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G'day!
Wow, a long time has passed since the last FreeBee Newsletter.
I have been very busy between consulting assignments and a major
move from my lifetime home of Sydney Australia to Port Macquarie
which is about 5 hours north of Sydney. I am now settled and
over the past few months have been busy developing some new products
and some new FreeBees (which you will find throughout this
newsletter).
Power Book Builder and ToolBook
Place 3rd at Shootout
Power Book Builder and ToolBook
placed third in interactivity at the PowerPoint to e-Learning
Shootout at the Training Fall/On-line Learning Conference in San
Francisco in October. Robin McDermott did the conversion using
Power
Book Builder and was assisted by Denny Dedmore (who created
a clever interactive question object that caught the crowd's
attention). Denny was also the guy on the hotseat doing
the audio recordings live in front of well over 100 people.
Tomas Lund was there (all the way from Denmark!) to run the
debriefing (for those who may not know, Tomas now works for
SumTotal Systems sales). We fully converted a PowerPoint
presentation into a ToolBook AND deployed it to the web in less
than 20 minutes! The PowerPoint included several interactive
elements such as question that Power Book Builder converted
perfectly into ToolBook question objects, buttons that link to
external webpages, and progressive disclosure slides.
Click here to read more about the Shootout and to see the
PowerPoint that we converted.
Major Upgrades to EspritLMS
E-Commerce Option
Now Available! EspritLMS now has a
fully integrated e-commerce
front-end. This means that you can now sell your training through
your own customized on-line EspritLMS store and your customers will get
automatically signed up in the LMS - without any intervention on your
part. Talk about making money in your sleep! Our EspritLMS
stores are powered by Miva Merchant - a leading e-commerce solution.
Because not all of our customers require the e-commerce, we are
providing this option as an add-on. In addition to seamless
integration with Esprit-LMS, the e-commerce add-on also enables you to
sell hardgoods as well as downloadable softgoods. Click
here to
learn more about about EspritLMS E-Commerce add-on.
Now Launch Neuron
Courses Another exciting feature is that we now have
the ability to launch Neuron courses that communicate with EspritLMS.
This means that folks who have courses developed for Native ToolBook now
have an alternative to reworking all of your courses for dhtml
deployment.
Other Enhancements
that we have recently added to EspritLMS are more extensive reporting
capabilities, a Tip of the Day feature, localization, the ability to
launch non-ToolBook components such as Word docs, PDF's, Camtasia Videos
- the options are endless.
Simplified
Pricing/Low Commitment Starter Package There are three
levels of EspritLMS Professional Versions, the distinction between the
three being number of "active users." "Active users" are now
defined by number of people who have launched a learning experience over
the past quarter. This means that you don't have to worry about
getting charged for people who are not using the LMS and you don't have
to constantly be activating and deactivating learners to reduce your
quarterly exposure. In addition we are now also offering a way for
ToolBook developers to "test the on-line training waters" without making
a huge financial commitment. Our starter package will enable you
to try EspritLMS for three months for just $1250 you can continue using
the Starter Package for up to a full year for just $750 per quarter.
This should be ample time for you to assess the viability of a web-based
training business using EspritLMS.
Try Us Out for
FREE! Because seeing is believing we are offering to
put one of your courses into EspritLMS so that you can see for yourself
how it works. We will give you an EspritLMS account for two weeks
so that others in your organization can see how it works too. This
offer is only available to serious prospects for a limited time.
Click
here to learn more about about Esprit-LMS.
NEW FREEBEE!
10 Things Every ToolBookDeveloper Should Know
OK, I got carried away...there
are actually 14 or perhaps more as I will add to them as they come to me
:-) This list serves as a great reminder for those of us who have
been using ToolBook for several years and is an imperative but quick
read for folks who are new to ToolBook. Many problems that people
have contacted me about (only after practically driving themselves nuts)
are answered in one or more of the resources (mostly FREE) that are
listed here. Click
here to access the FreeBee.
New Products
In the past few months I
have developed six new tools:
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Multi-Line Button Builder
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Finally, attractive buttons with more than one line of text!
