We will also examine the System.out.println() method in detail demonstrating how it can output strings and the result of expressions. We’ll also take a look at the nearly identical method System.out.print().

In this tutorial you will learn how to properly configure the Java environment.  Java is not exactly plug and play, but getting the JDK (Java Development Kit) to work is not hard to do if you follow the steps in this video!

In this video we will download the Java JDK, install it, and then configure it.  If you’ve been mystified by instructions to set up the PATH variable, this video will show you that too!  Finally we’ll test the configuration with the traditional Hello World Program.

As promised the HelloWorld.java code appears below.

HelloWorld.java:

class helloWorld
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
System.out.println("Hello From LearnToProgram.tv!");
}
}


He proceeded to demonstrate the typical Powerpoint plug in approach, which had some canned Flash text effects and fades.  I tried to explain that while his product had some nice effects, and certainly would save time for someone doing animation to enhance their eLearning presentation, it did not at all tap in to the power of Actionscript.

He tried several times to explain that with the effects he was showing me his product could “Do everything that Flash could do,” without necessitating knowing any programming.

I smiled and nodded and didn’t engage in further conversation.  I was obviously not his target market.

Since the attitude of this vendor seems pervasive throughout the eLearning industry, I wanted to take a moment to write a post about the value of programming and programmers to the eLearning process.  Here are five reasons programmers and programming is needed in eLearning:

1. Programmers can help develop assessment interactions that go beyond the typical.  There are a number of canned assessment interactions that seem to be used again and again.  I suspect because these are the types of interactions that you can create with the most popular eLearning development tool.  (Most popular– not necessarily best)There are thousands of more creative and, quite often, more interesting ways to assess learning.  What about assembling the parts of engine with drag and drop to train mechanics?  Would developing an assessment in which learners played a casual video game that demonstrated their grasp of major concepts be more effective than a multiple choice question?  How about creating the assessment in the style of a popular game show?  A programmer can be key in bring these– and countless other– examples of creative, interesting assessment to life.
2. Programmers can move your eLearning project from lecture and demonstration to simulation.  Simulation can often be a very effective teaching tool.  This is especially true when training in and on real equipment in a “live” situation might prove too costly or dangerous.  Last year I provided Actionscript training for a number of eLearning Developers working in Oklahoma City.  They were simulating helicopter systems for helicopter pilots for the Border Patrol.   The eLearning project had a mid seven-figure budget.  This was still much less expensive than paying for airtime to have the pilots train in real helicopters– and much safer!
3. Programmers can help you separate content from structure.  In eLearning, often, the content, design, and logic behind an eLearning program is all combined in to a single layer.  This style of development does not promote reuse, easy maintenance or modification of your eLearning program.  For example, content modifications require opening the eLearning files, making the modifications, testing, repackaging and redeployment to the LMS.A well trained programmer can assist in placing your text content, images and videos in an externally managed structure.  Changes in text could easily be made in a word processor in just seconds.  Images could be modified in Photoshop without effecting the rest of the eLearning file or structure.  Design features could be more easily templated and used with other content.
4. Programmers can help you promote reusablility of your content.  I have met eLearning developers who make a separate eLearning presentation for different viewing modalities– One presentation for mobile learning, another for web based distribution and yet another for creating a printed learning guide.  Engaging the services of a programmer can help you separate content from structure as noted in #3 above and reuse the actual learning content in many different forms.  For example programmers can help you apply style sheets that are applied differently for each modality.  One stylesheet is automatically applied if your eLearning is viewed on the web, another stylesheet if viewed on an iPad and yet another if the material is printed.
5. Programmers can help your team work in the roles for which they have expertise and have been trained.  By separating content from design, and structure from text, programmers can empower your team members to work in ways that are convenient and comfortable.  Have a SME who’s a great content expert, but not a designer?  Let them work in Microsoft Word instead of forcing them in to Captivate or Powerpoint.  Know a graphic designer who can’t write well?  If they are focusing on their graphic design role, they shouldn’t have to…

   It seems that too many eLearning designers, developers, SME’s and instructional designers work in roles that they are not suited too.   Programmers can develop systems for distributing content that allow people to do what they do best as part of an eLearning team.

