Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

One cannot discuss colors and taste, but I do believe I have an extrodinary good looking webcam. It's a Logitech Quickcam Sphere MP.

This and some other selected camera's come with video effects. In short, you can download avatars from the logitech site, and virtual 'ornaments'. As the camera can recognise your face you can record yourself as a speaking avatar.

The result is somewhat more amateuristic than the sculptoris solution but can also increase the fun factor of a course or learning game at low cost. I've tried with three different avatars: dollar bill, a parrot and a scrambled view of myself (futuristic effect). In all movies the avatar asks a question from an IQ test. Enjoy.

The parrot sketch
Dollar Bill
Future Bert

Labels: avatars, logitech, webcam

If used sensibly, avatars have the potential to enhance the user interaction with your web site and the retention and fun factor of your e-learning modules.

Today I want to discuss one cheap way to include high quality talking avatars. I've been playing around with the Sculptoris Voice Lite program. On their site (www.sculptoris.com) you are greeted by one of the characters, and you can download a 30 day trial version. After that the license is only 99$ and you don't need to pay any redistribution rights of your character files that are exported as Flash 5 files. Flash has about 99% coverage if I believe Adobe, so it will play everywhere.

The program could not be more easy to use:

1- Choose the sound file (.wav) that contains the voice. It can be your own recording or a Text-To-Speech voice.

2- Optionally select the text file (.txt) that contains the text spoken in step 1. If you provide the file, the lip synchronisation will be more accurate.

3- Select the character to use. There are several build-in characters, male or female or even animal. If you purchase the additional Voice Character Creation Development Kit, you can make your own avatars or derive them from the free source files of the default ones.

4- Select the output flash file location and name.

5- Press 'Build Character'. Done. You will find the flash (.swf) and html preview file in the folder you selected. To include in your site, just copy/paste the HTML code and upload the flash file.

I've made two examples, one with Text-To-Speech synthetic voice, and one with my own voice.

First example can be viewed here.
The avatar (I named him Otto) asks one of the questions that I received from Lut for my birthday after my call in this blog post. The question is in English.

The Text-To-Speech voice was made with TextAloud, as described in this previous post.




The second example can be viewed here.
It is my own voice and gives you another question donated by my neighbour and brother-in-law Hans, this time in Dutch.
The recording is very basic and noisy because it is made with the default Sound Recorder tool found in Windows. There is probably much better available, but I'm not an expert on sound engineering and background noise reduction.

I think Sculptoris is a good and relatively cheap way to add some fun and interaction to your site or e-learning, and I'm considering moderate use of the flash avatars on about2findout.com.

Labels: avatars, sculptoris, Text-To-Speech, TTS

How much is your blog worth?
Another funny and completely useless site is this one. It calculates how much your blog is worth via the Technorati API and some algorithm. Anyway, mine is estimated at $1,693.62. Cool, anyone want to give me that? :-)

Labels: blog, Technorati

Today is my birthday.
One of the key aspects of web2.0 is the social dimension. I received e-cards from Yahoo and Live card services. I got an automatic personalised note from our country general manager here at IBM and some more from Rabobank (my bank) and pocketforum. No card from LinkedIn. The flickr home page doesn't seem to know that, or other popular web2.0 places.
I know it's all automatic and doesn't mean as much, but doesn't start social software with remembering a birthday?

Labels: birthday

I guess it is about time to reveal some of the mystery of what about2findout.com is going to look like. In a first phase, I'm going to concentrate on one popular part of learning/finding out: the game part, in the form of questions, quiz, challenges, etc. It is the topic with the most appeal and it is also easy and short to author and answer. Imagine a site where you can author questions, answer questions tagged with your interests, and challenge your contacts. I'm very exited about it. The slogan is going to be "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the smartest of us all?". I hope to have a prototype working by the summer and I'll keep you informed via this blog.

So what does that have to do with my 33rd birthday on April 18?
I'd be very happy to receive one or more questions from you as a birthday present. They don't have to be easy, but they should be original (not stolen from Trivial Pursuit for example).

So if you feel inspired please send them to me via

http://www.about2findout.com/surveys/nsurvey.aspx?surveyid=ffa5c1572854d4baae140af138488e7

Thank you very much in advance!
Bert

I've been toying with Text-To-Speech (TTS). These products allow you to input a text (from a document, typed in, from a web page,...) and hear it out loud via a synthetic, artificial voice.

