I’m pleased to announce that the much-anticipated major upgrades to Articulate Presenter, Quizmaker, and Engage are now available. All three products, along with the all-new Articulate Video Encoder, are available as part of Articulate Studio ‘09 Pro.

Following our most successful beta program ever — with more than 500 beta testers — we launched Studio ‘09 to the rest of the world on Tuesday, September 30, 2008: Articulate Releases New Suite of E-Learning Authoring Tools.

Along with these exciting new releases is an upgraded website and support site, chock-full of comprehensive feature tours (AP09 | QM09 | EN09), product demos (AP09 | QM09 | EN09), and excellent new tutorials:

• Presenter ‘09 tutorials
• Quizmaker ‘09 tutorials
• Engage ‘09 tutorials
• Video Encoder ‘09 tutorials

If you’re not sure where to start, the new product overview demos are a good place. Here’s what we have for Presenter ‘09:

View Presenter ‘09 Overview Demo

And for Quizmaker ‘09:

View Quizmaker ‘09 Overview Demo

As you’ll see in the demos, there are so many new and exciting features in all of the products that it’s impossible to outline everything here, but I’ll highlight a few of the features that “simply leave other eLearning development apps I’ve seen in the dust,” as Chris at eQuixotic put it (Articulate Studio ‘09 Has Arrived!).

Here are some of my favorite new features in each product:

Presenter ‘09

• Slide preview (1 or many)
• Slide branching
• Improved Flash conversion fidelity
• Single project file
• On-slide annotations
• Notes formatting
• Publish to CD now creates a self-contained EXE
• Publish to Podcast
• Lots more!

Quizmaker ‘09

• Rebuilt from the ground up!
• Two development modes: Form View & Slide View (if you use PowerPoint, you’ll be right at home)
• Free-form editing, timeline view, customizable themes and more in Slide View
• Question groups & pooling
• Built-in audio editor
• Slide master
• Lots more!

Engage ‘09

• Branching (link to other parts of your interaction)
• Community Interactions & Engage SDK
• Interaction resume
• Publish to LMS
• Lots more!

Video Encoder ‘09

• Brand-new product!
• Convert any video format (QuickTime, Windows Media, etc.) into Flash Video (.FLV)
• Capture & record video with your webcam, then convert to .FLV
• No more hassling with 3rd-party products to convert your videos for use in Articulate products
• Lots more!

So, the #1 question that’s been flooding in practically non-stop since Tuesday night’s release is this: How do I upgrade?

Here’s how to upgrade to Studio ‘09:

• New purchases: Visit the Full Versions area of the Articulate Store
• Upgrade purchases: Visit the Upgrades area of the Articulate Store
• Free upgrades: If you’re a Platinum Membership Plan (PMP) customer, you can redeem your Studio Second Edition (Presenter 5, Quizmaker 2, Engage (1st Release)) serial numbers in our new PMP Upgrade Application. Learn how to find your old serial numbers.

And, of course, if you’re not quite ready to upgrade, you can still download a free 30-day trial of all the new products today.

As Tony Karrer predicted and I echoed back in Jaunary, it’s time for “Articulate to dominate in 2008.”

Enjoy these amazing new releases!

A big thank you to our beta testers, without whom these releases would not be as solid as they are, and congrats to the entire Articulate team on a successful product launch!

As the leaves begin to fall and the thermometers take a dip here in the U.S., that means that the fall elearning conference season is upon us. We have a packed calendar that may get even more packed as we add events to it.

We already have 5 industry conferences on the calendar, including the just-added Educause 2008 — the “premier IT event in higher education” — and may add even more, thanks to the overwhelming response to our sold-out inaugural Articulate Regional User Group Conference in Philadelphia a week from today.

Keep those inquiries coming if you’d like to attend or host a conference in your city (click here to contact us and select “User Group” from the Interested In drop-down menu).

We haven’t announced other locations yet, but make sure you’re subscribed to my blog to receive all the latest Articulate announcements. You can also click here to subscribe to the Articulate Calendar via Google Calendar.

Here’s a quick summary of our upcoming conference appearances:

• September 22, 2008: Articulate Regional User Group Conference (Philadelphia, PA) - SOLD OUT!
• October 26 - 29, 2008: Elliott Masie’s Learning 2008 (Orlando, FL)
• October 28-31, 2008: Educause 2008 (Orlando, FL)
• November 11-14, 2008: DevLearn 2008 (San Jose, CA)
• February 9-10, 2009: Training 2009 (Atlanta, GA)
  

I’ll be at the Articulate Regional User Group Conference in Philly and Training 2009 in Atlanta, and Tom Kuhlmann, author of the award-winning and wildly popular Rapid eLearning Blog, will be at all conferences, along with other Articulate staff.

We hope to see you at one of these conferences! We’re going to have a lot to show off, including our upcoming new releases.

