Blog

Adapt Tips UI Kit

Through one of my other Adapt brands, Adapt Tips, myself and my business partner Chuck recently launched a brand new product, the Adapt UI Kit. This product was created from our own experience of working with designers who were creating prototypes of Adapt courses. We would work with many talented designers, but clearly fell short in terms of knowledge of Adapt and what standard components and extensions it had. We believed with a standard list of components and extensions that they could build…

Learning Technologies 2023

Another year, another Learning Technologies show. I'll be attending the Exhibition on the 3rd of May. I'm really looking forward to meeting clients and former colleagues again in person, as well as seeing some of the cool things that companies are working on (Adapt based and not!). If you're attending the show let me know. I would be glad to meet to discuss Adapt and how it could become your team's go to Authoring Tool.

Learning Technologies 2022

I'll be attending the Learning Technologies Exhibition tomorrow at the ExCeL center in London. I'm really looking forward to meeting clients and former colleagues again in person, as well as seeing some of the cool things that companies are working on (Adapt based and not!). If you're attending the show let me know. I would be glad to meet to discuss Adapt and how it could become your team's go to Authoring Tool.

Adapt Tips

Last month I launched a brand new platform to help teams and individuals who are using Adapt - Adapt Tips. It's a site dedicated to Tips, Tricks and guides on how to use Adapt. I'm running it with Chuck Lorenz, another long term expert of Adapt. We'll be updating it will new resources on a weekly basis and the best way to keep to date is to subscribe to our newsletter, which you can do using this link. In addition to the site we've also launched a Podcast, every two weeks we'll be releasing…

2020 update Adapt Plugin Checklist

I'm updating my free resource, the Adapt Plugin checklist to support version 5 of the Adapt Framework. I've included some of the plugins that have been created by the community since I last visited this resource and removed extensions which added functionality which is now delivered through the core Framework or theme. You can download it for free here. What is it? I created the Adapt Project Plugin checklist to help my own client projects. I wanted to help my client's have some understanding of…

New extension - Adapt Block Branching

Creating interactive scenarios: A new branching extension from Adapt I am today releasing a new open source extension that will help all Adapt users to create engaging interactive scenarios, born from a project to train GPs in London through interactive roleplay. Simon Date shares more about the inspiration behind it and the solution he has developed. The inspiration I had a client approach me a couple of months ago with a brief. The client - a large General Practitioner (GP) surgery based in…

Is this thing on? - Adapt Freelancer newsletter #001

This post is taken from my the launch of my newsletter. I'll be sharing updates every month on Adapt Freelancer and Adapt Unlimited, as well as tips and tricks on how to best use Adapt. You can subscribe to get future updates using this link - https://tinyletter.com/adaptfreelancer Hi there, Welcome to the official launch of the Adapt Freelancer newsletter! 🎉 I'm planning to start sharing updates about Adapt Freelancer, my Adapt freelancing and consultancy company, as well as Adapt Unlimited…

Adapt Unlimited - Adapt hosting provided by Adapt Freelancer

If you follow me Twitter or Linkedin you may have noticed that I have launched my own Adapt hosting service - Adapt Unlimited. Adapt Unlimited offers teams the ability to use Adapt on a remote, secure server. We deal with all the updates and maintenance involved with running the Adapt Authoring Tool, so your team can just focus on creating beautiful e-learning content. Instead of a per author model we use a charge a single flat monthly or annual fee for teams up to twenty authors. Prices start…

Authoring Tool lock-in and five ways to prevent it

I remember just over ten years ago, being in a GCSE Computing class when I was first introduced to Google docs. I was blown away by this new internet based approach (the term Cloud hadn’t been invented yet) that offered the ability to create documents your browser, which were automatically backed up and could be shared and collaborated on with anyone. In the past decade, more and more software suppliers have moved their offerings into the Cloud and ushered in a new business model: Software as a…

New Component - Adapt-imageJuxtapose

One of my client's recently sent over a mockup for a theme that they wanted me to produce. The client had included a request for a "sliding interaction" that had two images overlaid. I was about to send an email to no such component existed and we would have to find an alternative. However, just to be safe I decided to search for "image slider". I was lucky enough to find this open source library which exactly matched what the client was requesting. I managed to get it working as an Adapt…

