With the latest release of EZ LCMS, our entire system has been redesigned with mobile devices in mind. We went to great lengths to upgrade our Learning Management System in a way that it is more interactive and visual than ever, using only “Apple-Device compatible” technologies.

What does this mean for our customers? This means that every function from the actual construction of online course materials, to student delivery, to interactive chart-based reporting all functions identically on a computer and a tablet or Smartphone, including the iPhone and iPad.

Not only will your students be able to complete their training on an iPad, but you will also be able to create an online course using our built in course authoring capabilities on the iPad as well.

EZ LCMS is the first system that we are aware of that allows you to create, deliver and track e-learning content on the iPad, without the need for a PC at any stage of the process.

While many LMS developers are struggling with a means to simply get their content DELIVERED on the iPad, at EZ LCMS we have create a system where students, managers, instructors and administrators can perform all of their necessary training tasks on the Apple Mobile Platform as well.

This is just another example of our continued commitment to maintain the most affordable, easy to use and technologically relevant Learning Management System available.

Learn more at www.ezlcms.com.

Years ago, the process of creating a video was itself, a complicated, time consuming task. Training developers would not settle for poor quality video productions. Training developers using video in their products years ago would spend countless hours and dollars trying to produce Hollywood quality training productions to teach their tasks.

YouTube has quickly changed all of that. Using our “Tire Changing” example, a professional training development company may spend $20,000.00 or $30,000.00 or more to produce a professional quality tire changing video with professional actors, narrators, lighting equipment and video camera equipment. And some other person at “Bob’s used tires” may set his cell phone on a work bench and record himself changing a tire, explaining the process along the way in a thick southern drawl. These videos could both be posted to YouTube, and Bob’s video may well out-pace the professional video.

How could that be? Because content is king. YouTube has created an environment where productions values are almost unimportant. More importantly, web-surfers have become accustomed to watching lower quality videos, and being quite satisfied with them, as long as they provide the information that they are looking for. When a user searches YouTube for “Hoe to change a tire”, they are looking for the clip that will explain the process the best, not the clip that looks the best.

So what does this mean to those of us producing training? It means that we can spend less time and focus on productions values, and more time on producing quality content, something we generally prefer to do anyway.

In our Learning Management System, EZ LCMS, you can create entire courses made up of YouTube videos. Our system allows you to very easily paste in YouTube video links and assemble them together into logical course structures. You can even add quizzes, tests and surveys to your course however you would like. Give it a try free.

This system uses HTML5 and javascript to produce rich-media content without need to install anything on your computer. You project is fully maintained in the cloud, and can be accessed from anywhere for development and delivery. Multiple developers may collaborate online within the system to produce one or more courses and tests that are engaging, educational and mobile compatible.

The development capabilities built into EZ LCMS also allow you to create quiz and test questions that are scored, and tracked all the way down to the way in which a particular student answers a specific question.

Theses development capabilities are just the latest innovation from the EZ LCMS Learning Management System.

For example, Todd Scott Bales from the “Thomas Kinkade Company”, the international organization established to distribute the works of the artist Thomas Kinkade, had this to say:

“The Thomas Kinkade Training & Education Group utilizes EZ LCMS to push quizzes and courses to it’s galleries around the world. Having done the research before signing on with EZ LCMS, we found that for the cost and for the ease of use, there was no other web-based product that offered such a quick return for such a reasonable price. We’ve recommended their services to several others in the training industry.”

On rapid development and delivery, Bruce Warner, the Director of Content & Quality Management at the Training Modernization Group had this to say:

“EZ LCMS has helped TMG respond rapidly to our customer’s changing needs. In response to an emergency situation, using EZ LCMS, we were able to create a course and distribute it to over 700 users in diverse locations, all within a matter of weeks. We are using EZ LCMS to develop multiple professional multimedia courses for many different customers, and we love the fact that we can develop, deliver and track our courses all from the same system. We plan to use EZ LCMS as our primary courseware development and delivery platform for years to come.”

To read more about what our customers have to say, check out our testimonials page.

The process of branding is extremely easy. You simply upload images of the proper size, and enter you own custom log-in and welcome message and submit.