Not convinced you need a programmer?  Can’t afford one?  Become one.  Actionscript (the language behind Flash) is easy to learn, and with practice, can be understood by almost anyone who is computer literate.  However, if you can have a trained programmer on your team, you will be able to push your eLearning envelope in ways that benefit your team, and, most importantly, the learner.

This video discusses a couple of very important concepts in C. First simple If conditinals are reviewed. Then the Else and Else If statements are introduced to make long, complex conditionals. The logic of if conditionals is than expanded so that AND and OR conditionals can be created.

As always, if you have any questions about the videos, or any feedback, please post it here.

Thanks and good luck continuing to learn C Programming!

Part I

Part II

If You Want To Work with Graphics and Sound:
Adobe.com Free Trial Downloads
LearnToProgram.TV Flash, Flex and Actionscript Tutorials

Tables and the table tag are a great way to display information in columns and rows. While tables appear tricky at first, this tutorial will show you how to easily construct tables that display tabular information on your web page. Appropriate for all regardless of your experience level.

This is the sixth tutorial in the HTML series.  The HTML video series is designed to take you through the basics of HTML through the more advanced topics.  New videos will be released periodically.

If you would like to download the code and image used in this tutorial it is available free.  Remember that you must load the HTML file for this tables tutorial in to a browser using File –> Open or a similar command for the browser you are using.  You may also load the HTML file in to Notepad to see the source code.

Specifically, this video reviews the table tag, the th (table header) and td (table data) tags, the border attribute, the cellspacing and cellpadding attributes as well as colors within your tables.

Mark Lassoff, host of the Linux Installation on VMWare Tutorial

If you’re tired of rebooting when you need to switch operating systems, or just want to give Linux a try without committing a hard drive partition, this tutorial is for you.  In this video, you’ll learn how to install VMWare’s VMWare Player, a great free virtual machine tool.  We’ll use that virtual machine to install and use Ubuntu Linux.

Linux is a great operating system for software development.  Systems like ATM machines, POS machines a countless others run on Linux.  It’s very common on computers that run just one piece of software– like airline check-in kiosks– making an investment in a Window’s license senseless.

The links mentioned in the video are:

VMWare Player and Ubuntu Linux

Good luck with the install and email me if you have any questions!

I just completed presenting and attending the BYOL eLearning conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Having an opportunity to present for the attendees as well as attend a few sessions I had a unique perspective on the conference and came away with a few revelations about eLearning in general.

This is the second eLearning focused conference I have presented at and certainly will not be the last.  I enjoyed the interaction with the others at the conference and enjoyed teaching two Actionscript Sessions and a shorter introductory session on Flex.

However, like the last elearning conference I attended I came away with a slightly uneasy feeling about the state of eLearning and the eLearning “profession.”

These are a few of my thoughts and conclusions about the state of eLearning:

1. eLearning Needs Rockstar Innovators: Social Media’s growth, reach, and innovations can be traced at least partially to several rock star innovators.  These rock stars have thousands of twitter followers, extremely well read blogs and influence over the social media community.  I think of Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, among others as social media rock stars.  They tend to catalyze forward movement, innovation and progress in social media.  Who’s filling this role for eLearning?eLearning seems to be blindly following the lead of social media, trying to integrate tools like twitter, Second Life without the foggiest idea of whether or not these technologies help people learn.  It was almost anathema, in my experience, to bring up effectiveness in sessions at the conference, as if I was spoiling the enthusiasm around the tool– even though the tool might turn out to be HURTING the learners’ experience and learning outcomes.The sooner we have some innovative rock stars cutting a path through the hype and BS the better.  Any volunteers?
2. eLearning Needs Better and More Standards: There are too many vendors selling incompatible distribution systems making it difficult, if not impossible, to move content from one LMS (Learning Management System) to the another.  I think the competition is good and SCORM compliance helps, but SCORM compliance only seems to scratch the surface in the area of standards.In talking with my new friend Matt Stoner at the conference we discussed the need for a standardized XML mark-up to hold learning content.  (Kind of like SOAP messaging– but for learning.)  However, these standards don’t exist– in fact it seems like most developers are simply embedding their content directly in to Flash movies or (shudder) Powerpoint and have no idea about the advantages of encapsulation and reuse.
3. eLearning Needs to Think About Certification Tracks: I have never been a huge fan of certification tracks for programmers, but, perhaps I need to change my tune.  Some type of certifying body would indicate that eLearning people know at least some level of course design principals if certified.  Again, it’s not a solution to all of our problems, but it would, at least, provide some baseline level of competence.
4. eLearning Needs to Recruit from Web Developers and Designers, and degreeded education folks– not Office Administrators: The skills possessed by web designers and developers are similar to those needed for eLearning creatives and production people.  It seems as if many of the people in eLearning did not come from the web production, web creative, or education professional ranks.  Many that I met had eLearning tacked on to their duties in sales, HR, or some other only peripherally relevant department.  Unacceptable!
   
