Mobile Learning

TechSmith, who are still giving out copies of Camtasia Studio for free, are now also giving away another of their premium products, SnagIt.

Like Camtasia, SnagIt allows you to capture anything you see on your screen and save it and edit it for creating small instructional resources. However, SnagIt can be configured for “one-clicK” access on your computer, and allows you to capture high-quality still images as well as video. You can add effects and instructional text and graphics, and even make your tutorial interactive with clickable areas and text.

Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (English)
Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (German)
Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (French)

Click here for a key to register SnagIt 7.2.5 demo as a fully licensed version.

Because SnagIt outputs interactive Flash files as well as images and video files, it can be used in a number of ways to create mobile learning content for PDAs, mobile phones and media players. It could also be used by learners to document their mastery of a computer-based process or to create content for sharing with other learners.

(via Freebies Blog)

Tags: snagit, camtasia, techsmith, flash, free, video, screen, capture, image, interactive, m-learning, mlearning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, mobile learning, education, resources, tools

Judy Breck at the Golden Swamp blog has drawn my attention to this page on the Adobe website, enabling developers of mobile content to make it available through various mobile phone network and service providers. For m-learning content developers, this is an opportunity to unleash your content for public consumption. As Judy states most insightfully:

Here is a call that should be answered by education if we expect to improve learning in our digital age. There is money to be made as well as ignorance to be diminished by selling mobile content for sciences, history, geography, technologies, literature and the 3 Rs.

I have one m-learning product concept I’ve been working on that I’m particularly keen to release, an immersive and engaging edu-game that has already proven successful on desktop PCs that could easily be adapted to a mobile environment. Now if I can just find some time to build it…

technorati tags:m-learning, mlearning, adobe, flash, lite, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, education, content, development

Thank you to Stephanie Rieger, who continues to inform and inspire me.  She’s posted a comment on an earlier post to let me know the Good News – and I’m not just talking about Christmas. It seems that Adobe have released a new version of the Flash Lite Player, which is free of charge and capable of playing standalone SWF files.  You can download it here.

What does this mean for educators?

Well… for one, it means that developers whose favourite IDE happens to be Flash – (like, say, me, for example!) – are going to have a lot of fun, creating new learning experiences that can be deployed to mobile- and web- based learning environments and learner devices.

It also means that if you’ve got a favourite Flash file which you’ve used in the past to deliver learning experiences to learners on the web… it’s quite possible that that material could now be utilised in mobile environments as well.  Here in Australia, Flash is used heavily in the development of Flexible Learning Toolboxes, and the use of Flash was previously a considerable inhibitor to repurposing Toolboxes for mobile devices; now, it seems, porting these valuable resources for mobile use has come a step closer to reality.

Now… does anyone have a wish list of mobile Flash applications for education that they’d like me to develop and make available here?

technorati tags:m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, flash, flash lite, adobe, macromedia, swf, player, clcommunity