In EZ LCMS, you can create multiple brands for the same organization. This means that you can add multiple different “looks” to the same system. So for example, if you have three primary customers that you provide training to through EZ LCMS, you can set up three different “Brands” to match their website design etc.

Each separate brand gets a unique log-in page, which is what determines which brand the user will see. A user that logs in through the “Brand A” log-in page will see a system that looks like “Brand A”. A user who logs in through a different branded log in page will see a different looking system.

This gives you as the administrator a way to provide a learning portal that is customized to your specific user’s needs, even if you are trying to appeal to more than one user group.

The Multiple Branding feature of EZ LCMS is another feature that sets it apart from other Learning Management Systems, and gives you the ability to do more with your training platform.
Learn more about branding by watching this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBhLmk8C4sU or at http://www.ezlcms.com .

In case you have not heard of Moodle, it is an “Open Source” Learning Management System. In many people’s minds, open source is Synonymous with Free. However, in this case, that could not be further from the truth. There is a long list of expenses that go into installing, implementing and maintaining any type of web-based application, and the licensing fee (that Moodle does not charge) is usually a very small part of that.

The table below will illustrate some of the costs of implementing an EZ LCMS Learning Management System account, versus the costs of implementing Moodle. These numbers are estimates of course, and could be larger or smaller depending on your situation.

As they say “The Proof is in the Pudding”. In this case our “Pudding” is the fact that a significant number of our current, happy EZ LCMS customer are people who have recently attempted to implement Moodle, and now know the true value of the “Free” Learning Management System. Almost on a weekly basis, we are told by our customers that they once went down the “Moodle is free” path and are so happy to now have EZ LCMS, which is fully supported, and much more affordable and cost-effective than that “Free” solution.

Don’t get us wrong. Moodle is a well respected Learning Management Platform and a viable option in some situations. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that it is “Free” (like so many others have).

Give EZ LCMS a try for Free at http://www.ezlcms.com/index.php/free-trial/

For example, many users are turning to Google Docs to do spreadsheets online, instead of using MS Excel. There are no source files to keep track of, and no software to install. Remember emailing yourself an excel file so you could work on it from home, and then emailing it back to yourself at the office the next day? With cloud-based applications, there is no need for such tasks. Just log in, and there is all of your “stuff” right in front of you, no matter where you are.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? So in order to allow for the creation of e-learning content in “the cloud”, many online training development software providers are scrambling to figure out how to re-engineer their development systems and make them “cloud-based”.

But here’s the really exciting part. At EZ LCMS, we have been doing this all along! From day one, EZ LCMS has included (for free, by the way) an online courseware development system that allowed users build e-learning content in an online, collaborative form-based development system.  For years our users have been able to upload media and materials, and create interactive courseware including quizzes and tests, from any computer with a web-browser, and time, 24-7.

We are not trying to pull an “Al Gore”, and imply that we invented Cloud computing by any means. We have just known all along that an online development system that that makes course files accessible by multiple people at once, from anywhere, was the most convenient, effective means of e-learning content development.

So while many vendors will soon be releasing new, untested, experimental cloud-based versions of their development applications, EZ LCMS already has a tried-and-true cloud-based development suite that has been used effectively by hundreds of organizations for many years. I guess you could say that our “Cloud” is a bit more mature than most.

As always, feel free to try it out for FREE at http://www.ezlcms.com/.

If you think about it, there are really a lot of reasons to use PowerPoint:

• Its very easy to use
• Most people already know how to use it, and if you don’t, there are countless hours of free instructions available online.
• Most organizations already have training content in PowerPoint that has been used for years and is user-tested and refined already.
• PowerPoint is an established force. Its not going anywhere, and its no “new kid on the block”

At EZ LCMS, as you know, we believe in keeping it simple. Anytime you can use training content that you already have in place, with some fairly simple modifications to get a training product fits the bill, we say go for it.

There are a large number of tools that will allow to convert a PowerPoint course into an elearning course. We offer one, and best of all, it’s FREE!. Its called the Adaptive Course Authoring PowerPoint Plug-in, and you can learn more about it here.