   There are several skill sets involved in creating quality eLearning and these skill sets often require college education, high levels of training, experience or a likely combination of the three.  If eLearning is going to be a profession we need professionals– or at least those willing to acquire the necessary skill sets and not simply seek out tools that cover for their skill deficits.  (I can already see the hate emails on this one!)
5. eLearning Needs to Take itself Seriously as a Profession: This is strongly related to the revelation above about the people entering the eLearning arena.  Corporate training, web development and design, and education are all highly related fields that seem to have been able to make the case to professionalize– There are at least informal barriers to entry to the fields.  However, to be an eLearning professional you simply have to call yourself one.  I’m not saying it should be mandated that you have an distance learning degree or 2,000 hours of apprenticeship, but we need to look at creating professional standards and guidelines in order to stop pretending to be and actually become professionals.
6. eLearning Should not be Designed by “anyone” in Two Hours: More than once I heard smart, educated people at the conference say things like “This tool will let ANYONE create an eLearning course,” or “You can create eLearning in two hours.”  Are we trading efficiency and ease for effectiveness?  How do we know?I would argue that eLearning shouldn’t be created by “anyone,” and certainly not in two hours.  eLearning should be created by professionals and the process of instructional design, planning, asset creation and development, production and distribution should certainly take more than two hours.

I certainly don’t mean this article to be an indictment of the eLearning field.  I do hope, however, it sparks some discussion of what we can do to move the profession forward.  My friend Matt Stoner expressed the hope that one day we “stop calling it eLearning and just call it Learning.”  I think that’s a long way off, but a laudable goal.  A laudable goal that can only be reached by professionals committed to quality and the development of  high standards that are reflective of the quality necessary for eLearning outcomes to be indistinguishable from traditional education.

eLearning Training

It seems like I am writing a lot about eLearning this week– Likely due to the upcoming BYOL eLearning conference where I am presenting.  In any case, in preparation for the conference and in teaching classes to eLearning classes in the recent past, I have seen some ways in which, from a production standpoint, eLearning production can be improved.

I’m not an instructional designer, however, I do teach and have an expertise in the technologies used to produce eLearning, so, hopefully, you’ll find these tips useful!