We’re often asked if we have help documentation in languages other than English. Although the authoring interface of our products is available only in English, content can be translated into any language. However, we currently do not offer non-English documentation.

But thanks to one enthusiastic customer with a desire to share with the Articulate community, I’m pleased to say that now there’s at least one way for Spanish speakers around the world to learn how to author quizzes and surveys in Quizmaker.

Not only is this a great, interactive Quizmaker tutorial in Español, it also shows off a great use of Articulate Rapid E-Learning Studio features, including the following:

• Engage slide interactions in Presenter
• Quizmaker quiz in Presenter
• PowerPoint animations published with Presenter
• Use of hyperlinks for navigation in Presenter

Quizmaker Tutorial en Español

Below you can view the full Spanish tutorial of Quizmaker 2 in its entirety:

View Quizmaker Tutorial en Español

I asked the author of the tutorial, Ghada de Souki of Venezuela, why she chose Articulate, and about her experience creating the tutorial with Articulate products.

Why did you need elearning software?

I took a course for my Master’s degree at Colegios Mater Salvatoris, where I had to select from a very big list of applications and to design a class to explain it.

I was working on my thesis in Venezuela, where technology almost doesn’t exist — especially in education — so I proposed that using technology in evaluation might bring a lot of benefits for both students and teachers through a paper I wrote. As a solution to this problem I proposed to teach teachers in secondary level how to use these applications.

Why did you choose Articulate products?

I investigated different applications for graded questions and selected two, including Quizmaker. I immediately felt in love with all Articulate products, so I bought them all.

No other quizzing tool can offer the simplicity and the excellence that Quizmaker does.

Any challenges?

I did have one problem to get over: The language issue. So I solved it by a good design and incorporated the translation of text labels in the course. Another component I incorporated was the Engage Glossary as a quick search for the way graded questions can be designed, so users can use it to find the content they need.

What was the experience like?

Besides the the challenge of the language issue, I had a great experience. This tutorial is only my first project, but I hope I can take it to practice soon. I’m currently the only member of my organization using this application, but it’s worth the investment.

Thank you to everyone who registered for the Articulate Regional User Group meeting in Philadelphia on Monday, September 22, 2008! We’ve reached capacity and have stopped accepting new registrations.

However, if you’d like to sign up for a standby list in case of any cancellations, please contact us and select User Group as the subject in the drop-down list.

We’re looking forward to what’s sure to be a great day!

Please also contact us if you’re interested in hosting a user conference in your city.

Update (9.2.2008): Philly User Group is Sold Out

Does the opportunity to do any of the following pique your interest?

• Connect with your elearning development peers
• Meet Articulate personnel, including Tom and yours truly
• Learn Articulate best practices
• Get authoring tips ‘n tricks
• See great examples of Articulate-authored content
• Preview our forthcoming unreleased software
• And much more!

If so, you’ll need to act fast.

Time is running out to register for our first-ever Articulate Regional User Group Conference — on Monday, September 22, 2008 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania!

Register Today

We have limited capacity for the event and only pre-registered customers may attend. Seats are going fast and we will likely need to cut off registration any day now! If you want to secure one of the remaining seats, take a moment to register.

Get more details in my last blog post announcing the conference.

Host a User Group in Your City

Interested in seeing us come to your city? If you’d like to explore hosting a regional Articulate User Group Conference at your business or university, please contact us (select the “User Group” option under the “Interested in” field). Your event space should allow for a capacity of at least 150 people.

Future User Group Conferences

Don’t worry, if you don’t make the cut this time around — or can’t get to Philly — we do plan on hosting future events in other cities. Be sure to subscribe to my blog (take a look at the right sidebar of any page to get the email notification or RSS feed) or to the Articulate Google Calendar to be in the know.

Dr. Rosemary Chacko has found a way to maximize her investment in Articulate tools: She uses our products in both her professional and private lives.

As she puts it:

All in all, Articulate suite has been one of the best investments I made as a physician educator and a homeschool educator. Thank you, Articulate Team. Keep up the good work. We are all learning.

In her professional life at St Luke’s Baptist Hospital (part of the Baptist Health System in San Antonio, Texas), Dr. Chacko has leveraged Articulate Presenter, Quizmaker, and Engage to distribute medicinal knowledge in some creative ways to busy doctors who aren’t always available for in-person meetings.

In her own words:

Huge changes are occurring in hospital medicine. Unfortunately, doctors are no longer attending meetings at the hospital. Articulate’s suite of programs have helped spread the word at the Baptist Health System, from little quiz prompts for e-newsletters, to web-based continuing medical education and nursing education, to documentation tips on the new MSDRG payment system.

The turn-around time for the projects is so much faster with these tools. For example, I attended a lecture presentation and was able to plug the key points into an ‘Engaging’ format and pop the links to my colleagues within a couple days.

