Tech Trends

Our assignment this week was to investigate a tech trend that was outlined in the Horizon Report.

I chose to focus on online learning, hybrid and collaborative learning, and looked at how the site HapYak (www.hapyak.com) can make online learning interactive and controllable by the learner.

HapYak enables you to add chapters, annotations and quizzes to make videos interactive and engaging.  The site also provides analytics about learner activity on each of these options.  

For my artifact I recorded a video using Camtasia to teach our corporate learners about the resources available to them, and how they can navigate to find the right resource for their professional development.  This was imported to YouTube and then using HapYak I defined chapters so learners can click on the chapters link to skip to a section if they don't wish to view the whole video.

Link to HapYak video: HapYak Interactive Video

I enjoyed using the HapYak site even though it did take me a few attempts to get my video to load and understand how it works (unfortunately there aren't any how-to videos on the site).  Once you have an understanding of how it works though it's very simple and easy to use.  Using this will make it easier for a learner to skip over sections they may already be familiar with, and to concentrate on those sections they want to learn more about.  In an online teaching environment where videos are used, this would be a great tool to incorporate into training programs.  I plan to look into this further and possibly use in some of our corporate online training courses.


Side note:  For the creation of my video I had originally looked at GoAnimate (www.goanimate.com).  Unfortunately with a free account they only allow you to create 30 second videos.  They are great though and a lot of fun to use.  If you have a situation where you just need a 30 second video then this is a great tool.  Click here to see my original video.