Report from DevLearn 2007 - Part 3

Project ideas generated:

• First, build a Flash container for Captivate. I would like to build it so by turning off the sound in a Flash file you can turn off the sound in Captivate and open the Closed Captioning. And vice versa. My purpose for this is to build a sound toggling feature. When there is a speaking narrator only bulleted or minimal text will be displayed, however when you turn the sound off the full narration should be displayed. This should be the fix. The key will be if I can find the command to control the Closed Captioning window.
• Build Flash course templates that can be populated dynamically with XML. The XML would be created in Excel and then imported into Flash. Ideally I would like to have Flash generate the course on the fly based on the XML input. So you push a button in Flash (would require modifying the Flash IDE) and flash will go to the XML file and use the array to determine the number of pages and build the course on the fly. One thing I do not know is if I can program Flash to create XML bindings. What would be really cool is that a more advanced developer could go in afterward and add additional screens with advanced interactions that would involve custom scripting. I would like to incorporate the Captivate templates into this also. Finally the templates would have all the code required to be SCORM compliant. Phew, this is going to be a tough project. But the experts at Adobe recommend the Flash template solution and one Authorware developer from Fed Ex is migrating his content is a similar manner.
• Build a Documentation Repository in Flex similar to RoboHelp. I would like to model it after this Flex application built by Yolanda Oritz: www.hwcws.cahwnet.gov/training/applications/STAR/bin/star.html.
• I may be able to export Authorware content to XML. Then I may be able to clean up the tag and plug it right into my Flash templates. I could probably write a macro in Excel that would change the XML tags to the correct wording. It will not be a completely smooth process to migrate Authorware content, but it should help.
• Write a research report for the elearning guild with case studies of how developers are using Flash and ActionScript 3 to create elearning content. I spoke with Brent Schenkler from the guild and he thought it was a good idea.