Microsoft has released a preview version of its new “Office Mix” tool, an interactive storytelling, presentation and teaching tool based on Microsoft PowerPoint.
Having worked with tools such as Adobe Captivate, this seems to be similar but updated to take advantage of cloud based delivery, touch based tablets and web cam driven video. The idea is to capture what you are presenting in real time through your web cam and hand writing on the touch screen. The product is free with an Office 2013 subscription.
Learning Management Systems have been around for decades and content authoring tools have typically adopted a standard called SCORM for authoring structured lessons with quizzes, tracking and analytics. There is a free open source SharePoint based LMS that supports this standard called the SharePoint Learning Kit. This allows you to take your content and move it into any compliant LMS. There is no mention of SCORM in Microsoft’s new tool so stay tuned as it evolves to see if this is more of an interactive presentation tool or a true lesson content authoring tool that supports SCORM as a standard.
