Donna K. Fitch - Portfolio

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Archives for February 2019

Captivate Text-to-Speech Converter

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I viewed a video called Secret Downloads for Adobe Captivate. The main secret is this page of program and other downloads for Captivate 2019 that may be downloaded without the Akamai download manager. I think the e-Learning Assets are the same as what we already downloaded, but I did download the NeoSpeech Voices Text-to-Speech Converter. It is a honkin' big file at 1.8 Gb. I found out I'd already installed the voices. Oh well.

For comparison of the text-to-speech function, I did one slide in Captivate 2019 and the other in Vyond.

Captivate version
Vyond version

Results

Vyond was by far easier to create text-to-speech, and has the added bonus of syncing the character's mouth. To be fair, though, I'm not yet as versed in Captivate, so the animation isn't as smooth. Captivate requires a lot more attention to detail, but that makes it more flexible. Plus, cartoon figures might not be acceptable in every learning situation. I found it interesting that the same speech pattern, Bridget, was available in both programs, so I used it both places for a better comparison.

This experiment was fun. I hope you learned something!

Blended is Better

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This is colorful dyed wool fiber from a sheep applied to a blending board to make handmade rolags for spinning yarn. Photo by twinschoice on AdobeStock.

If you know anything about education, you might wonder if I'm saying blended classes are better, i.e. online plus meeting in person. No, not for a second! I love online classes, and this semester has been the best so far. What I mean is that I am loving how blended the two classes I'm taking are.

Before the semester began, I wondered how on earth we could have Introduction to Instructional Design I and Introduction to Instructional Design II at the same time. The I and II designations generally mean sequence.

The two courses complement each other so well! We're learning theoretical, yet practical information in IDTE551 and technical, yet also widely applicable information in IDTE553. I just turned in a presentation on the ADDIE Model in 551. Our assignment in 553 was our project proposal for the end of semester project, in which we had to list how we would use ADDIE. Those fit together quite nicely.

Taking two courses in one semester and working 37 1/2 hours a week isn't easy, but the way these two are set up makes it an exhilarating experience. Thank you, Laura McNeill and Stephanie Graves!

Captivated by Captivate

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I know, I know. Terrible title. But it had to happen at some point, so why not get it out of the way?

Fairy with wand, captioned "Do Magic"

Last night's class in IDTE553 was revelatory to me. I had a vague idea that Captivate would be similar to Camtasia. Oh, not as such. Instructor Graves presented step-by-step instructions, with helpful hints along the way, as an introduction to using Captivate. After just a few minutes, I had created a tiny but effective eLearning module on how to change page orientation in Notepad.

What makes it so stunning to me is the ease with which this was accomplished. All I did was start the recording process and click through the steps in Notepad. The program itself created brief messages to the learner on what to do. I probably could have accomplished this in Camtasia, but with much more fiddling around and much more time.

I can't wait to find out what else it can do! Consider me sold on Captivate for creating eLearning modules.

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