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.

Flex Logo

Much has been written about Adobe Flex as a development environment.  It runs on the existing Flash platform and anyone with a Flash player can run Flex based applications.  Some argue it’s the wave of the future when it comes to application development.  Here’s five reasons LearnToProgram.TV believes that you should be using Flex.

1) Easy Cross Platform Development.  Want to release an application on Mac, Windows and Linux and even the Apple iPhone?  Adobe Flex allows you to write a single application, create a single release and distribute it to most platforms.  The hosted web applications are cross platform, as they run in the Flash plug-in in your web browser.  The SWF file is interpreted by the Flash plug-in. Applications run identically, regardless of platform.

2) Web or AIR Desktop with ease. If you need to be able to easily port your applications from the web to desktop environment, no tool makes it easier than Flex.  No specific Flex training is required to move from desktop to web and back.  Change a couple of tags, and– Presto!  Your web application is running within Adobe AIR– which is Adobe’s desktop runtime environment.  AIR applications install much like regular applications and as long as the user has the AIR runtime environment installed, there is little to distinguish an AIR application from a traditional desktop application.

3) Great Data Visualization Tools.  If data visualization is important to you, you’ll love the built-in and commercially available data visualization tools for Adobe Flex.  The built-in charting environment is rich an featureful, however for those who need more advanced charting tools, you will find there are a number of commercially produced tools that create amazing visuals.

4) A True Rapid Application Development Environment. Creating powerful, dynamic user interfaces is easy with Flex. Create the user interfaces with the existing drag and drop tools, or if you prefer, create interfaces with the easy-to-learn MXML markup language.  In minutes you can create complex interfaces that include datagrids, numeric steppers, and a myriad of other user interface components.  Because of the convenient listener-based user interface framework, it’s quick to “wire up” the components and have them interact with user events.

5) MVC Out of the Box.  The Flex Development environment encourages the use of the popular and powerful Model-View-Controller pattern.  By immediately separating the user interface (MXML based) and the application logic (ActionScript 3) it’s possible to create portable MVC style applications in a natural way.  With use of the MVC pattern your business logic and interface logic are reusable as they are well encapsulated.

6) (Ok– So It’s Six Reasons) Easy Apple iPhone Distribution is on the way!  With Adobe’s recent announcement that future versions of the Flash/Flex SDK will support distribution to the iPhone you can for the first time create iPhone applications without having to learn iPhone programming.  What’s more, you will also be able to distribute your iPhone applications to other mobile platforms without porting any code!

Convinced?  Need Flex training?  Please contact LearnToProgram.TV and we’ll be happy to show you how LearnToProgram.TV’s custom courses can get you and your development team up to speed with Flex in just a few days!  Our training courses are guaranteed to satisfy your training needs.

LearnToProgram.TV offers a unique approach to instructor led training. While you will find many training companies offer canned curriculum that are designed to be one-size-fits-all, LearnToProgram.TV offers customized courses that are guaranteed to meet your needs.  We are not certification based. In fact, we offer no courses that lead to certifications at all– Instead, we train developers to solve the actual problems they will encounter in a production environment.  For example, in our customized Adobe Flex Training Classes we often have participants build full streaming multimedia applications that are often part of the rich interfaces that Flex is known for helping create.  In our Java classes,  instead of just learning the basics of socket programming, training participants create an instant messenger with a Graphical User Interface that communicates across the classroom local area network.

We seek to provide not only customization, but also value.  With competitive instructional fees, high levels of customization, and an award winning instructional team you can’t go wrong with LearnToProgram.TV.  We’re so convinced that you’ll find the training we provide satifactory that we guarantee it!

If you’re looking to take programming exams and hang certifications on your wall– Look elsewhere! If you’re trying to put together a development team that can get the job done, on time and within budget, every time, contact us.  We’d be happy to show you how we’d customize training for your team.

A Simple MP3 Player
The first program I am posting is a simple MP3 player. If you are interested in learning how to build an MP3 player in Flex, or want to learn more about the Sound objects in Actionscript 3.0, this is a great program to study. When we write the program in class we write it in several iterations. First we simply play a sound. Then, we add the stop and pause buttons, the volume and pan controls and allow the sound to buffer when loading via a soundLoaderContext object. You can download the mxml code and the associated actionscript file here.
To make the provided code work in Flex
To make the code work in Flex, open a new Flex project in Flex Builder. Copy the MXML code in to the existing MXML file in the src folder. From the new menu in Flex Builder create a new Actionscript file and copy the Actionscript file provided in there. You can now build and run your MP3 player. Note that there is a line in the Actionscript file that says:

public var songName:String= "songName.mp3";

You must change the songname mp3 to the name of the mp3 file you want the player to play.You must also place the actual MP3 file in the src Folder.

A Simple Drawing Application

The drawing application is another program written in my Total Flex Class. It simulates the pencil tool but adds the ability to change the color and width of the stroke. The program isn’t perfect! You can actually draw outside the canvas boundary. If you are learning Flex, it might be a good exercise to try to fix it. The code can be downloaded here.

To make the provided code work in Flex
As before simply start a new Flex project and place the code in the appropriate source file.

You may use these programs any way you wish. If you expand on these and add features, I’d love to see your work. Please drop me a line at mark@learntoprogram.tv.