As a Palliative Medicine physician, I used Engage to make a quick demo for the physicians about a new project in our intensive care unit, sharing the form we are using as well as giving examples of how the form can be completed.

Below is an example Engage interaction provided by Dr. Chacko from the cardiac diagnoses portion of the MSDRG training:

View Example Engage Interaction

Outside work, Dr. Chacko keeps plenty busy at home, where she educates her 7 children. She’s even enlisted the older children to create Articulate-powered content — a learning experience in itself — to help with the education of the younger children:

Articulate has vastly improved my effectiveness as an educator, not only at the hospital, but in my home. Both my husband and I made the decision to work only part-time so that we could homeschool our growing family of seven (children are ages 2-17).

Creating learning content with Articulate software is a process shared by the whole Chacko family:

The kids have learned to make quizzes on Quizmaker. Michael (age 9) made matching questions for his multiplication to try on his younger brother, Peter (age 5). The short answer and essay questions lend themselves to literature quizzes and composition as well.

One child tried to use the matching program to remember his geometric proofs. My older children have learned the value of presentations through Articulate, seeing the incredible time-saving of updating a project and republishing instead of re-taping the entire presentation as a .WMV or video.

Grandma even teaches periodically. I am hoping to take her PowerPoint lessons and save her lectures using Articulate. I can burn CDs and make a library for the children to share –– or to share with other families.

Below is a sample Quizmaker math quiz created by 5-year-old Peter, based on his experience with the new carpet currently being laid in the family’s home:

View Example Quizmaker Quiz

On the math quiz Peter made, Dr. Chacko says:

The chain is divided into six beads each section.  Markers of the sixes ( 6, 12, 18…) are placed as he counts the chain.  He goes to the screen, gets his problem, returns to the floor and counts the groups of sixes to get his answer and then returns to the screen to complete the quiz.  I put a picture of the setup on the first quiz question.

Thanks for sharing your unique story, Dr. Chacko, and we’re glad that our software is helping to educate both your colleagues and your family.

Have a story you’d like to share about how you’ve incporporated Articulate into your work or home life? Let me know.

Heading to San Jose November 11-14, 2008 for the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn08 conference?

DevLearn 2008 Conference & Expo is where the most experienced and knowledgeable professionals in the e-Learning industry convene each year to explore, discuss, and learn about the best ideas and technologies for e-Learning.

We’ll be there, and we hope to see you there, too.

In the meantime, attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers are all invited to submit proposals for demoing content at the DemoFest portion of DevLearn08. What’s DemoFest?

It’s like a science fair where you move from table to table to view demos of e-Learning courses, and talk to their designers and developers about the objectives, tools, technologies, and processes they used, as well as the challenges they faced with their project.

So if you’ve created a great course with Articulate tools, we’d love to see you share it with your fellow conference-goers in San Jose.

DemoFest FAQs are available for review.

Finally, anyone who registers for the conference by August 31, 2008 will be entered to win an iPhone.

Update (9.2.2008): Philly User Group is Sold Out

Looking for a fast and easy way to get the most out of your Articulate software? Want to get the inside scoop on new Articulate products directly from Articulate personnel? Interested in sharing tips and tricks with other Articulate software users?

Then join us at our upcoming Articulate Regional User Group conference:

• When?
  Monday, September 22, 2008
• Where?
  Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Your conference host is Tom Kuhlmann, vice president of community for Articulate and the author of the wildly popular Rapid E-Learning Blog. And, thanks to our facilities host, Drexel Online.

You’ll participate in a full day of live sessions with Articulate personnel and customer experts. You’ll learn the following:

• How to build great-looking courses with Articulate software
• Why creating engaging and interactive e-learning is not as hard as it looks
• How to leverage multimedia and the web in your Articulate-authored courses
• What new products are coming from Articulate
• Inside tips and tricks from other Articulate users
• How to take your Articulate courses to a whole other level

How to Attend

Attendance is just $99 per attendee and covers all sessions, breakfast and lunch, and exclusive, free templates to enhance your use of Articulate software. Seating is limited, so secure your slot by registering today. If you want to register multiple attendees, include their names in the order comments. Be sure to bring ID to confirm your attendance upon check-in. Cancellations with full refunds can be made through September 15, 2008.

Breakfast and registration begins at 7:30 AM. The first session will begin at 8:30 AM and we’ll conclude at 4:00 PM.

We’ll be meeting at the Behrakis Grand Hall, on the campus of Drexel University, located on the first floor of the Creese Student Center, 3200 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Visitor parking is available in a Drexel parking garage located at 33rd and Chestnut Streets. View a campus map, driving directions and public transportation information.

To confirm your slot, please secure your registration today.

Where to Stay?

