Review of Visme: Presentations, Photo Editing, Animations

I'm reviewing the free version of Visme (http://www.visme.co/) because I stalled around and let my free trial to the premium version expire before I had time to really work with the program.

There are quite a few sources of presentation templates and infographic software, and many are free. So, how does one wade through and finally decide which one to use? I like the idea of using quite a few of them.  Just for fun, I thought I'd create a collage with a few photos that I took along with some of the shapes in the Visme library of free items.

In order to use the graphic, I had to save it and then download it. With the free version, I can download a jpg graphic. But, with the  premium, I can save it as the following file types: PNG, PDF, and HTML5.

Visme graphic I created using the free version and playing with Visme's shape library and a few photos I took in Mexico.

Visme offers infographics, but most come with the premium version. If I had the premium version of Visme, I might prefer it. But, at the moment, my favorite infographic cloud-based software program is Canva (https://www.canva.com/). It is easy to use, and the built-in template give me endless inspiration and ideas. As with all infographics, planning is the most important part. What do you want to communicate? What is your message? Why do you need to communicate the message in infographic form? What are your advantages?

After you've determined what your purpose is and what you want your reader to do with the information (the famous "rhetorical situation"), you can start taking the next step.

Canva is great for infographics, and it also has presentations. But, so does Google slides. And, for that matter, PowerPoint's many online repositories can provide you with templates.

So where does Visme fit in?  To me, what makes Visme really special is what lies beneath the first slide -- in the depth and breadth of the presentation templates, and that they are very easy to animate.

They can also be connected to Screencast-o-matic for excellent and easy-to-make audio-accompanied screencasts.

But returning to Visme -- here are a few of the advantages: 

1. Visme's tools are very professional and allow you customize more than you can with some of the other templates and interfaces
2. The photo editor is very easy to use and powerful
3. The font library is fun and very extensive
4. The banners are perfect of quick construction of banner ads for placement on websites
5. The simple charts and graphics within the infographics section are extensive. They're not free, though. 

How much does Visme cost?  Right now, there packages for free, $7 per month, and $15 per month. If you're a designer and you use Visme to build ads, etc. the price is certainly worth it.

I personally think that Visme would be a better solution if it also included a library of cut-out characters. It's really a pain to have to subscribe to five or six different services just to create the kinds of instructional or promotional materials that you want / need to create.

Here's a social media graphic (using the premium version) that I assembled using photos from Pawnee, Oklahoma, where a 5.6 earthquake in September 2016 impacted historical buildings, some much more than others.

That said (and all whining for a utopian solution aside), I like using Visme, and love the results. Here's just one experiment -- photos taken in Mexico and in downtown Tulsa on Cinco de Mayo 2016 at the Chihuahua races :) :)

Interview with Sameer Bhatia, ProProfs, E-Learning Innovations

Welcome to an interview with Sameer Bhatia, founder of ProProfs, innovators in interactive elearning elements which are used in mlearning and elearning, with degrees, including online teaching degrees. 

1. What is your name and your relation to elearning?

I am Sameer Bhatia, the founder of ProProfs. ProProfs provides comprehensive elearning tools for building, testing and applying knowledge. Through its Quiz and Training products, ProProfs offers trainers and educators powerfully-simple features that allow them to create elearning courses, quizzes and managing their classroom online.

2. How do you see the role of mobile learning evolving in the future?

By 2013, more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online. Mobile is having a significant impact in elearning and helps learners stay engaged anytime and anywhere. Learners expect that the mobile experience will be as good as the desktop experience, however there are restrictions around screen size, support for technology, etc. The challenge for instructor is to cater to multitude of devices, browsers, screen sizes & operating systems that the learner may be on. At ProProfs, we simplify that process so any course or quiz created once works across all devices so the instructor is ready for the ways today’s learners interact with elearning content.  

3.How can we overcome the problems of a) rented digits, rather than being able to download information for later access when there is no connectivity; b) intermittent connectivity creating a digital divide?

The web is growing and accelerating at mind-boggling rates. The quality of connections has continued to improve, limiting the impact of issues like intermittent or no connectivity. There is also increasing adoption of interactive & adaptive content that simply cannot run offline.  However, there is also content that is authored offline such as PDF or word documents. Today's instructor has the dual problem of taking offline content online and dealing with content that needs to downloaded to go from online to offline. We focus on solving that problem by essentially handling that issue end to end for the instructor. As an example, our new technology allows instructors to upload PDF or Word docs, which can then be converted to a webpage automatically - or instructors can simply click "Allow Download" and content becomes accessible as downloadable content. 

4.  What is QuizMaker and how can it be used in mobile applications? 

Quiz Maker allows users to create custom quizzes quickly and easily by using the largest library of pre-made questions (more than 3,000,000) and quiz templates (more than 300,000) on the Web, and track performance through a powerful new reporting tool.  Quiz Maker is fully mobile compliant and works across all devices & browsers.  It even converts any user uploaded documents into HTML5 so they can be loaded seamlessly across mobile devices. Any video uploads are also converted into a mobile friendly format, so it essentially does all the work for the instructor to ensure compliance with mobile while still allowing them to use their existing teaching or training material.

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5.  What are new capabilities of QuizMaker?  What are the pedagogical purposes of products / activities made on QuizMaker?  