The million dollar question: is TTS technology good enough today to include in e-learning? The answer: no. There has been a remarkable progress and some premium voices are sounding quite natural. But you can still tell the difference, which distracts a learner from the content. And they are OK for short periods, but you don't want to listen 15 minutes to a TTS voice unless you really have to.

The usage

That doesn't mean TTS cannot be used for learning. I suggest these usages:

• Inclusive learning: provide TTS as alternative medium for your students with eye or reading problems. Here there is no choice. For them it's either a monotone robot voice or nothing at all. But there are many text readers available -even standardly in the Windows XP or Vista operating system- so rather than include it in your learning package just give blind people one of the available softwares that can read the screen.
• Short sentences: you can use TTS for short parts of voice, such as an instruction "Click next to see your results" or objectives "In this lesson you will learn nothing useful but it will keep you off the street".
• Prototyping: the biggest use for TTS is in prototyping. Before you hire a professional and expensive speaker, include TTS audio files in the mock-up of your e-learning course. TTS has as a big advantage you can change sentences at no or low extra cost. Paying someone to rerecord and read one word extra in a sentence is expensive. When the prototype is accepted, go to the recording studio.

Before we discuss some products, first some terminology:

• TTS : Text-To-Speech, from written to spoken word.
• SAPI : The Speech-API. This is a standard for speech applications. Most products today will either use the older SAPI4 interface or the newer SAPI5 interface. Make sure your software and voices all adhere to the SAPI standard.

A TTS solution comes in two parts:
- The software to generate the sound output from the text input
- The voices

The software

There are many text readers available. For our usage we need a tool that can also export the sound to files, preferably in a batch or automated process. For complete automation, the tool should support an API (interface) or command line that other programs can call.

I recommend TextAloud from Nextup.com. It's a popular and good shareware that is very cheap (29.95$ and a discount of 5$ when you purchase some voices as well). You can try it out for 30 days. It has an easy interface, supports both SAPI4 and SAPI5 voices and allows for changing pitch, tone and volume in a voice. Out of the box it exports to mp3 and wav file formats, and when you install a free extra ActiveX encoder it also exports to wma files. But the most interesting feature is the batch conversion. Just put the text files in a folder, point to it, and the tool creates the corresponding voice files. Other features I like are the possibility to change voice within a text and to add your own vocabulary.

TextAloud also has an API and a command line interface, but for that you need to pay an extra license of 250$.

Other tools I came accross:
- Ultra Hal reader; comes with the NeoSpeech voices Kate and Paul for only 24.95$ which makes it a cheaper package. No batch export or any automation.
- TextSound from ByteCool : another shareware tool, with command line tool for about $29.95. You can download a trial that lasts 50 conversions.
- Balabolka: (thanks for the link Ralph!) a freeware tool that reads text in SAPI4 or SAPI5 voices and can export to wav. No automation or batch. But totally free and good.

My recommendation for the tool: Buy TextAloud. All samples below are created with it.

The voices

Regardless of the tool you use for conversion, you want good voices. Together with the MS Agent, Microsoft did release the voices 'Sam', 'Mike' and 'Mary'. That was 5 years ago. You can tell by listening to the samples below. They are the typical robot-like monotone voices we have come to hate. Most tools will ship with those because they are free. Available in SAPI4 and SAPI5 versions.

Sample of Microsoft Sam (wav)
Sample of Microsoft Mike (wav)
Sample of Microsoft Mary (mp3)

Microsoft also included the L&H TruVoice voice engines for free download. (See the section 'free voices' at the end of this link for download.) Without going into the dramatic national story of the Belgian pride Lernout&Hauspie Speech Technologies going bust, these voices are what is left from that area. They are equally old now but better, and have non-English voices and I guess they are free because who will sue you for using them? Available in SAPI4 versions.

Sample of TruVoice CarolUK (mp3)
Sample of TruVoice PeterUK (mp3)

Now we get to the acceptable voices. Two examples below are 'special voices', also free but they represent a whisper or robot voice. Since both are not naturally speaking by definition, it doesn't matter so much it is a synthetic voice.

Sample of male whisper (mp3)
Sample of robot voice (wma)

So far the free voices, also available on http://www.bytecool.com/voices.htm.

There are also many 'premium voices' available from companies like AT&T, Cepstral, NeoSpeech, Acapela and others. They charge for voices, but the quality is much much better. These companies have invested millions in their voices, so voices for commercial use can become quite expensive.

