Top 10 Australian eLearning Providers With Highest Social Media Engagement

A few weeks ago I read an interesting post by Christopher Pappas over at eLearning Industry. The post was titled The Top 20 Learning Portal Companies based on Social Media and ranked the top learning portals based on their popularity on social media. Christopher's post was in turn inspired by an earlier TrainingIndustry.com blog post titled 2012 Top 20 Learning Portal Companies.

Since I live and work in Australia, I thought it would be interesting to look at the social media engagement of some of the movers and shakers in the Australian eLearning industry. I have chosen to measure each eLearning provider's social media engagement via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. With regards to Twitter I have included the number of tweets as well as the number of followers since I am attempting to measure social media engagement rather than just popularity.

I based my list on eLearning providers that are familiar to me as an eLearning consultant plus I had a look through my own LinkedIn contacts as well as the list of winners from the LearnX Asia Pacific Learning & Technology Impact Awards from 2011 and 2012.

I think I've covered off most of the big players. However, if there's an Australian eLearning provider you think deserves to be on the list post their details in the comments and I'll include them in an updated list next year. 

#1: Online Courses Australia

Online Courses Australia specialises in creating customised, tailored and interactive online learning solutions that integrate theory, experience and knowledge.

Location: Brisbane, Australia
Total Social Network: 5,427

Twitter: 37 followers & 142 tweets
Facebook: 5,243 likes
LinkedIn: 5 followers

#2: Learning Plan

Learning Plan is a specialist learning development and learning technology services company.

Location: Sydney, Australia
Total Social Network: 2,747

Twitter: 1,058 followers & 1,026 tweets
Facebook: 621 likes
LinkedIn: 12 followers

#3: B Online Learning

B Online Learning offers eLearning and online learning courses and software.

Location: Sydney, Australia
Total Social Network: 1,586

Twitter: 768 followers & 579 tweets
Facebook: 165 likes
LinkedIn: 74 followers

#4: Learning Seat

Learning Seat provides individually branded, web based organisational Learning Centres and specialise in providing compliance, professional development and accredited training.

Location: Melbourne, Australia
Total Social Network: 1,483

Twitter: 550 tweets & 404 followers
Facebook: 122 likes
LinkedIn: 407 followers

#5: Purple Learning

Purple Learning is a creative learning company specialising in custom learning solutions for large organisations and government bodies.

Location: Sydney and Melbourne, Australia
Total Social Network: 1,231

Twitter: 677 followers & 489 tweets
LinkedIn: 65 followers

#6: Nine Lanterns

Nine Lanterns design and build bespoke training solutions and collaborative online learning environments.

Location: Melbourne, Australia
Total Social Network: 681

Twitter: 388 followers & 293 tweets

#7: Online Learning Australia

Online Learning Australia provides learning strategy, custom eLearning course development, rapid development, creation of classroom material, advice on learning management systems and customisable courses.

Location: Melbourne, Australia
Total Social Network: 547

Facebook: 8 likes
LinkedIn: 539 followers

#8: eCreators

eCreators provide high level eLearning consulting services as well as expert training in Articulate Studio, Adobe Captivate and Online Instructional Design.

Location: Melbourne, Australia
Total Social Network: 210

Twitter: 60 followers & 83 tweets
Facebook: 23 likes
LinkedIn: 44 followers

#9: Savv-e

Savv-e develop elearning creation tools, learning management systems and pre-packaged content.

Location: Sydney, Australia
Total Social Network: 126

LinkedIn: 126 followers

#10: 2and2

2and2 creates custom eLearning and creative digital content solutions that educate and entertain, engage and inspire.

Location: Sydney, Australia
Total Social Network: 122

Twitter: 25 followers & 8 tweets
Facebook: 52 likes
LinkedIn: 37 followers

I'm heading over to Europe for a 4 week holiday. Do I take a MacBook Air or the new iPad?

A few weeks ago I bought the new iPad. As much as I love technology, this is my first iPad. Up until now I couldn't really see the point of it all. However, towards the end of last year, I decided to take a long overdue 4 week overseas holiday and I really want to be able to do the things I would normally do on my Apple MacBook Air.

Anyhow, when I heard that Apple were probably going to bring out a new iPad in February or March of this year I wondered whether I would be better off going OS with the new iPad rather than my MacBook Air. As much as I love my Mac I think it would be an interesting experiment to see if I can get by without it when I'm OS. I'm going to be out and about most of the time so I shouldn't really need it much. Unless I have to I won't be doing any work. All I'm really going to be doing is looking at maps, train timetables, weather forecasts, accommodation, etc. Suffice to say, I think an iPad should see me through.

Not only that but I think it would be much easier to travel with an iPad since it's smaller and lighter than a MacBook Air. In fact, the new iPad is half as heavy as my 13 inch MacBook Air: 652 g as opposed to 1.35 kg. The only real downside about using an iPad, as I discovered recently, is that the virtual keyboard is a little cramped. I probably need to give it more time so that I can get used to it.

Another downside for me is the fact that there's currently no Microsoft Office for the iPad. However, as per an article I recently read on AppleInsider, Microsoft are going to be releasing Microsoft Office for the iPad any day now. Although I may not need it, it would be nice to have access to Microsoft Office whilst I'm away. I won't be heading off for another 5 months so there's plenty of time for Microsoft to release Microsoft Office for the iPad.

Have I missed anything? What do you think I should do?

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.