I had the pleasure earlier this week of spending some time in the company of Dr Allen Partridge.
Allen was
in San Francisco yesterday presenting to ASTD members and guests for a full day
workshop (that I missed half of due to Jury Service!) and a Chapter meeting in
the evening.
Allen works for
Adobe and his title is Senior Technology Advocate for eLearning. What a cool
title.
The job is even
cooler.
He gets to listen to
what the world of eLearning development folks want and need from their vendors
and explain all that to the team at Adobe.
He also gets to
listen to what the team at Adobe have built and how they see it being used and
he gets to explain that to the eLearning developer community.
So Allen was the
perfect person to show us around the new capabilities that have been built into
Captivate 8 and he spend the workshop focusing on responsive design and the
ways that with the new tool you can build a course that looks good on a mobile
phone screen, a tablet and a laptop or desktop sized screen as well.
For me however the
evening was the most fascinating.
Because here he
shared what he was hearing in those advocate conversations he has been having
all around the world. I tweeted out a few notes
and they are captured here.
But the overarching
theme, as I saw it, was this:
- The learners of today and certainly the learners of tomorrow want to learn
- ELearning designers want to create great and effective eLearning
- Companies need their workforces skilled up in effective, scale-able and cost efficient ways
- And the technology is just about catching up with those needs, despite it's attempts to trip itself up again and again.
What exciting times
we live in.
Happy Learning
