Interested in Apple's iPad for learning?
We are excited about the possibilities for learning that we see with Apple's new iPad and the devices that will surely follow. As Udutu Gurus already know, much of the output from the myUdutu authoring system is HTML and will work just fine on an iPad. We here at Udutu believe that a few adjustments could bring the full richness of Udutu courses and all of their interactivity to the iPad. Additionally, we are excited about discovering what new interactions we can create to best take advantage of the touch screen interface, motion detection, and other unique features the iPad offers.

• Do you have an idea for a deployment of iPad-based training?
• Would you like to see Udutu add the ability to output completely interactive myUdutu courses to the iPad with any Flash-based functionality redeveloped exclusively for the iPad?
• How would you use these platforms to enhance your learning or training requirements?

From the mLearnCon website:
mLearnCon is where every aspect of mobile learning including management strategies, platforms (SmartPhones, PDAs, iPods, Tablets, etc), operating systems (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone OS X, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc.), authoring tools and technologies, content design & development, and best practices will be explored. Whether you are working in an academic, corporate, government, or military setting ... mLearnCon will give you the ideas, information, and community you and your organization need to succeed.

Guru memberships include new themes only available to Gurus and a very handy SCORM data tracking utility that can email you course results. If you use or have considered using Udutu course hosting, then these memberships are a must! Guru Basic includes 50 hosted screens a month and Guru Essentials includes 200 screens a month. This one feature more than pays for the membership!

Ready to sign up? Login to myUdutu and click on the Guru membership option on the right side of your screen.

• Logo
  • Do you have a custom logo?
• Colors
  • Do you have a corporate or brand palette?
  • What is the color scheme for the website or LMS if you plan to use one?
  • Is there some other color affiliation that is important? (School colors, product, sport)
• Navigation
  • Do you want your navigation buttons at the top or at the bottom of the course?
  • Are any of the existing navigation icon sets suitable or do you want to create custom ones?
  • Do you plan to use all of the navigation options? (course map, resources, etc)
• Text styles
  • What fonts will you use?
  • What colors are used for text?
  • What sizes are used?
• Background
  • Do you want an image or custom background behind the content?
  • Do you want to customize the navigation bar background?
  • Do you want to customize the info bar background?
• Accessibility
  • Do you need Section 508 compliance?

Now that you have a good grasp of how you wish to personalize your theme, it's time to jump in theme builder. To access theme builder, login to myUdutu and either create a new course or choose an existing one. Next, click on the "my themes" button in the "personlize your course" section to go directly to theme builder. You can also access theme builder by clicking on the "Administration" tab and then clicking on the "theme builder" sub tab.

There are four easy steps to designing your custom theme.

1. Choose an existing theme as your foundation
2. Personalize your theme
3. Modify your theme's text styles
4. Choose your navigation options

There is also an advanced option where you can add background images, enable Section 508 accessibility, or even directly modify the CSS settings for your theme.

Step 1: Choose an existing theme
myUdutu includes several great themes to use either as they are or as a foundation for creating your own. In addition, you can use any theme you personalize as the foundation for a new theme.

You start by selecting the theme you wish to use as your foundation and clicking on the "edit" button for that theme. Don't worry that all the themes look alike in the list. You can see the theme's appearance by clicking on it and scrolling down to view.

You may also want to choose a theme that isn't in your active themes as your foundation. To do so, simply select the theme in the "myUdutu themes" list and click "activate" to add it to your active themes list.

Step 2: Personalize your theme
Choose a descriptive name for your theme that will make it easy to identify later. Add your logo by uploading it. Please note that your logo should not exceed 80 pixels tall. You can also add a copyright notice here. Click "Save" and you're ready to move on to the next step.

Step 3: Modify text styles
There are three types of screens that you can adjust text appearance: basic screens, assessment screens, and advanced screens. You have text style control over basic screens independently from the assessment and advanced screens. This allows you to globally change all text elements throughout your course.