Attractive
buttons can mean the difference between an amateur or a professional
ToolBook product. But, standard ToolBook functionality can be quite
limiting when it comes to buttons. The only alternative, creating the
buttons outside of ToolBook, can be time consuming and still does not
guarantee a professional appearance. These limitations are a thing of the
past now with the Multi-Line Button Builder. |
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Simulation Menu Builder
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Now you can focus on building effective simulations instead of spending hours capturing menus.
Accurate and interactive menus can mean the difference between an amateur
simulation and a professional, realistic simulation. But, the current
ToolBook simulation recorder does not have the ability to automate the
building of menus. This limitation is a thing of the past now with the
Simulation Menu Builder. |
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Grid Question Object
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Easily create complex questions and provide visual feedback.
Grid Questions are a great way to add interactivity to your revision
(exercise) pages and to your quizzes. They allow you to add a level of depth
and complexity to questions that is often difficult to achieve with basic
multiple choice questions. Yet, grid questions are no more difficult to
design and configure than standard multiple choice question
objects...providing you use the Grid Question Widget. |
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Better Navigation Widgets
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Quickly develop navigation menus from page names OR record fields.
Easily specify pages to be included in the menu.
Have you ever tried using the standard Automatic Menu Widget or the standard
Popup Menu Widget? These widgets only allow for all pages, a single page
range or pages on selected backgrounds, sounds great, but what about just
the first page of a given section/chapter, what about a sub-menu in a
chapter? |
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Question Feedback
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Show the correct answer along with the selected answer for multiple choice and true/false questions.
In addition to assessing competence, quizzes can be powerful learning tools
when combined with question-by-question feedback. With ToolBook adding text
and audio feedback to question objects is fairly easy. What is not easy is
providing visual feedback on the right and wrong selected answers in
Multiple Choice and True-False Questions. Now you can easily provide that
feedback - not only with future projects, but you can VERY easily rework
existing projects as well. |
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Question Audio Feedback
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Randomized audio feedback and it even includes the audio files!
Question audio feedback is great way to provide audio feedback to your revision
(exercise) and quiz questions. The Widgets will play a random list of audio
files. This way your learners will not hear the same "Well done!" all of the
time! With the the Question Audio Feedback Widgets you will get 46
professionally produced audio files. |
NEW FREEBEE!
Actions - Execute Script
Did you know that you can include both OpenScript and JavaScript
function calls with the ToolBook version 8.9 (2004) Action System? This
is a really cool new feature that extends the somewhat limited
functionality that we have with the Actions Editor. But, what good is a
cool new feature if you don't know how to use it?
Fear Not! In this FreeBee you will not only learn how to use this new
feature, but I will also give you an easy to use "cheat sheet" that will
create OpenScript and JavaScript functions source code that you can then
easily incorporate into your projects. Click
here to access the ToolBookDeveloper FreeBee Quick
Course.
Check Out the New
On-Line Store
We have also updated the
ToolBookDeveloper.com On-Line Store. The folks who have
used it so far really like it - especially because you now get
instant access when you purchase any of my ToolBook Add-On
products. That means if you are tearing your hair out at
midnight and need one of my tools to complete a project by
morning you can have it in less than 5 minutes.
NEW FREEBEE!
Simulation
Function Keys
Do you have applications that use function keys that you need to
simulate? As you probably know, the simulation object can not simulate
all of the function keys. Enter the Simulation Function Keys Object :-)
This is an easy to use workaround to the limitations with using function
keys in simulations. Some people may already be aware of this as I
posted it to the ToolBook ListServe a few months back. Click
here
to access the FreeBee.
Subscribe to the FreeBee Newsletter - It's...well, FREE :-)
If you are new to the FreeBee newsletter, please consider
subscribing. As a subscriber, you will be the first to receive
notice of new newsletters - yes, I will strive to get them out in a
more timely manner in the future :-) In addition, some of my FreeBee
Tools (free utilities to make ToolBook development easier) are
available only to subscribers. Click
here to subscribe.
When you subscribe you will receive an automated e-mail with a
username and password for accessing the FreeBees.
Happy Holidays and here's to 32-bit in
2005!!!!
Best regards,
Peter
Jackson
pjackson@toolbookdeveloper.com
www.toolbookdeveloper.com
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