If you’re not using Rise.com or a learning management system to manage your e-learning courses, then you’ll need another way to upload courses to a web server to share. This is especially true if you’re maintaining a professional portfolio in one of those simple website builders like Wix where you can’t upload your published course files.

In an earlier post we looked at using Amazon S3 to share courses and today we’ll look at using Google Cloud.

• With Google Cloud, you create an account and add a project.
• From there you create a bucket to hold the content folder.
• You upload files and folders (or published e-learning courses).
• Then you add permission to access them. This generates the URL you can share with others.

Google gives you 5 GB free, and odds are you will never have to pay for the service unless you have a lot of content. And even then, it’ll only cost a few dollars a year at most.

Share Courses Tutorial

Here’s a quick tutorial that walks through how to create the Google Cloud account and get it all set up to share courses. If you have questions or need help with this, the Google Cloud site has lots of handy tutorials to help.

View the tutorial on YouTube.

Resources

• Sign up for an account with Google Cloud.
• Download and install Cloudberry Explorer if you want to use that to manage your courses without using your browser.

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Ideally you have an LMS or using a product like Rise.com to share your e-learning courses. However, there are many times you don’t need a formal management system. For example, you may maintain a professional portfolio where you share courses and work samples.

Amazon S3 is an easy way to do this. And it’s relatively simple : create the account, upload your files, create a URL, and let people access the content. The cost is nominal. Odds are you won’t pay anything and if you do, it’s only a few dollars a year.

Share Courses with Amazon S3 Tutorial

Here’s a quick tutorial that walks through how to create the account and get it all set up. I also show how to use Cloudberry Explorer (another free product) to manage uploading and creating the URL.

View the tutorial on YouTube.

Resources

• Sign up for an account with Amazon S3.
• Download and install Cloudberry Explorer.

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The death of Flash has created a mess for many e-learning developers who have to look for things in older e-learning courses that were published in Flash.

I run into that a lot in the community and with some of my old demos on this blog. It sure is a pain. Not being able to see the file makes it a challenge to recall what was in it or to even know what to look for to update it and republish.

The good news is that I found this thread in the community recently where Sarah shared a link to a Flash player that may help you view old courses. Below is a quick tutorial on how to use it.

Click to view the tutorial.

There’s no guarantee that these links will work forever, I’d download them now, so you have a copy.

Hope that helps those who need to view older Flash courses.

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Even though many e-learning applications have their own audio tools, I usually don’t use them. I may for quick projects, but generally, I like to keep my audio production separate from my e-learning course production. It provides more control over the audio files and dedicated audio editing software tends to have more features.

Here’s a list of some free audio editors that are more than sufficient for what you may need for most of your e-learning course production. And the price is right.

Of course, working with audio isn’t necessarily as easy as plugging in a microphone and recording narration. I include links to the free software’s learning community to help you if you have detailed questions.

Audacity

Audacity is the most popular of the free audio editors. It’s open source with lots of users so that means there’s a lot of help available online. You can do quick basic recording or use the more advanced features for better audio editing.

• Download
• Help

Ocenaudio

The interface for this is familiar and pretty easy to use to get started. As they say, it’s “easy to use, fast and functional audio editor. It is the ideal software for people who need to edit and analyze audio files without complications.”

• Download
• Help

Presonus Studio One (free).

There’s a free and pro version. This is a nice application and a bit more sophisticated than what most of us are used to using. However, once you learn to use it you’ll have a lot you can do.

• Download
• Help

TwistedWave (beta)

This is an online tool. The start page is a bit different than you might expect. To create a recording you click “new document.” This opens up an easy to use recording window. It is online and you can save to Google Drive.

I do like the ability to download and edit audio from Soundcloud.

• Download
• Help

Wavosaur

I just took a quick look at the free audio editor so I can’t speak to how easy it is to use. However, I know that there are a few blog readers who use it. Here’s how Wavosaur describes the tool: “a cool free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. The program has no installer and doesn’t write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design.”

• Download
• Help

WaveShop

This is another application I haven’t used yet, but was told about at a recent conference. It does bit perfect editing which apparently is important if you don’t want a corrupted dither; and who wants that?

• Download
• Help

There are a lot more free audio editors out there, but these are the ones I’ve personally used hear the most about from blog readers. And they’re not tied to non-commercial or freemium business models. That means you’re free to use them for the courses you produce at work.

*image via commons.wikimedia.org

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Earlier we looked at the essential guide to visual thinking where we discussed how to communicate visually. Coupled with that post, we explored practical ways to apply visual thinking skills to e-learning course design.

One advantage of visual thinking is learning to see the concepts and how to express them to others. Another advantage is that you gain the skills to create real assets that can be used in your e-learning courses.

