I'm Doing the Moodle Course Creator Certificate (MCCC)

In case you're wondering why you haven't heard from me in a while it's because I'm currently completing an online course, namely the Moodle Course Creator Certificate (MCCC). It's an 8 week course which finishes at the end of November. I'm doing the course through an official Moodle partner. The course isn't hard but it is a bit of a struggle finding the time as I'm kept fairly busy managing Graccon Learning Solutions. Anyhow, I'm sure it'll all be worth it in the end.

Why Can't I Open Microsoft Word Files From My Dropbox When Using My Apple MacBook Air?

As some of you may know, I've been spending a lot of time lately coming to terms with my new purchase, namely an Apple MacBook Air. I've come a long way in a very short period of time. I must admit, having been a PC user for many years, it took me a while to get my head around this whole Mac thing. Anyhow, it's been six weeks now and I'm starting to feel comfortable with my MacBook Air.

One of the first things I did after I took possession of my Mac was to go out and purchase Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. Installing the software was easy. However, I soon discovered that I couldn't open any of the Microsoft Word files that live in my Dropbox. I could open them from my PC but they wouldn't open on my Mac. I went to my local Next Byte shop where the scruffy but helpful Geek behind the counter was stumped by my problem. He tried a few different things but in the end all he could come up with was to reinstall Office.

I really didn't want to have to go to all that trouble so I did some research using my trusty friend Google and came across a post in the Dropbox Forums titled Can't open Word Files in which a number of Dropbox users discussed the fact that they were unable to open Word files on their MacBooks.

Whilst the discussion in the Dropbox Forums was certainly interesting it didn't really help me. In the end, I did some testing of my own and came up with my own solution. It occurred to me that Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 may have taken exception to the unusual naming convention I usually use when naming my files and folders. In the past I have tended to make my folder names as descriptive as possible. In doing so I have sometimes use keyboard characters on my PC that I shouldn't. (That's a hint!). Here's an example:

02 - Graccon; 2011; Admin; Invoicing In

I had created this folder on my PC sometime ago then copied it to my Dropbox. My PC didn't seem to mind the fact that I had used a semicolon in the naming of my folder. And my Dropbox didn't seem to have a problem with it either. It only became a problem after I purchased a MacBook Air, installed Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 and started opening Word documents on my Mac rather than my PC.

Slowly but surely I’m going through my Dropbox and renaming each and every folder so that if any of those folders ever contain a Word file I'll have no problem opening them on my PC and/or my Mac. It’s going to take me a while but its something that needs to be done. The folder above now looks like this:

02 - Graccon # 2011 # Admin # Invoicing In

Strangely, whilst Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 doesn’t seem to like folder names that contain a semicolon it has no such problem with file names containing a hash.

My Adobe Photoshop CS4 Problem and How It Was Resolved Thanks to the Adobe Windows Photoshop Forum

The other day I was having a design problem so I posted a message titled Why does my logo lose its transparent background when I copy it from PowerPoint into Photoshop? in the Adobe Windows Photoshop Forum. In particular, I had a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation that contained a client's logo and I needed to capture that logo so I could use it in Moodle. Initially, I copied the logo and pasted it into Adobe Photoshop CS4.

However, the logo had a transparent background in PowerPoint which it seemed to lose once it was in Photoshop. I tried copying and pasting the logo several times but on each occasion I ended up with a logo that had a white background. Anyhow, I decided to post a message in the Adobe Windows Photoshop Forum. Suffice to say, less than 24 hours later I had received two responses.

In one response the author suggested I capture the logo from PowerPoint in a different way. Instead of selecting the logo then clicking Copy it was suggested that I simply right-click on the logo and click Save as Picture. So I gave it a go and used Save as Picture to save the logo in PNG format before opening it up in Photoshop. Suffice to say, my logo now has a transparent background rather than a white one. Thanks Mike.

Thanks to Articulate Support My Articulate Presenter Preview Problem Has Been Resolved

You may remember my previous post in which I mentioned that I've been having a bit of a problem with Articulate Presenter. In particular, I could use Presenter to develop content, but I couldn't preview my content before publishing it. Anyhow, thanks to Articulate Support, you'll be pleased to know that the problem has now been fixed.

For just over a week, a large number of email were exchanged between Articulate Support and myself as we tried to figure out what the problem was. I must admit, Articulate Support were fantastic. They were really quite attentive and seemed to be genuinely interested in trying to help me. Anyhow, we did the email ping pong thing for over a week until we reached a point where we seemed to be running out of options so one of their senior customer support engineers suggested we organise a virtual meeting.