Respect yourself - Freelance series (3/3)

As a freelancer, it’s important that you respect yourself. It might be cliché to say but if you can’t respect yourself then how do you expect your clients to treat you. In this third and final blog post that celebrates and recaps my first year working as a freelancer in the e-learning industry. I’m going to share some ways that you can better respect yourself. Whether it’s techniques to deal with stress, client relations or your physical and mental health. In case you missed them here are the…

Dealing with risk - Freelance series (2/3)

This is the second blog post of a series of three about freelancing. I'm celebrating one year of Adapt Freelancer and some of the lessons I've learnt. You can read the other posts here: Find your clients (1/3) Respect yourself (3/3) One of the biggest things on the mind of anyone who’s looking to jump from full-time work to freelancing is risk. When you have a job you pretty much know that no matter how good or bad things are going you can turn up to work tomorrow, work eight hours then collect…

Finding your clients - Freelance series (1/3)

This August marks the one-year anniversary of when I got my first client and started my journey down the road of freelancing in the e-learning industry. What was meant to be a side hustle quickly became my main source of income and lead me to the decision of handing in my resignation at my stable London job and going head-first into the freelance lifestyle. I’ve been fortunate with the opportunity to work remotely with nearly a dozen clients located across five countries, almost every engagement…

Youtube series - Adapt Plugins

I've written before about the huge amount of choice of plugins available that's available to the Adapt community. I've made it one of the aims of my company to not only help businesses and organisations have success with Adapt but also support the community with free resources that share my knowledge. I've just launched a brand new Youtube series - Adapt Plugins. I'll be covering all the amazing components and extensions that have been released by the Adapt community. I'll be showing what they…

Why I choose to specialise

Over the last nine months of launching my own business, solely focused on offering services around Adapt Learning and leaving a comfortable office job in London to make it my full-time venture, I've had various questions from clients, subcontractors, former colleagues and connections in the industry that go to this sort of tune: Why do you only work in Adapt? We have a Storyline module we need built. Can you help with it? Don't you get bored of working with just one tool? Surely there isn't…

Open source or hosted?

When you get started using Adapt, whether as a freelancer, agency, internal team or a company looking to procure custom e-Learning. You will have to make a conscious choice whether you will use the open source version or a hosted version. The two versions are quite different in how they operate so it's important to make the decision that is right for you. ##What is the open source version? The open source version is the version advertised on the official Adapt website. It consists of two parts…

Adapt Project Plugin Checklist

This blog post continues from my previous post where I outlined how plugins allow great customization within an open source platform, however without proper curation you risk having clients who feel disconnected from the plugin choice process and feel uninvolved from their own project. I thought the best way to solve this issue was to create a resources, the Adapt Project Plugin Checklist (APPC). As much as there is already a great community of open source developers there has been very little…

The Plugin Paradox

As I've been starting out with Adapt Freelancer and working with my first clients to introduce them to Adapt I've been running into a problem. It's part of a paradox that I've had in the last four years of being actively engaged in an open source community which enables the creation and sharing of plugins. How do you enhance client choice without compromising on the quality of their experience? OK, this isn't technically a paradox but it turns out alliteration is pretty good clickbait. Sorry…

Make your Adapt course fun in five minutes

I had a recent project where the client was looking for something that would make the content not only more engaging, but also add a sense of fun. I knew it would be a great project to start using something that I had wanted to try for a long time in a project, CSS animations. CSS animations are elements on the page that can animate in or out of view. I had previously used this as a design affordance for sidebars that slide in or out of view but it can also be applied to the content itself. The…

Adapt Learning - offering the third way

When searching for a modern E-Learning authoring tool that meets the needs of your learners Adapt really ticks all the boxes. It creates beautiful, fully responsive content that works on any device in a matter of minutes. It is supported and maintained by industry leading e-learning companies such as Kineo, Learning Pool and SpongeUK to name but a few. The core product is being constantly updated with new features, in the last 12 months alone language translations and xAPI support have been…