References from the interview:

Noise New Media

Advice to new users:

“Take the time to make individual files of all the elements in your sprouts and animate them using the effects and animation functionality.”

“Set up your master pages first, at least setup the master background because it is a huge timesaver.”

Steve Azar sprout:

I’ve been a college teacher for about 20 years now and I wish Sprout Builder was around when I started out.  I discovered Sprouts a few years ago when I needed a widget for my website and I’ve seen the capabilities of Sprouts grow to the point where I’m convinced it could be the kind of teaching tool educators have been asking for for a long time.  There are a lot of potential uses for Sprouts in education, but I’m really excited about this one: creating online projects.

I’m a psychology teacher, and despite what you might think, psychology is not all about Freud.  Like any science, psychology is about conducting experiments and surveys.  When the internet blossomed in the mid 90s I wondered whether student projects could finally go online.  Typically students choose easy to set up studies (like asking people to compare the taste of Coke vs. Pepsi, or to memorize lists of words….snore….) and they ask 10-15 of their friends or dorm-mates to act as subjects.  After a while that gets pretty boring for them and for the teacher.

What are the alternatives for teachers who want students to create fun projects where they can also collect data from a lot of people?  Well, as I see it we’ve had these options:

• HTML: you can create an online project in which participants go to a web page to read instructions, look at pictures, etc., and collect data from them by filling in HTML forms, but that takes a sophisticated knowledge of HTML and perhaps also of Javascript.  For the busy teacher, this is not going to happen.
• Adobe Flash: I love Flash.  I’ve been programming in Flash and actionscript for years.  And that’s what it takes – years – to be good enough at Flash to create an online project.  Flash carries a very steep learning curve.  Teachers are content experts, not developers.  So Flash is not the answer either.
• Software to Create Online Projects: there are packages educators can buy to create projects.  These can be easier to use than HTML or Flash, but the downside is that they are very expensive (upwards of $1,000), they are usually designed for professional researchers, and they are overkill for the average teacher who just wants students to easily create interesting projects, or for the teacher – distance ed or on the ground – to create online lesson plans.

That’s where I feel Sprout Builder comes in.  You can inexpensively create online projects without any coding knowledge.  I’ve created two of them for my podcast, The Psych Files, that were fun to make and I think are good examples of just the beginning of what can be done with Sprout Builder.  Here’s what Sprout Builder has that teachers and students need:

• Multimedia: Sprout builder let’s you drag and drop audio, video and images onto its “palette”. Now we’re no longer limited to doing projects with just lists of words.
• Multiple “Conditions”: students can use pages in Sprout builder and buttons to control exactly what participants in a project are allowed to see and do.   Although participants won’t be able to taste Coke or Pepsi, I think I we’ve been down that road enough times.  Now we can do projects that are more involving.  Here’s an example of a rather simple project I created for The Psych Files podcast:

• No Programming Skills Required: No HTML, JavaScript or Actionscript to learn.  Navigation from one “condition” (page) to another is easily done with drag and drop buttons and then selecting the actions of the buttons from a menu.
• Data collection: Here’s what really solves a big stumbling block for teachers: how can students gather real data from participants around the world?  This is what is so cool about what Sproutbuilder has recently done: integrated with Google Forms and PollDaddy.  Both of these sites can collect student data and are easy to set up.  Google Forms is of course free and you’ll get everything you need from PollDaddy’s free account.
• Publish to the Web: Most teachers are using blogs and Sprout Builder publishes to most of blog pages in one click, without anyone needing to know any code. Ridiculously easy.  With a tiny bit of HTML coding knowledge, the embed code is easily placed into a web page.  Here’s an example of a lesson/homework I made in Sprout and placed on a web page.
• Inexpensive: finally, teachers can create three sprouts for free, or get an inexpensive educator account to make as many Sprout as they want.

I could go on, but then you’ll think I work for the company.  I don’t.  I’m a teacher and I see a wonderful future for Sprout Builder in the education space.

Learn more about Michael Britt’s project, The Psych Files Podcast — Psychology podcast and resources for students and educators.

My boy and Sprout evangelist, Joey Mucha, noticed that I had created an interesting Sprout to help promote the Outside Lands Music Festival and asked if I would be interested in sharing my thoughts on why I chose Sprout for the job.  Here are my thoughts and process on how we executed this campaign and why we chose Sprout.