Today we’ll look at ways to create our own hand-drawn graphics. And of course, you can always download some free hand-drawn graphics in the community:

• 50 Stick figures
• 32 chalkboard graphics
• 21 hand-drawn circles
• 28 hand-drawn boxes
• 54 miscellaneous graphics
• 8 objects: books & notebooks
• Arrows & lines
• X-marks: red & black
• Check marks: red & green

How to Practice Sketching Hand-Drawn Graphics

Hand-drawn objects can create a personal and organic look. They are a stark contrast to the sterile corporate look that is so common in many courses. This contrast and the organic look can be used to craft an engaging look for the course. You don’t have to be an artist to create and use hand-drawn images.  It just takes some practice.

A while back, Blair Rorani facilitated a Twitter Draw-a-Thon. Each day several people submitted their sketch of that day’s object. This was a good exercise to think about the objects and how to draw them.

One thing I learned was to streamline my drawings and use less to communicate more. I also tried to practice different face styles. As you can see, I’m not going to sustain a career in graphic design, but with some practice, I can create a few usable objects.

Start with Basic Shapes

Most objects are basic shapes, so you need to learn to see the basic shapes in the objects. Then practice drawing them. The more you practice, the better you get.

Once you recognize the basic shapes, you’ll get better at streamlining your drawings. I find that the less detail, the better.

Practice Drawing Common Course Objects

There are a few objects that are common to many e-learning courses. Start by practicing sketching them. Break them into basic shapes and then see what you can sketch. Here are a few common objects to get started. Feel free to add to the list in the comments section.

• File folder open & folder closed
• Piece of paper & a stack of paper
• Desktop & laptop computers
• Envelope
• Paper clip
• Phones: mobile & stationary
• Desk & overhead desktop
• File cabinet
• Whiteboard
• Cork board

My Experience

As I mentioned in this blog post on overcoming instructional design challenges, Blair Rorani live sketched my presentation.

I liked what he did, so I tried my hand at live sketching at a workshop. You can see the results below.

What I learned:

• Find inspiration from what you like and copy it. I liked Blair’s style, so my first step was to mimic what he did. Now that I feel more comfortable, I can begin to craft my own style.
• My initial sketches took too long between capturing the big idea and trying to make it work with technology (I used the iPad and Adobe Ideas). However, once I completed a few of the sketches, I developed some basic procedures that helped make it faster.
• Spend some time practicing before doing it live or as you sketch for your e-learning courses. One idea is to capture something going on at home. This would also probably produce a lot of laughs, too. Or just turn on the news and sketch what’s being discussed. The main point is to practice and to apply the basic concepts discussed above: use basic shapes to create objects and then practice sketching ideas.
• Don’t worry about everything being perfect. Just do it. They look nice as they are and there’s something engaging about the organic look. However, I do recommend that you practice writing text, especially if you’re using an iPad. For the iPad I use the Cosmonaut stylus because the thicker pen helps me hold it more like I would on a whiteboard than on a piece of paper. I feel like I have more control when I draw. The newer PC tablets have pen input, and some come with a stylus.

We’re not all going to be artists who can crank out the best graphics. However, with some practice we can learn to communicate visually and streamline our graphics, so they do work in our courses (assuming the proper context).

Do you draw your own objects?

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If you’re using Articulate 360, you already get access to more than enough stock images. However, if you’re looking for a place to find more, one of my favorite sites for free stock images is Unsplash.com. They provide hundreds of free stock images with a Creative Commons Zero license. That means you can do anything with the images, whether free or commercial. And that’s a good deal for those of us who are on a tight budget.

As you can see above, I used one of the city images provided by Philipp Henzler for the Storyline tutorials. It works well in an e-learning context. I also used one of the free images for this free template that I shared a while back. You can download the free template it here.

Click to view the free template in action

Unfortunately, while it’s great to get a boatload of free stock images, many of them are mostly decorative and hard to use for e-learning courses. And it does take some time to go through the whole kit and caboodle to find just the right images.

Download Free Stock Images

To save you time, I sorted through the images currently available and looked for the ones that had desks, tables, computers, and other generic elements that could work for e-learning courses. You can see a sampling below and download the curated free stock images here.

How to Use the Free Stock Images

Obviously not all of the images will work for your courses, but with some creativity you can use of many of them. Here are a few thoughts on how to use them:

• Content holders: use the computer screens as a place to put your content.

• Zoom and crop: you don’t need to use the image as is. Feel free to crop or zoom to the parts that work.
• Apply filters like blur, black and white, or recolor to get the effect you want. In the image below, I added a blur and character.

