Since last June, one of the frequently asked questions among e-Learning designers and developers has been, “How do we get e-Learning onto the iPhone?” I have good news: The wait is over!
Recently Brad Crain, SumTotal® Systems Vice President and General Manager ToolBook, let me explore a soon-to-be-released update to one of the company's flagship products, ToolBook® Instructor™ 9.5. ToolBook Instructor is SumTotal's solution for producing interactive content, assessments, and software application simulations for the Web. This new version adds features that support mobile learning content and applications on the Apple® iPhone™ and iPod® touch.
Specifically, ToolBook Instructor 9.5 makes it very easy for developers to create online learning, reference material, tutorials, learning games, and other content for computers and devices running Apple's Safari™ Web browser. This includes Macintosh® and Windows® computers, as well as the iPhone and iPod touch. ToolBook Instructor already supports Internet Explorer®, Netscape® Navigator™, Firefox®, and Mozilla® browsers.
Why is this important? Think about the number of iPhone and iPod touch units that people already own and use at work. Think about the number of business people who will start using iPhones this June after Apple adds enterprise features required by corporate IT departments (support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, over-the-air push e-mail, contacts and calendars, remote wipe, and Cisco IPsec VPN). Now consider that Adobe® Flash® does not run on the iPhone, and may not do so for some time, if ever (judging by what Steve Jobs said about Flash last week).
Given this set of circumstances, SumTotal's release of the ToolBook update in “summer to fall of this year,” according to Brad Crain, will be well timed. In an unusual move (for the authoring tool world, anyway), SumTotal offers a subscription version of the current shipping product (9.0.1); subscribers will receive the update to 9.5 when it comes out.
This article will provide background information on ToolBook Instructor, mobile learning, the iPhone and iPod Touch, the Safari Web Browser, and a comprehensive look at the new features that will make it possible to develop ToolBook content for mobile devices running Safari.
An introduction to ToolBook
I provided an extensive overview of ToolBook 9 in my previous Learning Solutions article, A Courseware Authoring Tool Evolves: ToolBook Instructor 9, published June 11, 2007. This included the main features of ToolBook, but I'm going to run through some of the elements in the ToolBook authoring environment that are most relevant to the coming upgrade.
Figure 1 shows the ToolBook Instructor authoring environment with one of the SmartPages and a SmartStyle. SmartPages provides many page types, such as Menu, Bullets, Text, Multiple Choice Question, and so on. SmartStyles is a feature that makes available a wide variety of page styles and pre-defined common page types. The Catalog, on the left side of the screen, is a major feature of ToolBook Instructor, and has been for many past versions. It holds pre-programmed objects of various kinds (buttons, navigation tools, text fields, and so on) for designing applications. The small dialog box on the right is the Tool Palette, with which you draw objects if you don’t want to use the Catalog. In this case, the page is a size that is capable of displaying content to a standard Desktop PC at a resolution of 800 x 600 or greater.
More about the Catalog
The Catalog is organized by Categories, and it is easy for a developer to create custom Catalogs (Categories). Developers add objects to a ToolBook page by just dragging a selection from a Category of the Catalog. As shown in Figure 2, the available Categories include:
- Action Objects
- Buttons
- Text Fields
- Questions
- Styles
- Pages
- Media Players
- Draw Objects
The Actions Editor
The
Actions Editor, a visual programming tool for more complex interactions, first
appeared in earlier versions of ToolBook Instructor. It allows a developer to
set up scripting actions without writing any code. The developer can handle
events such as
The
interface of the Actions Editor has menus and a toolbar for adding interactive
behaviors to objects. Developers can create Action Sequences, behaviors that
ToolBook Instructor 9.5 carries out in a specified order. Action Sequences can
include prompting for user input, providing alerts, playing media, changing an
object’s properties, and specifying conditions for the execution of an action.
An Action Sequence for an object is triggered by some sort of event such as
Figure 3
shows the Actions Editor programming environment. In addition to the menus and
toolbar, an Actions Palette on the left side of the dialog box makes it
possible for developers to add a variety of actions by simply dragging the
action from the Actions Palette to the code window. The result is an Action
Sequence. In the example provided here, I've chosen an
More about SmartStyles and SmartPages
SmartStyles provides uniformity across the various methods available in previous versions of ToolBook for building an application, including Templates and the Book Specialist (now called the Book Wizard). In ToolBook Instructor 9.5, SmartStyles updates the older page types found in the Templates and Book Specialists of earlier versions of ToolBook. As in the currently shipping version of the product, SmartStyles makes it possible for developers to create their own new styles and page types as desired. If you add a new page to a book, that page will then use the book’s current style. If you want to restyle the entire book, simply add a new style from the Catalog.
ToolBook Instructor 9.5 has a Styles Category in the Catalog, containing the actual Smart Styles (SmartStyles is the feature, while a Smart Style is the individual style). The SmartPages feature provides a large variety of new page types (they call the actual pages Smart Pages). A Pages Category in the Catalog contains the various available page types. When you add a Smart Style to a book, ToolBook adds a background (called a Smart Background) to the book, and this background sets the graphic design for the book. As one element, the background contains a Navigation group with buttons styled to match the background graphic. Additionally, Title and Subtitle fields are available for text to display on all pages, formatted based upon the current style. For instance, one style could be Verdana while another style might switch the text formatting for these primary fields to Times New Roman.
These are the basic elements of ToolBook Instructor 9.5. Before going on to describe the specific features added to the product to support e-Learning on the iPhone and the iPod touch, I'm going to very briefly describe these devices within the context of mobile learning.