Sample of Cepstral Amy (mp3) - unregistered voice includes a registration message
Sample of Cepstral David (mp3) - unregistered voice includes a registration message

You can buy voices here. They will be between 30-50$ each for personal use.
Very nice and recommended voices are available from NeoSpeech. You can do your own demo online at

NeoSpeech demo: http://www.neospeech.com/demo/demo_text.php
Acapela demo: http://demo.acapela-group.com

But license restrictions apply: you cannot distribute the sound files unless you pay extra. In general, AT&T Natural Voices licensing can be very expensive, Cepstral and Neospeech more reasonable, but none of the redistribtuion rights licenses start below $1500. The only affordable distribution licenses are available on the web store of Cepstral. They are offering an Audio Distribution License for $199 per voice.

My recommendation: buy the NeoSpeech Paul and Kate voices (35$) for personal use. For commercial use or distribution, buy CepStral voices.

Labels: Cepstral, NeoSpeech, Text-To-Speech, TextAloud, TruVoice, TTS

I've been focussing on Second Life in my latest posts because that is the most succesful virtual environment today. Together with you I'm curious to find out how virtual worlds will find their way into education and how. But it is not sure at all in the end it will be Second Life. It's rarely the innovator or the first succesful market entrant that survives. Wordperfect was the text processor that broke the market open. Heard of it lately? What about the 'killer app' Lotus 1-2-3? Mosaic was the browser that found its way to mainstream. And so on. (I'm trying to find an example that doesn't involve Microsoft taking over, but it is hard to find one :-) ).
There are others currently to consider. There is Warcraft or something like that (I'm not a gamer). It is a large virtual game world, but with a purpose as opposed to Second Life that has as much purpose as life itself.

Take a look at a Belgian virtual world: taatu.com . Big in Belgium and France, they are currently raising money to break thru internationally.

Take a look at there.com. I didn't try it out but the introduction video looks nice and they do have sound/voice.


And those are all examples in the 'consumer web'. I'll expect some companies to launch similar sites for the 'corporate web'.

Labels: metaverse, taatu, there.com

Last time I shared 5 ideas of how SL can be used for learning. Today I'll list some pro/cons for using Second Life for education.

PRO: Second Life is free
This makes a very strong argument! No software to install, no software to purchase. No investment. If you don't like it just walk away. And you can't develop it yourself for that price!

CON: There is a hugh threshold
(Please note I'm writing this from a corporate learning perspective.) There are two big thresholds to using Second Life for learning in companies. One is technical. You need a powerful machine with a rapid graphical processor and plenty of memory to run it properly. In many companies the current PC platform will not allow for a comfortable Second Life experience. The second one is time. (And time is money.) It takes at least 4 hours for an orientation in Second Life. So if you use Second Life for mandatory training, you will spend 4 hours per person just to learn how to move in Second Life an go through the orientation and help islands. It will kill your business case because teleconferencing or face-to-face classroom take 0 time. In schools you might assume students already have a SL account or will get up to speed quickly. In a company you really can only assume basic internet navigation skills.

PRO: Second Life is hot
It doesn't hurt the hip factor of learning to ride on the waves. If people are curious and motivated to be on Second Life, give it to them! Motivation is key in adult learning and anything that helps, just helps. Consider it a form of edutainment.

CON: There is no sound
A big handicap is that Second Life has no voice facilities. You cannot speak, just chat. That means your teacher will either have to type everything and your session becomes an animated chat window, or that you'll use a telephone/skype conference on the side. That is far from ideal. I think takeup of SL and its use for education will go up even much higher at the time Linden Labs bring voice to this virtual world.

PRO: There is money to be made
It is possible and even relatively simple to charge and sell in Second Life. So there is an opportunity for a virtual learning MARKET as well. You can sell classes, rent virtual classrooms to others, etc.

CON: You don't own it
This might sound like a typical 'web 1.0'/capitalist/'big mean corporation' thing to say. But companies want to control the learning environments they use. Second Life is completely owned by Linden Labs. If they decide to kick you or your students or customers out of SL based on their interpretation of the code of conduct, there is nothing you can do about it. And there are no guarantees on security, privacy, availability of the environment. These are typically things companies need and are even willing to pay for. If companies really want to use SL for part of their learning, it cannot crash and it has to adhere to some Service Level Agreements.

Note: in January, Linden Lab put the code under GPL but only when linked to their own servers. So it doesn't really count as 'open' as far as I see it.

PRO: You can fly
Seriously, flying is fun :-) . What I mean is that a virtual environment let's you do more than you could in the real world. For example, in a real setting you can't speak to fellow students and listen to the teacher at the same time. In a virtual setting you can.