While I did curate the images to help save time, they did come from Unsplash. Be sure to give them some props. Thank you, Unsplash!

PS While you’re download those free stock images, grab these 54 free medical images, too.

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When I create presentations for our webinars or workshops, I like to use the imagery from our e-learning community or the Articulate website. They’re on-brand and with the illustrations, we have a lot from which to choose. When I created training at previous organizations, I did something similar.

If you need to collect images from your company site to use in your training this tip should help.

Usually when I find an image, I right-click to save. However, this is a bit tedious.

Here are two simple ways to see all the downloadable images and save them.

Image Extractor Extension

Use the image extractor extension in your browser. When you get to a page on your website, click the extension and it will isolate all the images. You can review what’s there and then download what you need.

Image Extractor Site

Another option is to use the Image Extractor site. Add a URL and it opens a browser via the server and extracts the images. It does an excellent job filtering images and removing tracking images. It also identifies the types of images and you can do a batch download.

Here are a few considerations:

• This is not intended to help you steal images and content from sites where you own no rights.
• Be sure to properly credit sources.

There you go. Two simple ways to extract images from your website.

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In a recent workshop on creating interactions, we looked at ways to take a single image and create interactive content. It’s a good practice activity because many of us aren’t graphic designers so it helps us see different ways to use stock imagery that doesn’t require a lot of editing. And it gets us to think about interactive content in ways we may not initially consider.

The general idea is to find a single image that you can use for an interaction. A few things I look for:

• Visually interesting. I’m not a graphics designer and design fashion changes every few years. I try to find images that feel new and modern.
• Content areas. Since I’m using a single image and it’s the unifying graphic, I look for places to add content. Sometimes it does require placing a box or some other container shape over the image, but I try to find open space in the image that works for content. In the three examples below, the computer has a good content area, the teens illustration has a middle section that is empty, and for the business collage I created a side panel.
• Visual context. Try to find images that offer visual context so it fits the context of the course content. Generic things like offices and desks work great.

Here are three examples that we’ve covered in the past that demonstrate this idea of using a single image with some interactive elements.

Exploratory E-learning Interaction

Click here to view the demo interaction.

In this example, a single image provides some office-like context. This could be used as an exploratory interaction, when clicking on objects exposes additional content. Ask a question. Looks for clues to answer them.

Original post: Create an Interactive Course Using a Single Image includes free download.

Meet the Team E-Learning Interaction

Click here to view the demo interaction.

The original example was used to highlight counting clicks with variables. However, the single image could be used to click on a character to glean more content such as a “meet the team” activity. The center area is a perfect place to display content.

Original post: E-Learning Tutorial – Easy Way to Make an Image Interactive

Business Collage E-Learning Interaction

Click here to view the demo interaction.

I like these types of collage images because there are plenty of those types of images to be found. The original was built in PowerPoint. The demo above was rebuilt in Storyline. Here’s a download with both files if you want to deconstruct them.

Original post: Here’s a Simple Way to Convert Your Course to an Interactive Story

Hopefully, this gives you some inspiration. If you want a good starting point, do an image search for collages and you’ll find some interesting ideas.

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A guest post by Elizabeth Pawlicki, Training Program Manager, Articulate.

You need a portfolio! Even if you’re not currently looking for a new job, maintaining a portfolio is important as an archive to highlight your work and experience.

In previous posts, we covered what should be in your portfolio and how to build one (with links to some potential sites).

However, I continue to get questions on how to host and manage a portfolio.  That’s what I’ll cover today.

Free Portfolio Site

Recently I came across a free tool called SpreadSimple, which is really cool because it builds websites out of Google Sheets (something many of us already know how to use). You create columns of information, and it takes a single line on a Google Sheet and turns it into a “card” on the site.

Demo Portfolio

I really liked that I didn’t need to do any programming and by adding content to Google Sheets I was able to create a simple website. So, I created a portfolio to test how easy it is to use. You can see it below.

Click here to view the portfolio.

How to Build the Portfolio

Keep in mind, the SpreadSimple site uses Google Sheets to pull in the data for the site. However, it doesn’t host your media. So, you’ll need a place to host your courses and images. There are a number of options here, but I used Amazon S3.

I added the portfolio content to my Google Sheet, added links to courses on Amazon S3, and in no time at all, I had a modern, professional looking web-based portfolio.

I really didn’t need much on my sheet, so I started with my course title, a description, the link to where the course was being hosted in S3, and the link to the course thumbnail, also in S3.

Later, I realized that SpreadSimple allowed for filtering when viewing the completed site, so I added a “Tools” column to my Google Sheet and organized my courses by whether they were built in Storyline 360 or Rise 360.