So that's what we did. We had a virtual meeting last Tuesday morning from 8am until about 10.35am. The engineer was very professional and seemed to know his stuff. Suffice to say, by the end of it I was tired but relieved because although we hadn’t found an answer to my problem, we had found a clever way around the problem. To cut a long story short, after extensive testing by Articulate, it appears that my user account has somehow been compromised. We know this to be the case because we created a new user, logged in as that user and successfully previewed Articulate Presenter content whereas I wasn't able to preview content when accessing Articulate Presenter by way of my old user account.

So, since my old user account has somehow been compromised, from now on I'm going to start using my new user account instead . I'll keep the old one just in case. Mind you, I've got a bit of work ahead of me moving all the stuff from Outlook in my old user account to Outlook in my new user account. However, as far as I'm concerned, it's just a minor inconvenience. The important thing for me is that I can now preview in Articulate Presenter.

My Articulate Presenter Preview Problem... Can You Help Me?

You'll have to excuse me. In recent days I've been a bit pre-occupied with an important software problem which has taken up a lot of my time. In particular, when previewing content in Articulate Presenter I see nothing. In other words, when I go to the Articulate Ribbon and click "Preview, Preview this slide" or "Preview, Preview Next 3 Slides" or Preview, Preview Range of Slides" the Preview window appears but it doesn't contain anything. Here's what I see:

This has been happening for about two weeks now. It doesn't matter whether I'm trying to preview something that was created an hour ago or a year ago: preview simply doesn't work. I'm not sure what the trigger was or is. Perhaps there's more than one trigger. All I know is that it's very frustrating.

The software works as it should except for the fact that I can't preview anything. I can create a presentation and then publish it but I can't preview. I've tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the software as well as uninstalling and then reinstalling Adobe Flash which the Articulate suite uses. I've also uninstalled Internet Explorer 8 such that I'm now running Internet Explorer 7. So far nothing has worked.

I've had an ongoing conversation by email with Articulate Support and I must admit they've been very helpful. However, at this point in time, I still can't preview Articulate Presenter content. Personally, I think it has something to do with Adobe Flash and/or Internet Explorer. Why do I think this? Because, as Articulate Support told me in one of their emails, and I quote, "Articulate Studio '09 products need Flash Player to work properly, and this is the Flash Player plugin that is installed in Internet Explorer."

All I can say to you right now is that I've invested a lot of time in trying to find a solution to this problem and that I hope to have resolved this problem before the end of the month.

Testing a Multi SCORM Learning Object in Moodle 2.0

At last night’s Melbourne Moodle Users Group meeting I demonstrated how to create a multi SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) learning object using JCA Solution's Simple SCORM Packager (SSP). Apart from the fact that we had some minor technical difficulties, it was a good night. In particular, there were several IT-savvy people in the room but no-one could get the data projector to recognise the laptop. We tried a few different keyboard combinations on the laptop but it didn't work. In the end we got everyone to crowd around me as I used my laptop to demonstrate how to use Simple SCORM Packager.

OK. So that was problem number 1. Problem number 2 was that I had a particular multi SCORM learning object which I wanted to show the group. This was a SCO (Shareable Content Object) which I had viewed that morning. Anyhow, for no apparent reason, we couldn't view this learning object half a day later. It just wouldn't open. The only thing that had changed was the Internet Service Provider (ISP). In the morning I was at home using my ISP, namely Internode, whereas in the evening I was using the meeting room's ISP.

Not being able to open a SCO which had opened easily previously is not unusual. I've had learning objects which would open on one occasion but not another. I have found from past experience that this problem can sometimes be solved by simply changing browsers. On this occasion, we started out using Mozilla Firefox. When that didn't work we changed over to Internet Explorer. As soon as we changed to Internet Explorer we were able to open the SCO which we hadn't been able to open earlier.

I have absolutely no idea why a SCO can be opened in Firefox in the morning but not in the evening. Would it be a problem with the browser? Or is it a problem with the Internet Service Provider (ISP)? Maybe it's something to do with Moodle 2.0. What do you think?

Why Two Browsers (Or Even Three) are Better Than One and Opera is the Best One of All

I have several different browsers installed on my laptop. In particular, I have Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. I use to have Chrome too but that’s another story. The fact is, I use each and every one of them. I use Firefox and Opera a lot, Safari a little and IE rarely.

Why do I use four browsers? The short answer is: it’s complicated! The main reason I use four browsers is because I’m in the habit of creating learning objects and I need to test my learning objects in the most popular browsers to see whether or not they behave the way I intended. Apart from that I use a particular browser based on what it is that I’m doing. (More on this in a future post.)

