Learning Captivate

Recently I have been looking at various trainer and instructional design positions to get a good view of what the Industry is looking for, and how we as a Continuing Education department could help meet those needs.  One program that kept coming up is Captivate.

Captivate, for those of you who are not familiar with the program, is a process and training development tool from Adobe.  It will make Flash videos from processes and provide a number of plugins, such as SCORM, so that these processes can be in turn graded and developed in that manner.  I haven't had any previous experience with Captivate in the past, and as such this new process is new to me.  Also, Captivate is not currently available for the Mac, which makes learning in a Virtual Machine all the more difficult. 

So why bother?  Well, for one, I can make a better looking test for my classes, and have the results plug directly into a WebCT or Moodle course.  I can also provide additional training that I don't have time to cover in class.  All in all, it's a great method for professional looking presentations that are self-paced.  Anyway, there is a chance that Captivate could be released for the Mac soon, and it will be interesting to see how it will be implemented. 

So how am I learning Captivate?  There is a Captivating video podcast that provides some great instruction on Captivate and using it in a classroom setting.  To date I know how to create a video demo and training process with Captivate, and I'm looking forward to the Editing episodes.