Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

If you watched the lyndaCampus information video, or attended the Personalize your Learning with lynda.com Webinar, you know that you can choose your preferred video player for watching lynda content. If you’re not sure which player to use, keep reading.

There are four players available on lyndaCampus:  Flash, QuickTime Standard, QuickTime Custom, and Windows Media. You can choose a player (after you’ve logged in to lynda) by going to My Account and then Site Preferences. You’ll see a list of available players and their features. Just lick the radio button next to the player you want to use and click Update.  (more…)

Adobe Illustrator CS6 is an awesome tool for making vector graphics. It’s probably the vector creation software of choice for most graphic designers and other professionals who create graphics for a living. Like all Adobe products, it’s packed with features, and comes with a steep learning curve.  I learned how to use Illustrator at a rudimentary level in two Indiana University IT Training Workshops, “Illustrator CS6: The Basics,” and “Adobe CS6: Pen Tool Basics.”  Now that I’m somewhat comfortable with the software, I practice on my own. My skills are improving a little, but if I’m going to become really good at Illustrator, I have to seek out some more training resources. (See the post I wrote  for the Tips Blog about taking the skills you learn in a workshop to the next level).

There are a lot of Illustrator tutorials out there.  I’ll share some of them with you now.

1. Adobe Illustrator on Adobe TV. Learn the software from the source.
2. Check the Adobe Illustrator Blog for more tutorials and tips.
3. Vector Tuts+ has a lot of content including tutorials, articles, tips, and resources. Premium members can access features such as online courses and an ebook library.
4. Astute Graphics’ blog has a quite a few free tutorials, tips, and tricks.
5. Chris Spooner’s Spoon Graphics offers free Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials.  You can find more content on his Facebook  page too.
6. An excellent source for technology training is lynda.com. Most lynda content is available  to paying subscribers only, but if you’re serious about learning, it’s probably worth the expense. IU students, facutly, and staff get lynda for free!

I think those are enough resources to get you (and me) started. I’m collecting Illustrator tutorial resources on Pearltrees, check there once in a while to see if anything new shows up.

One of the best ways to teach people about something is to show it to them. If you’re teaching about software, and you don’t have the luxury of having all of your students seated in a classroom, make a video demo.  There are lots of products on the market that you can use to create video demos.  Here’s a link to a blog post that describes five of them.

I’ve used TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio for several years, and I like it a lot, but IU’s agreement with Adobe makes Captivate 6 the more attractive option because I can get it for free. Camtasia used to be the obvious choice for making full motion video recordings of your screen. That’s what Camtasia is designed to do, and it does it well. Full motion recording in previous versions of Captivate was not the greatest. Full motion is better in Captivate 6, not perfect, but better. By the way, Captivate 6 doesn’t refer to full motion recording as full motion. It’s called Video Demo mode. You can begin your project by choosing the Video Demo option, or choose Video Demo when it’s time to start recording your screen.  The interface changes a little when you start the project in this mode. You can learn more about it in this  Adobe TV video.  Skip to 02:06 on the timeline. (more…)

So you attended an IT Training workshop. Where do you go from here?

The Workshop Experience
We design IT Training Workshops  to teach you the essentials of a particular software program. We guide you trough a series of tasks to give you hands-on experience, and we provide an explanation of why certain tasks are done in certain ways. There is a whole lot of information crammed into that 3-hour slot. Unless you have a photographic memory, you’re not going to remember it all. Once you leave the classroom it’s up to you. You have to “use it, or lose it,” as they say.

What’s Next?
After the workshop, you have to ask yourself how proficient you  want to become with this software. If you don’t want to do anything beyond what we covered in the materials, you’re all set.  Just get to work on the task at hand and refer to the materials if needed. For many students, what they learned in those three hours is all they’ll ever need to know.
For those of you who want to complete tasks that are beyond the scope of the materials, or you want to become a true expert, you’ll have to take matters into your own hands. Here are some tips for taking your learning to the next level: (more…)

Adobe Captivate 6 is eLearning authoring software, and broadly speaking, eLearning is learning online or via some electronic device.  It’s a different experience than you would have sitting in a classroom and taking notes as a lecturer gives you information.  For some, the experience is better, and for others, it’s worse.  Whatever you think of it, it’s here, so why not get involved?  Here’s an  infographic  to give  you some insight about the trend in online education in the United States. It’s trending upward! Recently, IU announced a major new online learning initiative called IU Online.  Check out the press release to learn more.