To give you an idea of just how little you really need to build a site, here’s a behind the scenes look at my Google Sheet.

It’s really easy to build and manage a portfolio this way. Here’s a quick tutorial where you can watch me add a new course to my portfolio just by adding a new line to Google Sheets, filling in the cells, and refreshing the SpreadSimple page.

Click here to view the tutorial.

If you don’t already have a portfolio, give SpreadSimple a try. The service is free if you don’t need to use any of the integrations or set up a custom domain. I found it quick and intuitive.

What do you think?

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I love free icons and illustrations that can be used in e-learning. Here are some good ones for the health and medical industries courtesy of Health Icons. What’s cool is that the icons are open source and free to use in commercial projects without any attribution requirement.

Why are the icons free?

“Health Icons is a volunteer effort to create a ‘global good’ for health projects all over the world. These icons are available in the public domain for use in any type of project. The project is hosted by the public health not-for-profit Resolve to Save Lives as an expression of our commitment to offer the icons for free, forever.”

How do I give credit for the free icons?

Even though they don’t ask for attribution, I think it’s good to spread the word and give them credit where possible. Here’s a post I shared earlier on different ways to share attribution of resources in your e-learning courses.

What can I share for free?

Also, while we’re on the topic of doing good, have you given blood yet? It’s easy to do, doesn’t cost much, and saves lives.

Hope these icons come in handy. And thanks to the volunteers who put them together.

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A guest post by Elizabeth Pawlicki, Training Program Manager, Articulate.

If you’re a Google Chrome 89+ user you now have access to Live Caption which is an accessibility feature that provides real-time captions for audio that plays through the browser.

This is a really excellent feature for audio that runs through your browser when viewing courses that have videos or narration, especially if the audio doesn’t have captions. Check it out below.

Initial Thoughts on Google Live Caption

I tested the Live Captions on a few different e-learning products that had audio including courses in Storyline 360, Rise 360, and Review 360. The captions worked well, surprisingly well, as you can see in the image below.

I also like that even if you turn off the audio, the captions work. As a user I am no longer constrained by whether or not the audio I am consuming has closed captions built-in to the product. The browser does the heavy lifting.

This is a big step forward for those who require captioned audio. I look forward to how this feature evolves going forward.

How to Access Google Live Caption

• First, make sure you’re using Google Chrome 89 or higher.
• Click the three dots on the top right.
• Then go to Settings and select Advanced>Accessibility.
• Click the toggle for Live Caption.

Once you have enabled Live Caption, you’ll see an option to toggle the captions on and off without going in and out of the settings.

Key Considerations for Google Live Caption

• This tip requires Google Chrome 89 or above. If you have learners who need captions and you can’t provide them in time, you at least have the option to recommend Chrome 89.
• It’s a new feature so there are some limitations such as size, position, and language. However, I assume the feature will be enhanced and my guess is other browsers will play catch up.
• From what I can tell the caption choices in Windows OS don’t seem to impact the captions displayed in the browser.

Google Live Caption is a step in the right direction and a great tool for those who need captions when they’re not provided.

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Here’s a cool PowerPoint hack. I had an illustrated character and needed a font style that matched the illustration style. To get the effect I used PowerPoint to create a title font and changed the format. In this post, I’ll show you how.

Free Illustrations for E-Learning

I used one of the free illustrations from Blush which is a great site for illustrations. The paid account gives you a bunch of options to customize. As you can see, the illustration style is organic and looks a little hand-drawn.

Creating Matching Font Style in PowerPoint

As you can see below, I added a big, bold font for effect. It’s OK. But how do I get a font to match the illustration style?

Convert Font into Vector Graphics

The first step is to convert the type into separate graphics. In PowerPoint, you need at least two objects selected. I created a temporary oval shape.

Then go to Shape Format > Merge Shapes > select Fragment. That converts each letter into a shape that can be modified and edited.

Assign Colors to the Objects

Once the letters are individual shapes, you can fill them with any color and change the line stroke. In this case I color picked the blue from the illustration for the fill and color picked the hair for the line color.

Then I used the format painter to apply the colors to the other letters.

Apply a Sketched Line

Adding the organic, hand-drawn effect is a matter of using one of the sketched line options in PowerPoint. I applied a line style that works.

Then made the line size larger to match the illustration. And format painted onto the other shapes.

Whatever you create can be saved as an image. To do so, select the object and right-click to save as image. Or got to the file saves as options and save the slide itself as an image.

PowerPoint Tutorial

Here’s a video tutorial that walks through these steps in more detail.

There you go: a really easy way to convert the regular type to individual vector shapes that can be edited to match the original illustration.

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