Learning Snacks are short, interactive presentations. Each Snack is delivered by using innovative Microsoft Silverlight technology and includes various media, such as animations and recorded demos, as well as interactive mini activities. At the end of each free presentation, you can view more Snacks, learn more about the topic, or visit a related Web site.
NOTE: For this SnackBox pilot phase, authoring is by invitation only. To be considered for authoring, please send a mail to snacksup@microsoft.com indicating your interest and area of expertise. You will need to be signed in using your Windows Live ID in order to upload a snack. Please click on the "Sign In" button in the upper right of this site to sign in. Once you're signed in, you'll see a new button on the right side of this page that will allow you to upload your snack after following the process below.
To create Learning Snacks, we will use the Learning Content Development System (LCDS), which is a free tool that enables the Microsoft Learning community to create high-quality, interactive, online courses. The LCDS allows anyone in the Microsoft Learning community to publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactive activities, quizzes, games, assessments, animations, demos, and other multimedia.
You can download the LCDS here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/tools/lcds/default.mspx
You will also need to install the Learning Snack plug-in for the LCDS: Snack Convertor download
Once you have downloaded the LCDS, you will need to launch the LCDS and create content for your Learning Snack. Here is a brief overview of that process. For more information, view the LCDS help system or FAQ.
1. Launch LCDS. 2. Click New, and in the Name dialog that appears, type a name for your course and click OK. 3. In the Course Structure panel on the left side of the screen, note the nodes inside of Lesson (Introduction, Topic, Topic, Self Test). This is where you will create your Snack content. Each node in Lesson represents a single topic in your Snack. 4. Click on the Introduction node to select it. We will now create our first topic. 5. In the center panel (Templates), notice the Name box contains "Introduction". If you would like to change the topic name, replace with desired name. 6. Below the Name field, we will define the topic type for our current topic in the Select Template area. The icons/tabs on the left side of the Select Template area contain template categories. Click on the first tab to see the Interact templates. IMPORTANT: Learning Snacks only support 6 of the LCDS templates. When authoring, please select from the following templates: i. Interact> Adventure Activity ii. Watch> Demonstration iii. Watch> Animation iv. Play> Sort Game v. Play> Tile Game vi. Read> Text and Picture 7. Select a valid topic type in the Select Template area, and then create the content in the Page panel, which will display a simple forms based authoring template. For more information on creating content in the LCDS, view the product Help, which contains comprehensive instructions. 8. Continue this process for each topic in your course. You can create up to 6 topics to include in your Learning Snack. To create your Learning Snack, click the Create button on the LCDS toolbar. A dialog box will appear. 9. In the dialog box, select Learning Snack and click Create. This will launch the Snack Converter.
Snack Converter 1. The Snack Converter plug-in is launched. 2. Click New>New Snack from LCDS. A Browse for Folder dialog box will appear showing the available LCDS courses on your machine: Select a subfolder inside of the courses folder (ie: sample_snack) and click OK. The subfolder name should match the name of the course you wish to convert. Note: when you click to select the subfolder, it may open to display more folders. The fields below are now active, and we can define the content of our Snack. 3. In the Snack Title field, enter the name of your Snack. 4. In the Topic 1 box, click the Browse button to select the first topic of your Snack. A file selection dialog box will appear: You will notice that the topics are numbered, beginning with 0001. Topics beginning with the number 0004 and higher are Snack-friendly topics. You can identify the topic by the title that follows the number. Select a topic, then click Open. 5. The Topic 1 box is now populated with the topic you have selected. Notice the Title field has been defined by the topic you’ve selected. If you would prefer a different title, simply edit the text. 6. Continue to select topics for your Snack following this process. Your Snack can contain between one and six topics. 7. When you are ready to create your Snack, click the Create Build button at the bottom of the screen. In the dialog box, select the folder where you would like the Snack to be created, or click the Make New Folder button to create a new folder. When you have selected (or created) a folder, click OK. 8. An alert box will appear when your Snack is complete 9. Navigate to and open the folder you specified in Step 7 Launch Default.html in your web browser to view your completed Snack! Note: If you would like to include a thumbnail, place a thumbnail file named "thumb.jpg" into the root folder (same folder where Default.html lives).
Next, we will create a ZIP file containing your Snack to upload to SnackBox. 1. Navigate to the folder that contains the Learning Snack you just created. 2. Right-click the folder containing the Snack, highlight "Send To", and select "Compressed (zipped) Folder" 3. You should see the folder compressing... 4. And in the end you should have the original folder, as well as the compressed folder.
You're now ready to upload your snack. Click on the Upload Snack link on the upper right part of this page to go to the upload form.