Up until about two months ago I wasn’t even using Opera but then there was something very specific which I needed to do that I couldn’t find a way of doing in either Firefox or IE. I was researching an overseas trip and needed to find a way of keeping tabs on a series of web pages relating to each of the cities I was intending to visit. For various reasons social bookmarking didn’t seem to be the way to go. I thought about opening all of these pages in IE then saving them as my Home Pages but IE will only let you save a maximum of eight Home page tabs.

So I decided to download Opera and give it a go. To my surprise the one thing that I really need to do right now can be done in Opera. Using Opera gives me the ability to save a “snapshot” of a series of tabs as a session for viewing at a later date.

It might not sound like much to you but when you’re trying to organise an overseas trip being able to do this can save a lot of time and effort. I have now created a session for each and every one of the cities I will be visiting later in the year. In my next post I'll show you how to save a session in Opera and how to manage your sessions.

How to Publish Articulate Presenter to a Single File

The other day I needed to publish an Articulate Presenter learning object such that the output would simply consist of a single file. Presenter gives you a range of options when publishing a presentation. However, there's currently no option which produces just one file. I remembered seeing a post in the Articulate Presenter Community Forum which mentioned using a program called HTML Executable so I downloaded a trial version of the program and gave it a test run. Using HTML Executable to create a single file was actually fairly quick and easy. Here's the process from beginning to end.

Articulate Presenter

1. When you are ready to publish your course click Publish from the Articulate menu and the Publish window opens.



2. In the Publish window select the WEB tab.



3. Choose your Publish Location then review your Publish Properties.


4. Make any changes necessary to your Publish Properties and then hit Publish.


5. The Publish Successful window opens.



6. Click Close.

HTML Executable

1. Open HTML Executable and click Start a new project. The Configure project window opens.



2. In the Configure project window click Next. The Publication Type window opens.



3. In the Publication Type window select Self-Extracting publication and click Next. The Select Source Folder window opens.



4. In the Select Source Folder window locate the folder containing the files Presenter just created and click Next. The Choose Homepage window opens.



5. In the Choose Homepage window select the 'player.html' file and click Next. The Output File & Finish window opens.



6. In the Output File & Finish window, under Executable Output File choose the location where you would like the output file to be placed and click Finish. The Publication Settings window opens.



7. In the Publication Settings window under Publication Title give the output file a name and select the Publication Output tab.



8. In the Publication Output tab click Compile Publication.

Are You Looking for Articulate Engage Community Interactions?

Articulate Engage is a great way of creating engaging Flash presentations quickly and easily. Engage can be used to create a number of different types of interactions, including Guided Image, Process and Pyramid.

As well as that, Engage makes it possible for you to give something back by downloading the Engage SDK, developing your own interactions and sharing them with the community. Any community interactions you download and install appear in your Community Interactions tab.

Here are some of the community interactions that have been developed so far:

Tic Tac Toe
- Click here to download

Bar Chart, Carousel, Flipbook, Stairstep
- Click here to download

Here's a sample of the Tic Tac Toe community interaction:

Use the comments area below to share other community interactions.

What Comes After SCORM? Have Your Say in The Future of SCORM at Project Tin Can

The other day I received an email from Project Tin Can which is working on behalf of Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL), the governing body for SCORM, and has been charged with the task of looking at SCORM and "modernizing things". Before they can do that they need to hear from people who care about learning and are actually using SCORM - people like you and I. There's a forum where you can look at the ideas that have already been submitted as well as submit your own. Or you can sign up for a one-on-one interview. Click here to follow Project Tin Can on Twitter.

Do You Need Social Media Icons for Your Blog or Website? Look No Further

The other day, whilst rummaging around on the Internet, I found this great site which offers a huge selection of social media icons in three different sizes. The best part is they're all totally free. No strings attached. Here's a sample:



Look to your right and you'll see that I've used some of the icons here in my blog. Click here to go to the actual website.

My Guided Crossword Puzzle at the Melbourne Moodle Users Group Meeting

At last night’s Melbourne Moodle Users Group meeting I showcased a guided crossword puzzle I had recently created using Puzzlemaker, Adobe Illustrator and Articulate Quizmaker. The audience showed much interest and asked lots of questions. Mind you, (as much as I'd like to), I can’t take all the credit. I created my puzzle based on a video I came across from @articulatebrian which steps you through the process from beginning to end. I pretty much followed Brian’s video to the letter. Having said that however, I did make one minor addition. I added a red arrow which flys in and indicates the question about to be solved as you move from one slide to the next. You can see the finished product here. No login required. Simply click "Login as a guest" and you're on your way.