1. Separate Your Content from Presentation-  This is a popular technique among programmers and web developers, but, from what I have seen, has not completely caught on yet with eLearning developers.  Separating your content — in essence the material you want the learner to absorb– from the presentation platform makes your learning more portable and maintainable.For example, if you have your content in an XML formatted document, you can easily use the exact same learning content again in another format– iPhone learning, CD-ROM or some other distribution format.  Embedding your learning material in graphics or Flash files simply makes your material harder to maintain and reuse.
2. Use a Central Metaphor or Theme-  Related your learning material to something the learner already knows about makes the learning more interesting.  I have seen excellent examples of eLearning material presented as a news broadcast, a comedian on stage, or even as navigating an international airport.  Using a central theme or metaphor simply makes your eLearning production more entertaining and more easily absorbed by learners.
3. Hire a Graphic Designer- I attended an eLearning conference earlier this year and the first session I went to was on Graphic Design in eLearning.  The opening Powerpoint slide for the session was so poorly designed that it undermined anything the speaker said during the hour-long session!  There are many, many graphic designers out there and, often, due to the amount of competition, they work at inexpensive hourly rates.  If you are visually illiterate– hire a designer!  Graphic design can be the difference between eLearning that’s successful and eLearning that’s BLAH!
4. Don’t Be Boring-  I have my Twitter client search for tweets about eLearning.  The most common thing I see from participants in eLearning is comments that the eLearning is BORING.  Now I understand that boredom is relative, and we all have different tolerances for technical material, however, there is no excuse to be boring.  In the classroom I make every effort to bring complex technical material to life.  You should be doing the same thing for your learning audiences.I think one of the main reasons that eLearning audiences get bored so quickly and easily is that the applicable context for what they are learning is not demonstrated.  Knowing how the material will apply to the learners’ life or job is an important factor in keep their attention.
5. Don’t Use Powerpoint-  For the love of God!  No Powerpoint– or at least no abusive Powerpoint.  Your audience can read.  Showing a Powerpoint and reading it to them is not effective eLearning.  It’s a crutch for people who don’t know what they’re doing.”They saw the Powerpoint– They’re trained,” is an all too common thought process in eLearning.  Powerpoint is no different from any other written medium.  You might as well hand them photocopies of your presentation written in Word.  Powerpoint is easier for the eLearning Developer because (a) They don’t have to have much skill to use it and (b) It’s quick.  Don’t be lazy.  Don’t use Powerpoint.  It’s simply not effective.
6. Look at the Work of Others- When I was first learning web design in the mid 90′s the best thing I did was to look at the work of others.  There were people out there doing high quality, engaging web sites.  I was creating long streams of text based crap.  By examining the work of other web designers and developers, I was able to develop the skills to create a high quality, well-designed web site.  When I say look at the work of others, I should really say EXAMINE the work of others.  Go through it carefully.  Spending time with their navigation… Look at their learning metaphors… Understand their mix of audio, video and animation… Then go apply the techniques you like to your own work.
7. Learn The Flash Platform-  The Flash platform consists of Adobe Flash and Flex.  It is a platform neutral method of creating eLearning assets that will work on Mac, PC, Linux, some Mobile and soon, the Apple iPhone.  Learning Flash and it’s scripting language Actionscript, can make you a powerful force in the world of eLearning as you’ll be able to develop learning interactions that include animation, video, audio and just about everything else you can think of.  The best eLearning I have seen has made extensive use of Flash and yours should too!
8. Become a Photoshop Master-  It’s all about the visuals.  No learner wants to read, but if they can learn from quality visuals, and you can learn to create them, you’ll be well on your way to creating quality eLearning.  Photoshop is the primary image development and processing tool use by eLearning developers.  Becoming well versed in the Photoshop will help you create engaging visuals thatwill hold your learners interest throughout the course.

Mark Lassoff of LearnToProgram.TV provides instructor-led classroom training for eLearning developers, web developers and software developers in Flash, Flex, Actionscript and other technologies.  If your company needs training, please contact us.

Bring Your Own Laptop: eLearning 2009

I will be presenting at this year’s BYOL: eLearning 2009 in Salt Lake City. I have been invited to present training sessions on Adobe Actionscript and Adobe Flex.  The BYOL conferences have a unique concept– The session are in-depth and hands-on.  Participants will go through what are essentially technical training sessions in all areas of eLearning.  Other presenters are discussing everything from Captivate to enterprise LMS systems to the design of eLearning courses.

The Actionscript 3.0 and Flex training sessions will cover the basics for beginners and include activities that teach participants how to manipulate objects with Actionscript, bring in external text, XML and image assets and in an intermediate course build a complete MP3 player and separate video player.

The BYOL conference is a great place to get training on a number of areas related to eLearning Production and the attendees tend to have diverse professional backgrounds, but have the common goal of wanting to improve the quality of the eLearning courses they build.

Following the conference I’ll post the session files and tutorials similar to those I will present in the session for those who are not able to attend.