CON: It is public
Anything you say can and will be used against you. So do you want your sensitive and costly in-company training given on a public place? Would you organise your sales training in the middle of the city park?

So there is good and bad, as always. I'd like to conclude on a sceptical note taken from a newsletter I got:
"In case any of you are being pressurised to dabble in the online virtual reality game that is 'Second Life', The Register provided a useful analysis this week:
Despite Second Life's claim that it now has 3.1 million residents, there are typically only 15,000 clients logged on at any time. Only 15% of those who became residents last October have ever logged on again after their first 30 days. Less than 50,000 of the residents are premium accounts which are able to start businesses. All of them rely on new users entering Second Life for their income. Although 21,000 of these premium accounts had a positive cashflow last month, only 10,000 of these made more than $10. And that was before the owners, Linden Labs, applied their charges.

Only people with no first live need a second...?
Other sceptics who believe the emperor may well be wearing no clothes include the one-page spoof Website that is http://www.getafirstlife.com/ ."

Labels: metaverse, Second Life

Second Life is hip. Hey, even I've been there. And when someone talks about the 'many uses' of Second Life, somewhere education is in that list. But how exactly can Second Life or a similar multi-player virtual world be used for learning? Here are five of my thoughts:

1- Virtual Class 2.0

One component of the e-learning spectrum has always been the virtual classroom. At this time a virtual classroom is pretty close to a web conference system. You have a list with participants (sometimes in a seating metaphore) who can raise hands and/or show basic emotions. You have a shared whiteboard, a central presentation or polls and questions. You have an instructor and/or a facilitator who speak, sometimes via the tool itself sometimes via a separate telephone conferencing system. And you have a chat window. Centra is one of the popular products in this area.
Second Life-lookalikes could transform this 'Virtual Class 1.0' into what virtual classrooms have always been trying to do: mimic the ever so popular face-to-face classroom as natural as possible, but distant. It might work. People can all teleport to a virtual classroom building and share a learning moment there. As long as the learning is instructional and information sharing only and doesn't involve labs or exercises this will work fine.

A further evolution of this is a Virtual Conference. Lotus for example held part of its January LotusSphere conference both in Orlando ànd in Second Life simultaneously. They are basically the same, except for the number of participants and concurrent events.
Take a look: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ibm%209/34/58/23

2- Research

A second big learning thing with Second Life is learning about Second Life itself. Hey, it is a virtual world and a hugh experiment. Second Life has for example its own virtual economy. I can imagine economists wanting to research if it behaves in the same way as the real world. Will the SL economy collaps if that Chinese lady tries to convert all her money into real dollars?
And there is the dark side. You didn't think SL would be free of terrorists, hackers and freaks did you? Some weeks ago a bomb exploded on SL. Hackers are trying to steal your virtual assets. Just last week I heard about a new problem on SL: child porn. There are no laws against avatars having sex with avatars representing children. I can imagine sociologists will want to research how a society and community in a virtual world evolves. How it regulates itself.

So all of that is valid learning. But it is more research-oriented , so I for one am not interested as my 'thing' is corporate learning. This is for the academics among us.

3- Learning to be someone else

What better way for sensitivity training, role play or diversity training if you actually can change into someone else. How does it feel to be a woman, a black person, or a gay rabbit? Second Life can have its place in any kind of training where you are trying to let participants experience things from the other's point of view.

4- Soft skill simulation and coaching

Second Life can be used to bring coach and coachee together via the net. For example a manager and his coach can meet on Second Life every evening to go over their program. A sales trainee can schedule a one-on-one with a virtual coach to practise selling a product.

5- Images and 3D animation

And if nothing else, Second Life is a cheap way to get quality images and 3D animation movies. Just 'act' in Second Life and let the program capture it. Then include it in your e-learning course. I haven't figured out if Linden Labs (owners of Second Life) prohibits the use of photo's and films taken on SL. I think you are OK if you mention the image or video was taken there and link back.

I did not include putting learning on Second Life billboards in here. For me, that is just the same as putting up a web page or writing a piece of paper on some topic. Second Life doesn't add anything to that.

As a conclusion for today's post, some educational resourses on Second Life:
- TOP 20 EDUCATIONAL LOCATIONS IN SL
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Top_20_Educational_Locations_in_Second_Life

And some other sources of information on the same topic:
http://greateribm.typepad.com/web_log/2006/10/greater_ibm_vir_1.html
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/011107-web-20.html

In one of the next posts I'll talk about pro's and con's of SL.

Labels: metaverse, Second Life