The Tools I Use
On a recent live stream, I was asked about which tools I use to create my eLearning and video tutorials. I gave a partial answer during the live stream but I thought I would go a little more in-depth on that question here...
On a recent live stream, I was asked about which tools I use to create my eLearning and video tutorials. I gave a partial answer during the live stream but I thought I would go a little more in-depth on that question here.
Adobe Captivate
I think it's obvious that I use Adobe Captivate and almost always have the latest version. I do also keep the previous version installed on my main system. Up to and including presently I have always purchased a perpetual license for Adobe Captivate. I know that Adobe would prefer me to tell you to buy the subscription version but I always feel more comfortable knowing that regardless of what my current situation is, I can continue to run my Copy of Captivate indefinitely.
One thing that the viewers of my YouTube tutorials are often surprised to learn is that I also use Adobe Captivate to record my videos. I use the Video Demo feature to record the features that I’m demonstrating on another instance of Captivate that I run simultaneously.
Adobe Creative Cloud
Going back several years I purchased the Adobe eLearning Suite which is no longer available. The suite came with Adobe Captivate plus several key applications that became part of my workflow. The main applications from that suite that were important to me were Photoshop and Audition. I relied on those apps for years after upgrading to newer versions of Captivate. Until very recently, Photoshop CS5 was more than enough for my needs. A few years ago I became very serious about my photography and began purchasing copies of Lightroom. Eventually, I signed up for the Creative Cloud photography plan for about $10 month. This last fall there was some great pricing on the full Creative Cloud that I decided to take advantage of. It allowed me to get the latest version of all my applications for only a few dollars more than I was spending on the Photography plan and another third party service that I no longer felt was needed. This now allows me to have the latest version of several other applications which have proven beneficial as well.
Microsoft Office
It’s almost automatic that a PC user will have some version of Microsoft Office. I took advantage of some really good pricing on Office 2013 a few years ago and I haven’t felt the need to upgrade to Office 2016. Perhaps in a few years, I will be forced to but for right now 2013 is fine.
Snagit
I purchased Snagit 11 a number of years ago and I install this on each computer I have used since then. It is the defector standard for screen capture applications. In a pinch, I could get away without it but it’s annotation and markup tools are really nice and certainly easy to use.
PureText
I’m not even sure when I first became aware of PureText but PureText is a simple application that sits in your system tray. When you copy some text from various sources, in most cases you are also copying some text formatting as well. One click on the PureText icon in your system tray will strip out any formatting before you paste it into your destination application, which for me is typically Adobe Captivate. Captivate doesn’t always play well with formatting, especially from Microsoft Word, so this is a nice feature to have at my disposal. Puretext can be downloaded for free from stevemiller.net.
FileZilla
At some point, I usually need to upload my published eLearning projects to a web server. For me, there is nothing I need from a file transfer protocol (FTP) application that FileZilla cannot provide. Like PureText, FileZilla is completely free. In this case, FileZilla is open source. At present, it falls under the GNU General Public License so there are no ads embedded in the application and unless you get the software from a disreputable source there is no bundled crapware that comes along with it. It’s a great choice for FTP software.
About Me
I've combined my passion for design, usic and photography; with my desire to teach, to become a highly sought after Instructional Designer, Developer, facilitator. If you need help building your next eLearning project, consider hiring me. I create learning solutions that are not only visually appealing, but effective at achieving not only the student's goals, but the organization's business goals as well.
Get Microsoft Office For Practically Free
I've spoken about this before but with the new version of Office released I thought I would remind everyone about the Microsoft Office Home Use Program. If you haven't heard of it before you might be wondering why Microsoft would essentially give away one of their most important software packages for next to nothing. Well, I think it comes down to training. From Microsoft's perspective the more people who know how to use Office, the more people and organizations will purchase the software. The benefit to an organization is clear. If their employees are using Office at home, they require less training on Office at work. It's a pretty good benefit.