We just added several new features including pre-made quiz templates and questions, as well as the ability to create and track quizzes for separate classes or groups.  Users also now have access to an enhanced statistics dashboard that allows them to generate reports by quiz-taker, individual question, quiz and group or by custom meta data, view quiz data by average time spent per question, percentage of correct/incorrect answers, and more.  These new Quiz Maker features are focused on giving users a powerfully-simple, comprehensive tool set that helps them not only gather and manage quiz data, but also apply that knowledge, empowering them with valuable insight about their quiz-takers.  And through Quiz Maker’s dashboard, educators and trainers now have the ability to reveal knowledge gaps, helping them create more efficient and productive learning environments.

6. What do you think will be the future of mobile learning?

I can sum that up in one word: "ubiquitous"

Content Management Systems and E-Learning: Thoughts, New Dimensions / Directions

As mobile applications begin to be an integral part of elearning solutions, it is increasingly important to have a robust, flexible, and easy to use content management system (CMS). Not only will your CMS support the widest possible range of content types, including documents, audio, video, animation, multimedia, and web pages, it should also integrate well with other servers, databases, and systems, including the learning management system (LMS), the student information system, and the various cloud-based servers from which you'll pull content for online programs and courses, including those for online teaching degrees.

A good CMS is easy to use, and the workflows are intuitive and easy to follow, from file creation (with clear naming protocols and directory structure) to file sharing and automated notification processes.

Because the CMS constitutes the heart of the organization and is essential framework, the content must be accurate, the delivery consistent, and it must be easy to manage updates and changes.

At the bare minimum, a CMS should be able to

            * establish easy-to-follow workflows

            * allow the easy importation of files

            * automate notices of changed content

            * maintain version control

            * enable automatic distribution of new docs to defined users

            * facilitate the integration of databases

Many of the content management systems that are used in higher education are built on a content management framework (CMF) that makes it easier to use reuseable objects. A CMF is often written in one of a half dozen or so popular programming languages / technologies:

• Django-CMS (uses Python, Django or MySQL)
• Plone (uses Python)
• Drupal (uses PHP and MySQL)
• Joomla! (uses PHP and MySQL)
• Microsoft SharePoint Server (works with .NET Framework, works with SQL Server)

For organizations that do not have a small army of developers and programmers, it is often advisable to go with a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution for one's CMS. They are generally cloud-based, so security protocols and requirements must be reviewed. The solutions include software, hosting, and support with a single vendor.  Some of the more popular SaaS solutions include:

Google Apps (not just for business -- some universities are using Google Apps with great success in conjunction with an open-source LMS such as Sakai)

• Agility
• Windows Live (Free)
• Microsoft Office 365
• Amazon application hosting

It’s a bit difficult to see how a SaaS solution could work as a flexible CMS since the existing software would have, by definition, a number of limitations. However, there are definitely a number of advantages with having applications that work fairly seamlessly together. For example, Google docs works as a very useful document-sharing platform, and can integrate with Google sites.  Whether or not one of the Google apps works as a relational database, is not immediately evident. It would be interesting to see a Google solution appear as a templatized relational database that walks the user through a series of frameworks that integrate object repositories with applications. These solutions could be customizable “ready-mades” for schools of all sizes and strips, including home schools and very specialized professional development.

Proprietary Software CMS solutions include the following:

This list is by no means inclusive, but contains a few examples of popular proprietary solutions. It is useful to note that most of the proprietary solutions are Rackspace / Akamai ready, which is to say that they are cheerfully cloud-based. Many of the CMS solutions contain easy-to-use interfaces, even drag-and-drop, to make it easy to get started.  Further, some, such as Centralpoint, have incorporated Single Sign On in order to allow the simultaneous log-in to all the relational databases. At the same time, there is data mining capability in the ability to emulate customer relation management functions and develop adaptive and targeted mailing lists.

• OpenText Web Site Management (Formerly RedDot) - on a Java platform, works with Oracle, SQL Server
• DotNetNuke - on ASP.NET - on SQL Server
• Microsoft SharePoint Server on ASP.NET, with SQL Server or SQL Express
• IBM Enterprise Content Management, with Oracle, SQL, or DB2
• Percussion Software CM1: Java / MySQL / Derby
• Limelight: MySQL

OpenSource

Devotees and apologists for OpenSource are passionate, to say the least. They do have a point. There is something rather romantic about thinking that not only do you have the opportunity to obtain software for free (although labor costs always trump licenses in the overall scheme of things). The real appeal of OpenSource is usually the radical simplicity of it. They are ready to go, and are very basic. Unfortunately, if you have special applications, or need more functionality, you may find yourself paying quite dearly in terms of programming-hours as well as time. However, if you have aspirations of developing your own solution or marketing a custom template, using OpenSource could make sense. If you choose Drupal or Joomla!, you definitely will be joining a global army of people who think you’re right on target by supporting the concept of OpenSource. You’ll also be joining the ranks of people who have learned to be patient and, in some cases, settle for a solution that does not quite do what the commercial competition can do.

PHP

• Joomla! (MySQL)
• Drupal (MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server)
• Mambo (MySQL)
• SilverStripe (MySQL)
• WordPress (MySQL)

A final thought about Content Management Systems.

A CMS is all about creating a framework that allows the useful and predictable manipulation of schema having to do with digital objects. It’s easy to get lost in the structure and forget that we’re in a time of rapidly evolving delivery systems, and that “going mobile” represents the leading edge of one or more sea changes. So, it’s fairly short-sighted to think of CMS as only relating to content. It has to be delivery-friendly as well, no matter what / how / when the delivery manifests itself.