You can change:

• Text color
• Text style (normal, bold, italics, underline)
• Justification (left, right, center)
• Background color
• Font family (Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, etc)
• Font size

In addition to the basic screen elements, the assessment and advanced screen text options allow you to modify:

• button font
• feedback font
• question font
• question option font
• advanced slide text
• advanced page title
• advanced instructions
• advanced title

What if you want to change something on a particular screen? Don't worry. You can override any of your text style options on individual screens if so desired.

Step 4: Choose your navigation options
On the next screen of theme builder, you will see an array of icons showing three versions (normal, highlighted, disabled) for each button.

Changing icons is easy. Simply click on the "library" button to select from existing icons. Or if you prefer, you can design your own and import them using the "add" button. Just remember to create three versions of each icon for the three states and keep the size to 80 x 80 pixels to make sure you don't have any unexpected layout issues.

You can turn off individual buttons by unchecking the "show" box below the icon set. There is also an option on the bottom left (just above the theme preview area) for swapping between top and bottom navigation.

The final page of theme builder allows you to check a box for Section 508 and add background images if desired. For advanced CSS pros, you can also directly edit CSS here. But that is not necessary for most of us.

That's all there is to it! Go try it for yourself and have fun designing your themes!

Tips and tricks with Emily Wray
In this edition of Udutu Guru Empowerment, we are talking with Emily Wray. Emily was one of the winners of the Udutu Guru contest. She won for her great work with myUdutu while attending Full Sail University.

What is your background?
My background is in graphic design and web development. I recently graduated with my Master’s in Education Media Design and Technology from Full Sail University. I currently work as a Webmaster for the State of Florida and enjoy both freelancing and volunteering in Tallahassee’s local business community.

Experience level with myUdutu
I was introduced to Udutu during my graduate coursework at Full Sail. One of the assignments for my Learning Management Systems and Organizations class was to create an online course module using myUdutu. My instructor, Dr. Ian Gibson, encouraged us to use the assignment as an opportunity to explore this powerful free tool.

My favorite project I’ve ever created with myUdutu was a training module to increase awareness about technology accessibility. As a Webmaster for the State of Florida, part of my job is to make electronic information more readily available to everyone, including individuals with disabilities. The course I created was a prototype for a proposed statewide training on the development and implementation Section 508 accessibility Web standards.

Favorite feature of myUdutu
What I like most about myUdutu is it’s scalability. The tool is easy enough for novices, but offers plenty of robust features for those who are more technologically savvy. Another really great thing about myUdutu is that it’s free, which means it’s more financially accessible to the education industry, which is too-often underfunded.

Favorite tip, trick, or technique you wish to share.
My favorite trick when creating a course in myUdutu is the development of custom graphics. Tinkering with the templates provided by adding background textures and navigational buttons goes a long way to making your project your own.

Any features you believe would be useful to add to myUdutu?
I would love to see a wider selection of pre-made template designs for users who can’t pop the hood and alter the look and feel of their courses. That said, for those of us with a little CSS knowledge, I’d like to be able to manipulate a few more features of the interface using styles.

Send us your tips and tricks
Do you have any particular tips, techniques, or tricks you want to share with other myUdutu users? If so, please send your submission to info@udutu.com with the subject "Guru Transcendence" and be sure to provide the following information:

First Voices Language Tutor
In the last edition of Udutu Guru Empowerment, we announced Udutu is a finalist for the 2010 VIATeC Technology Product of the Year Award. Our nomination was based on the incredible work done in partnership with the First Peoples' Cultural Foundation to develop FirstVoices Language Tutor. We talked with Peter Brand, FirstVoices Coordinator, about the project and the future of learning.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself:
My name is Peter Brand and I am FirstVoices Coordinator for the First People's Council. I was born in Australia in 1947. I graduated from Hobart Teacher's College, Tasmania and spent ten years traveling the world including circumnavigation in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. I immigrated to Canada in 1978 and focused on elementary education, working mostly with Aboriginal schools in Australia and Canada. Penny and I moved to Victoria BC in 1980 and then built our home in the woods in North Saanich in 1982 where we raised our two sons, Josh and Aidan.

I first began experimenting with development of computer-based language education software in 1999 while IT Instructor at Saanich Indian School Board. I conceived FirstVoices.com, online Aboriginal language resources, in 2000 with First Nations teaching colleague John Elliott.