We’ve secured a special event rate at the below hotel, which is a 7-minute (0.3-mile) walk to the conference location at Drexel:

Sheraton Philadelphia University City Hotel
3549 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-3361
Reservation Line: 1-888-627-7071
Special Rate Name: Articulate User Group Conference
Special Rate: $189.00 per night

Interested in Presenting?

If you’d like to present or share your examples of how you’re using Articulate software for this conference, or have any other questions about this conference, please contact us.

We’re eager to support other Articulate Regional User Group conferences. If you’ve got facilities and would like to host a conference in your city or would like to get involved in a user group meeting in your city, please contact us.

We hope to meet with you in Philadelphia or another upcoming Articulate Regional User Group Conference at a location near you.

Randy Pausch, whose book has topped best-selling lists for months, was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who died of pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008 (TechCrunch coverage). His final talk — Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams — has been viewed more than 6 million times on YouTube.

If you’re one of the 65,098 people who’ve viewed our most popular forums thread, Examples of Articulate in Action, then you may have already seen the post by community member jjensen about his Articulate Presenter version of Dr. Pausch’s lecture, which he’s made searchable and more. As jjensen notes in his forum post:

This version allows immediate access to any segment of the 1 hr 40 min video, full-text search, no download/installation, etc. etc. etc. This version uses a template we have developed to quickly convert training videos to interactive online training using Articulate, among other tools.

You can view the searchable version of the lecture, which also allows you to jump to any portion of the video via Presenter’s side navigation links, below:

View Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Also of note is that the website of Amer Technology, which created this version of the video, is 100% powered by Articulate Presenter.

Thanks for sharing your work, jjensen.

And condolences to family, friends, and colleagues of Dr. Pausch.

To say that Mandy Smith, Training Design and Development Manager with Southwest Business Corporation (SWBC), is a fan of Articulate products would be an understatement. Mandy is such an enthusiastic customer and provided me with so much great material for this blog entry that she almost made sharing her story too easy.

Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, SWBC is a diversified financial services company providing a wide range of insurance, mortgage and investments to financial institutions, businesses, and individuals. Mandy uses Articulate products to create elearning. She also uses it to create sales presentation for various departments within SWBC, including her own.

“Unlike Anything Our Clients Have Ever Seen”

Mandy describes how seeing is believing:

“How better to showcase what we do? Trying to describe our interactive, online learning isn’t effective. But showing our online learning and our capabilities is the only way to allow our audience to experience what we do.

“We are not only using Articulate for our sales presentations, but have other departments asking us to convert theirs! In fact, two of the departments want me to convert their annual report to the owners!

“We work in a very competitive market. We needed something that demonstrated how we are different from other training, insurance, mortgage and investment providers. Articulate Presenter and Engage is unlike anything our clients have ever seen. The ‘wow factor’ is definitely there!
I have had a number of existing and potential clients ask what tool we used. In fact, I have had a number who have begun using Articulate as a result. More important than that, we have gained new SWBC clients as a result of our training presentations.”

Sample Sales Presentation

So what do SWBC’s training and presentations look like? Mandy shared the below example sales presentation with me, which demonstrates an excellent blending of Articulate Presenter and Engage color schemes. It also shows off a number of Engage interaction types, including Circle, Pyramid, Tabs, Media Tour, and Timeline:

View Sample Presentation

Capturing Users’ Attention

Mandy explains how Articulate tools have allowed her to make truly engaging content for her users:

“How many times have you been sitting in a PowerPoint presentation and just zoned out? Everyone has seen everything PowerPoint can do. Quite frankly, many of the tools have been over used. How many different text animations can one put into a single PowerPoint? Articulate allows us to capture and retain the attention of our audience in a whole new way. We have all of the same benefits of PowerPoint. We are still able to fully control the flow and pace of the presentation, but in a more aesthetic and efficient way.

“No two presentations are the same. We customize our approach to meet the individual needs of the client or potential client. Articulate Presenter allows us to include everything we could possibly need in one standard presentation. The presenter is then able to use the navigation to select and highlight the most appropriate sections.”

Responding Quickly to Unique Client Needs

The easy usability and customization capabilities of Articulate products allow SWBC to quickly create custom presentations unique to each client’s needs. Mandy elaborates:

“Leveraging SWBC’s strong relationships with insurance carriers, we research the best benefits package for the client. As you can imagine, each presentation needs to be as unique as the client. Articulate Presenter allows us to build a presentation that contains all the elements a sales or account manager may need. They can quickly make edits and further customize the presentation. The end result is a presentation that really demonstrates SWBC’s goal to customize each solution to meet the clients’ needs.

“Because Articulate is so easy to use, we are able to complete projects quickly. As our demand continues to increase, so does our need for new, innovative and effective learning and sales presentations. Articulate allows us to respond quickly to needs, of both our internal and external clients.”

Thanks for sharing your story, Mandy!

Have a story you’d like to share? Let me know.