Anyway, you can find out if your workplace offers the Home Use Program from the following site:
Make the Windows Start Screen More Like the Start Menu
I’ve figured out a way to make the Windows 8 Start screen more like the traditional Windows Start menu. By adding shortcuts to the typical items you would find such as My Computer, or your User folder you can easily access them without too much difficulty.
In addition, I added shortcuts to the power options used for restart and shutdown, thanks to an article I found on How-to Geek. Just add shortcuts to the following commands:
Shutdown Computer
Shutdown.exe -s -t 00
Restart Computer
Shutdown.exe -r -t 00
You can use alternate icons by going to the properties window of these new shortcuts and selecting a new icon such as I have in the screenshot above.
Windows 8 Again
I've been using Windows 8 again. I know, I must be a glutton for punishment, but I really want to try and make a go of it.
I was amazed today when I had to Google how to log off of my user account. They really have “reimagined” Windows. Logging off was tied to shutting down and restarting, however now to log off you click on the tile that represents you as a user in the upper right corner of the Start screen. A drop down appears with the options for Change account picture, Lock and Sign out.
Is this all a cruel prank by Steven Sinofsky on the eve of his departure from Microsoft?
Offer Office 2013 Training To Your Employees Right Now
For those of you who are not aware, Microsoft provides the Office suite of products available to employees of corporations who subscribe to Microsoft’s volume license agreements. The idea is that if you make the software available to employees for a really great price for their home PCs, they will learn how to use the software at home on their own time. This keeps the cost of training for an organization low, and keeps the workforce up to date on the latest software. This is a really good example of informal learning.
I was listening to one of my favourite tech podcasts, Windows Weekly, when I heard mention that the Home Use Program for Office 2013 was already available. I checked my company’s HUP website and sure enough, Office 2013 was available to purchase. I believe in the United States it sells through this program for $10; In Canada it sells for $11.
If you are responsible for Office training in your organization, check with your IT department if you have access to this great program. It’s a excellent way to get employees comfortable with the newest office software.
Adobe Software for Free!
Of course now I would answer a little differently. It seems that Adobe has decided to make the Creative Suite CS2 software all freely available to download. Creative Suite is a bundle of some of Adobe’s popular software, which includes, Adobe Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro and more. Perhaps this is a mistake, perhaps not. I personally would download this software and copy down the posted serial numbers as soon as possible, just in case. You can find all this software bundled together, or available to download separately from here:
Update
So it seems that Adobe have added the following comment to this page since I published my blog post:
Adobe has disabled the activation server for CS2 products, including Acrobat 7, because of a technical issue. These products were released more than seven years ago, do not run on many modern operating systems, and are no longer supported.
Adobe strongly advises against running unsupported and outdated software. The serial numbers below should only be used by customers who legitimately purchased CS2 or Acrobat 7 and need to maintain their current use of these products.
Time Machine for Windows
I remember when Time Machine for Apple’s Mac OS X was announced. It was heralded as an extraordinary accomplishment in computer technology. Turns out Windows has had a similar feature called ‘Previous Versions’ since about 2003 that was originally available in their server line of operating systems and has quietly made it’s way into the consumer line of operating systems such as Windows 7. Nobody knows about this feature as it’s kind of buried in the operating system’s features and not as flashy as Time Machine for Mac OS X.
To access it, you simply right click on the file you would like to revert to a previous version and click on properties. Select the Previous Versions tab to see any previous versions that exist for that file. You may need to turn this feature on, which you can do by navigating through the link on this tab entitled How do I use previous versions?
The reason I am mentioning this here is the usefulness of this feature when developing materials for training. Having the Previous Versions feature turned on, allows to recall versions that you may have written over with new material. It happens, from time to time, that your stake holders may request you changing a document back to the way it was last week. If you haven’t saved that version as a separate document, using Previous Versions in Windows could help you get that information back.