Let me give you some quick background info: now in it’s second year, The Outside Lands Music Festival (taking place in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco Aug 28 – 30) has quickly become a premiere national music event. This year’s headliners are Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Tenacious D, and many more. Not surprisingly, big music festivals are subject to a fair amount of speculation and interest. Will two amazing artists team up on stage for a one-off performance? Will Jack Black and Jack White meet up with Black Joe Lewis? In short, there is a vast community of music lovers giddy at the thought of so many talented people hanging out at the same food cart backstage. Oh, the possibilities. Some music fans seek this information via sites like Consequence Of Sound (CoS). CoS has become one of the top referring websites to major music events in the country. They keep their site clean and simple and provide a popular forum to discuss breaking festival news and the latest most-likely-to-be-true rumors.

Sadly, one of the festival headliners, The Beastie Boys, were forced to cancel all performances after it was discovered that member Adam Yauch had developed cancer. The good news is Adam is getting the care he needs and is expecting a full recovery. Still, this left the festival in need of another headlining act – without much time to promote the addition before the curtain rose.

We realized that this unhappy development also brought a new opportunity to engage fans of the festival. Why not ask them directly who would be a great addition? Better yet, why not reward someone for actually guessing the correct replacement? Doing this on a site like Consequence of Sound was a no-brainer. What was a little more challenging, however, was figuring out the best way to do it. Because we had some fantastic assets from our design team (floating Bison heads anyone?), I decided to build an interactive quiz. After correctly answering a few questions visitors were encouraged to post their guess as to who would replace the Beasties. The right answer (chosen randomly from multiple correct entries) would win a prize. A ”super duper secret” prize no less.

Take a look at the image below. This was my “eureka” moment. And it was a little ugly to be sure.

Now take a look at the finished product below. I took that chaotic scribble from idea to sketch to finished product in about 2 hours. Seriously.

The crew at CoS loved the idea of running such a unique promotion for their visitors, and the festival received excellent placement on the site. After the official announcement had been made and the contest ended, I needed the ability to update the information with the big news of our new headliner – none other than Tenacious D! Adding an announcement of The D within the promotion after it had launched was a breeze.

PRNewswire
PALM DESERT, Calif.

January 31 /PRNewswire/ — At the DEMO ‘08 conference, Sprout unveiled Sprout Builder, an authoring platform that allows anyone to quickly and easily build “Living Content” – widgets, mashups, mini-sites, and other forms of interactive and distributable web content.

Users create content (“sprouts”) by dragging and dropping rich media such as video, audio, images, text, shapes, and interactive services such as chat (Meebo), phone (Ribbit), fundraising (ChipIn), surveys (PollDaddy), and more. The resulting Flash file can be embedded onto any Web site, blog, or social networking profile or published via widget platforms such as Gigya, Clearspring and SpringWidgets.

The Sprout team demonstrated the power of its Sprout Builder onstage at DEMO ‘08, building a sprout live and in less than five minutes for the band Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. The sprout, which included video, a jukebox, calendar, and RSS feed, will be embedded on the band’s Web site (www.benharper.net) and MySpace profile, where it can be copied and shared by their fans, allowing the band to reach new audiences and keep their fans constantly updated with the latest news, tour dates, song releases, and more.

“Sprout is bringing sophisticated content creation to the masses,” says Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO conferences. “Not only have they made Flash development simple and easy, but they also are integrating their authoring platform with leading Web content and distribution services in a very powerful way.”

“We’re rapidly expanding our content and distribution partner offerings and constantly adding templates and wizards to make Sprout Builder both more powerful and easy to use,” says Sprout CEO Carnet Williams. “Our vision is to redefine the way social media and even the Web itself is built by creating an authoring platform that anyone can use for any purpose. In fact, we’ve built a good chunk of our Web site using Sprout.”

Sprout is a free service and is currently in beta testing. Those interested in learning more or becoming a beta user should visit www.sproutbuilder.com.

About Sprout

Headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, Sprout is the premier authoring platform for quickly and easily building Living Content™. For more information, visit www.sproutbuilder.com.

About DEMO

Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products, and technologies. For more information, visit www.demo.com

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