Can you provide some details about FirstVoices.com and the FirstVoices Language Tutor?
Throughout the world, indigenous languages are severely endangered. In British Columbia, 32 First Nations languages - over 60% of the Indigenous languages of Canada - plus numerous dialects, are at risk of becoming extinct unless a concerted effort is made to document and teach them to younger generations. The available pool of indigenous language speakers is diminishing rapidly. Fluent First Nations language speakers in BC have declined from 100% in 1890 to 5% in 2010.

In 2003, the First Peoples' Cultural Foundation (FPCF) launched FirstVoices.com, a suite of tools enabling community-based First Nations language teams to collect and archive their words and phrases in a robust online database. Subsequently, additional features were added to the word and phrase collections, including stories, songs, games and teacher resources.

A recently released First Peoples' Council report predicts that without drastic action, the number of fluent speakers of BC First Nations languages will ebb to close to 0 by 2016. The FPCF determined that the most cost effective way to deliver language documentation and revitalization resources was to develop a Web-based tool kit designed to both capture and preserve these languages while they still exist, and provide a means of teaching them to future generations. The FirstVoices Language Tutor was developed to meet this challenge head on.

In early 2009, FPCF began a collaboration with Udutu to develop FirstVoices Language Tutor, an intuitive and easy to use tool that could capture the words, phrases, songs, and stories that are so vital to preserving indigenous languages and cultures. The tool had to work in the communities where the languages are spoken and be portable and available from anywhere.

FirstVoices Language Tutor, completed in December 2009 and launched in early 2010, delivers media-rich interactive online Aboriginal language lessons featuring custom online student voice recording capability and built-in student and teacher tracking tools. It not only allows non-technical people in the communities to record and capture, but also to create engaging interactive online learning, to deploy it on the internet, and to record and measure the results. An outstanding feature of the FirstVoices Language Tutor is a unique online audio recording and play-back tool that allows students to practice speaking and compare the recording of their own voice with the recordings of their fluent teachers.

Why you feel this project pushes the boundaries of learning?
The FirstVoices Language Tutor provides grass-roots community-based language teachers and activists with the training, tools and support to develop their own online language lessons free of charge. The FirstVoices Language Tutor is the only multi-lingual Aboriginal language resource of its kind in the world. First Nations teachers deserve and celebrate the right to take charge of their own language resource development. This project has profound potential impact for indigenous languages in Canada and around the world.

What is your vision of the future of online learning?
I'm excited about the prospects for handheld online learning and looking forward to moving forward with plans to deliver the FirstVoices Language Tutor on the iPhone, iPod and iPad.

What tools or technologies do you feel will have the greatest impact on learning in the next 5 years and why?
I believe that the revolution in portable devices such as smart phones, the iPad and iPod will transform education as we know it. I have a $10 app on my iPhone that enables me to navigate the coastal waters of BC. Another alerts me to every new earthquake anywhere in the world. That's up-to-the-minute geophysical data being pushed to my phone 24/7! And of course we have a growing set of FirstVoices Mobile apps. I am presently planning to package a class set of iPads with apps in multiple First Nations languages. I want to demonstrate the accessibility, excitement and cool factor of these tools to the new generation of learners. In this age of such compelling technologies, educators have to be at the leading edge in order to keep young learners engaged.

What possibilities do you see using myUdutu or other Udutu tools?
We are keen to explore the possibilities for multi-function Language Tutor apps for the iPad, iPod and iPhone.

Is there anything else you would like to share with fellow Udutu Gurus?
The FirstVoices Language Tutor was built from scratch on the Udutu framework at a fraction of the cost of developing an Indigenous language education tool from scratch. A gratifying culmination of our exciting development cycle was seeing the FirstVoices Language Tutor nominated as a finalist in the Viatec Product of the Year Category for 2010. Hats off to the development team, in particular Kris Noesgard at Udutu and Shay Boechler at FirstVoices.

For any submission that we use in future newsletters, we will send the featured Udutu Guru a coveted Udutu hat and Udutu shirt!

So go ahead. Tell us why you are a Udutu Guru!

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