, and feedback). If you have an authoring tool built from academic-style templates, there’s a strong tendency for the resulting courseware to be academic.
The main problem with trying to use templates to build authentic learning experiences is that instructional content dictates what is appropriate CCAF. That is, it’s difficult to use fill-in-the-blank structures to replicate unique tasks that need to be performed in unique contexts.
Posted by Brittany Dengerud on Wed, Sep 23, 2009 @ 01:59 PM
by Michael Allen, CEO
We're so exasperated with the state of tools for e-learning. Although there are many tools, I'm thinking authoring tools just now, they seem to fall into two camps: way too simplistic (PowerPoint) or highly sophisticated (Flash/ActionScript).
When we want to just kick out some information, sure, PowerPoint is fine. But when we really want to create learning experiences, we often turn to a fairly expensive approach such as ActionScript or Lectora. Now we have the advantage of very skilled and experienced developers. Our clients come to us in large part specifically because we have these skills, can use sophisticated tools, and are a lot faster than less experienced folk.
But it seems like better tools would lower the cost and effort for everyone. And I'd like to see that.
So, while we're busy experimenting with some in-house tools, I'm wondering:
- Are you exasperated too?
- Are you developing your own tools?
- Should we seriously considering productizing our own tools and marketing them for others to use?
Just wondering today (and most every day)... 
Posted by Allen Interactions on Fri, Sep 11, 2009 @ 06:04 PM
by Scott Colehour, Solutions Architect
First off let me get everyone caught up on the progress of the Zebra research project here at Allen Interactions. We have made some very good progress on the prototype and have added some things that we really think will be valuable. As a result of these additions, we need to hold off a bit longer on releasing it to our research group that has volunteered to participate with us. What we would like to do in the mean time, is get your opinions on a few design features/ideas we have been pondering about this potential development tool.
The first question we would like to pose to the group is about an integrated bitmap editor within a development tool. Too what extent do you feel this is a “must have” in a development system? Our internal discussions revolve around a multitude of bit editor choices currently available to designers/developers vs. the need to devote resources to integrating a simplified bitmap editor in the development tool.
We would appreciate any thoughts you may have on this design option.
Posted by Brittany Dengerud on Thu, Jun 25, 2009 @ 05:51 PM
by Michael Allen, CEO
Thanks so very much to you and all the ASTD ICE attendees who have signed up to help us examine what authoring tools are and aren’t doing for us in e-learning. In recent years, it seems to me we’ve largely been left to either 1) use general purpose development tools (which means the going is hard and many excellent possibilities have to be compromised) or 2) use tools that belittle both instructional challenges and the complexity of instructional product creation.
Our processes are complex and almost always occur in an organizational context which adds further complexity. We need assistance from the analysis and ideation phase to translation, database management, LMS interface, evaluation, and so much more.
General purpose tools, while they may be ubiquitous and enduring, provide so little of the needed solution. And most tools focused on learning simply sneer at the true complexity of powerful learning events, substituting instead multiple-choice and drag-and-drop question editors. Although organizations blessed with teams of power programmers can meet the challenge, they do so at major expense and often with unavoidable inefficiency due to the lack of appropriate tools.
The question is, then, if there were to be a suite of e-learning authoring tools that provided just what we need, what would it look like?
In concert with the iterative methodology our studios use for the design and development of e-learning applications, we’re prototyping to see what we can come up with. It’s my plan to put prototypes in your hands and ask for your evaluation.
We’re going through another prototype iteration just now, and because we aren’t a tool vendor with lots of user support available, we’ve decided to distribute the upcoming prototype rather than the one demonstrated at ICE. It will be “smoother” and more easily explored. And it won’t be long before it hatches—sometime this fall, as it looks now. Please be patient.
In the meantime, we’d very much like to continue the dialogue about the importance of tools and the nature of what we really should have. So, please share your thoughts and we’ll do likewise.