So, back to Captivate 6. IU students, faculty, and staff can download it from IUware free of charge. You can’t beat that! Captivate 6 gives you features like:

• Rapid eLearning content development
• More effective collaboration
• Interactive eLearning experiences
• Rich multimedia to attract learners
• Easy quizzing
• Delivery virtually anywhere
• Scoring, tracking, and reporting

You’re itching to learn all about this cool tool aren’t you? Luckily, IT Training has a Captivate 6: The Basics workshop planned.  It’s an online workshop (imagine that), scheduled for Tuesday, December 4th from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. In the meantime, go ahead and download Captivate 6 and start playing around with it. You can also find Captivate 6 training on lynda.com.

If you’re an educator you may be called upon to create some online learning content, so learn how to do it and impress your boss.  If you’re a student you can surely use Captivate to put together some pretty nifty class projects. There’s something for everyone, so start learning today.

Captivate 6 opening screen

Watch this video to learn what you can expect at this year’s IT Training Conference.

You’re in class on the first day and the professor is going over the syllabus. There are readings, papers, quizzes; all of the usual stuff. She says that if you participate in class and turn in your assignments you’ll get a B.  Then she mentions the big end-of-semester project  that counts for 70 percent of your grade. If you do well on this, you’ll get an A. You hear this and say to youself, “I’d better get started on this right away!” Of course you do. You’re a go-getter.

You decide to make a list of things that would make your presentation stand out.

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I create videos, podcasts, and other digital material for delivery via the Web. I want my work to be visually and sonically interesting, but I’m not a professional designer or musician, and I don’t have lots of money to spend on assets from stock photo, video, and music services. My solution is the Creative Commons.

Founded in 2001, the Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables content creators to share their knowledge and creations through free, legal tools.  If you want others to be able to use your work only if they credit you with its creation, you can apply a license that states just that. There are licenses that give others the right to change your work and not give you credit, or change your work but state that the new work came from your original. You can disallow use of your work for commercial purposes or even dedicate your work to the public domain. Visit the Creative Commons website to learn about all of these options and others.

So, when I’m looking for background music for a podcast I can go to this page, http://search.creativecommons.org/ and run a search. When I find music I like, I add the music to my podcast and make sure I’m following the rules stated in the license.

The thing I love about the Creative Commons is that it helps make the Internet a place for openness and sharing; a place where everyone can participate. Their vision statement is this:  “…nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity. ”

I encourage you to take advantage of this wonderful resource.

Creative Commons licensed works will have a logo like one of these attached to them:

Creative Commons license buttons

I recently came across an IT Training Tips Blog post by Donna K. Jones entitled “Renaming Clip Art Images When Creating Triggers in PowerPoint 2007 (Or… Using the Selection Pane)“.

“What?” I said to myself, “You can do that?”

Well it turns out you can. In my several years of using PowerPoint I have never noticed this Selection Pane, but there it was right under Bring Forward and Send Backward in the Arrange group in the Format tab.

Back in the day when I was using PowerPoint to create animations, and then converting them into video with Camtasia Studio for my IT Help Podcast, I could really have used this great feature.

Now that I do know about the Selection Pane I figured I’d make a little tutorial video to let you guys in on the secret.

I created a slide for a pretend presentation. This presentation is about animals and their habitats, and in the talk I want to mention an animal, show a picture of it, and show a picture of the place where it lives. I found some clip art images of the animals and the locations in which they might be found and arranged them on a slide.

I’ll use the Selection Pane to help me keep track of my images. I can also use it to organize text boxes and shapes.  I can give them useful, recognizable names, instead of their default names (i.e., picture 22, oval 1, etc.).  I can change an object’s place in the stacking order.  If you have lots of objects on a slide, it’s sometimes tricky to do this just by right-clicking and choosing Send to Back or Bring to Front.

Using the Selection Pane should speed up your design process. Watch my video and learn how to locate, and then use this neat tool.

You Photoshop users probably know that you can move your windows and panels around so that everything is exactly where you want it to be.  Now when I was a Photoshop newbie, I knew it was possible to modify the workspace, and I knew how to move things around, but I wasn’t sure how to put things back.  Because I was intimidated, I decided to just leave everything where it was.

Here’s a little video tutorial for those of you who hesitate to take advantage of the workspace flexibility that Photoshop offers.

Click the image to watch.

Click image to watch tutorial.