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.
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.
