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I am a multimedia specialist and have also been developing eLearning using Adobe Authorware, Flash and Captivate for five years. I am excited to see how the upcoming release of Flash Catalyst could also be used for eLearning projects.

I am writing you to make a request that Adobe consider creating a new SCORM packager program for Flash SWF files. With the growing list of applications, like Flash Catalyst, with the capability to publish to Flash format, I think it would make more sense to use a single program to package any Flash file (or a group of Flash files) to SCORM instead of having each program do the packaging separately. Adobe could concentrate its efforts on one solid SCORM program, and would not need to have multiple programs doing SCORM exports that cannot easily be used together. This would also allow any program that can export to Flash to be used for eLearning. Pre-existing Flash files could also be packaged using the new program, without having to re-create them. SCORM and Flash are so widely used in the eLearning industry, and both contribute to the power of its interoperability, it would be a great benefit to the industry for Adobe to combine them in this way.

The packager could be similar to the Authorware 7 SCORM packager that I believe Andrew Chemey (AEC Consulting) had developed for Macromedia a few years back. (Andrew also created the SCORM export function of Captivate.) Features of the new packager could include reading specific SCORM variables in the Flash movies to track user progress and scoring, using custom variables in the Flash movies for other functionality, building a customizable table of contents consisting of multiple Flash movies, a metadata editor, etc.

There may be tools out there that currently do this, but I have yet to find one that integrates perfectly with Flash (it would help if they were made by the same company), is as easy to use as the Authorware SCORM packager was, and does not require a lot of complex programming.

Thanks for listening!
Jen Pearce