Staff Development & Training
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The Tools We Use
"Adobe Captivate 3 software enables anyone to rapidly create powerful and engaging simulations, scenario-based training, and robust quizzes without programming knowledge or multimedia skills." That's what it says on their website and that's what we've found to be true. Staff Development & Training has been using Captivate since it switched from RoboDemo to Captivate 1. Initially, it was used for simulations and demonstrations of processes. Since then we have come to realize that Captivate's only limitation is our imagination. We have used it to develop podcasts, soft skills training and to convert our existing VCR or DVD videos into online training courses that we have uploaded to our learning management system. One of the best things about Captivate is that it is very widely used, so a Google search for any question you have should quickly provide the answers you need. 
"Articulate Rapid E-Learning Studio Second Edition combines powerful products into one integrated package with everything you need to rapidly create e-learning courses from PowerPoint, and to develop stunning interactive content, quizzes, assessments and surveys." Articulate has been an incredible addition to our authoring tools. It is both very powerful and incredible easy to use. Articulate Studio Professional comes with three products: Presenter, Quizmaker and Engage. When you install Presenter, it becomes a menu in PowerPoint, just like the File and Edit menus. It will allow you to quickly convert PowerPoint files into interactive Flash presentations. This is a tool that was truly designed for subject matter experts to be able to create online training content. Quizmaker allows you to create Flash based quizzes, assessments ans surveys, which can stand alone, be uploaded to a learning management system or integrated with Presenter. Engage provides 10 amazing and incredibly useful Flash interactions that, like Quizmaker, can stand alone, be uploaded to a learning management system or integrated with Presenter. Click on the link above to visit the Articulate site, select any of the products and click on the Demo button to see examples of what they can do. 
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. "Get the tools you need to create content for every design discipline in one offering." This is Adobe's largest suite of software and it has everything you will ever need and much more. We have used it to create custom graphics and logos, edit and add special effects to images, capture and edit audio and video files, create web pages, design Flash animations and create interactive Acrobat forms. We started using Adobe's Design Premium suite, which had many great tools but was lacking a video editing application, to meet that need we purchased Sony Vegas. Vegas is a great, easy to use video editor, but it made sense to us to upgrade to an Adobe suite that had all the tools we need in one package. Again, like Captivate, Adobe products are very widely used and support is incredibly easy to find, whether doing a Google search for a feature or question you have or visiting the Adobe Developers Center, you can very easily find the answers to any questions you might have. Although the Master Collection is an expensive suite of software, it has allowed us to develop logos, content and forms that are professional looking and unique to our agency.
Visual Studio Communicator allows us to choose between a library of 3D multicultural characters (also known as avatars), record our voices, add gestures from a large library of predefined facial expressions and hand/arm movements and incorporate those characters into our online training. Using an avatar in training content speeds up the development process by removing variables such as finding someone who is not camera shy, setting up camera and lighting equipment and capturing and editing video. It also brings consistency and familiarity across training topics by being able to use the same character for related training. There is a great research paper on "The Benefits of Interactive Online Characters" by Byron Reeves of Stanford University in the "The Way We Learned" section of this site.
"Digital Juice is the world leader in royalty-free professional animations, stock footage, music, layered graphics, clip art, and templates. Our mission and passion is to provide high quality creative content and software at revolutionary low prices." This company is one of our favorites! Oddly enough, there isn't a whole lot you can do with the products this company offers by themselves, but it has streamlined our development process more than any other application we use. We have used their video footage, audio clips, backgrounds, graphics and sound effects to create some incredible videos, podcasts, printed materials and training content in hours instead of days. They have amazing products, great prices, excellent customer service and Emmy award winning video training, which they call DJTV, on their website. DJTV is available free of charge to anyone that visits their website. DJ Training, DJ Forums and DJ Blog are also great, free resources available on their site. If you have some of your own work you want to show off or if you want to see what others are doing with DJ products to get some ideas for yourself, check out the DJ Showcase. Digital Juice products have been featured in American Idol, the Grammy Awards, The Daily Show, NBC Nightly news and NASCAR events to name a few.