Today, I downloaded a trial copy of Camtasia studio.  Not that I need another program on my computer, but I just wanted to see if it was any different than Captivate.  All I can say is…WOW!

Not only was it super easy to learn and use, but the first video I created was much more interesting than anything I’ve made in the past 2 years.  Not only that, but I made it in about 1/2 the time it normally takes me with Captivate. 

I first discovered TechSmith (the company behind the simple genius of Camtasia) when I learned about Jing a little over a year ago.  I think the company is very creative in a fun kind of way.  I’m not sure what made me think to try Camtasia after all this time, but boy am I glad I did! 

While I do like all of the Adobe products that I have used, I have to say that I prefer using Camtasia over Captivate for creating Rapid eLearning.  It was easier to learn and use, enabled me to create much more interesting screencasts, and it’s a lot less expensive than its counterpart. 

If you find yourself in the position of having to crank out short eLearning videos as often as I do, I suggest you proceed immediately to the TechSmith website and download the free trial version.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. 

The video I created today has some proprietary information, but I’ll create a more generic one soon and upload it so you can get a look at what you can do with Camtasia.  With a combination of the two, there’s no limit to what you can create for training.  I’m sure there are lots of other uses for the programs as well, but I can’t think of one right now.  My creative brain is spent for the day!

Happy screencasting!

Jeri

Begin with the end in mind

What do you want your learners to walk away with at the end of the session?  What should they be able to accomplish when the session is complete?  Asking this question can help make sure all relevant content is included.  It also helps you keep your session clutter-free.  By clutter-free, I mean that you don’t try to teach concepts that, while important in the long run, may not matter for the purpose of this particular session.

Don’t forget creativity

In order to keep your learner’s interest level high throughout the session, add as much creativity as you can.  Keep the session fun and the learner will be more engaged and retention will be higher.

Don’t try to do it all

Don’t try to teach every aspect of a topic in a single eLearning session – you won’t have their attention for that long, regardless of how much creativity you add.  If you must include a laundry list of topics in a single session, make navigation such that more advanced learners can skip sections and learners new to the topic can stop the session to absorb what they’ve learned and easily pick back up where they left off at a later time.

Make sure you are looking at the big picture of your overall project before you begin development.  Story-board, enlist creative types as well as subject matter experts, ask others to review your work throughout the process, and always keep the end result in mind.

I’ll be posting more on tools, tips and techniques for eLearning development, as well as share some of the eLearning sessions I have developed in the near future. 

Happy creating!

Jeri

It’s okay to have weaknesses.  We all have them.  The question is whether or not you recognize them or are willing to admit to them.  By recognizing your weaknesses and keeping them top of mind, you can make adjustments to your work style to prevent them from causing problems. 

Theoretically, the person I sent the document to for approval would have caught my error and I would have made the correction before sending it off for production.  There are two problems with this theory from my perspective.  First, the person to whom the document was sent was my supervisor (of sorts) and a supervisor is the last person I want to catch my mistakes. Second, by not keeping my propensity to miss details in mind I may not have given him enough information for the review process.  If those for whom I manage projects are used to receiving good work product – which I go to great pains to assure – they may miss minor errors during the review process.

In order to continue to produce good work product, I need to come up with techniques to minimize errors.  Either by making sure I double and triple-check for mistakes, or by having a trusted co-worker or direct report review my work product before submitting it – making sure they know what they’re looking for.

If you are an employer or supervisor, use evaluations or regular one-on-one meetings with your direct reports to help them understand the importance of identifying their work related weaknesses in order to improve their performance.  Brainstorm to help them come up with ways to minimize risk.

Bottom line, don’t deny your weaknesses.  Identify them, acknowledge them, understand the specific problems and establish a process to reduce potential problems. Weakness doesn’t have to be obvious to employers as long as they’re obvious to you!

There is also a wealth of free programs offered by the software giant, and some really cool educational opportunities for kids, business workers, developers, and almost everyone in between.  I can’t wait to get my younger sons started at the Kid’s Corner, a Beginner Developer Learning Center; my 18-year-old daughter will enjoy learning at Dreamspark; and I’m excited to start learning development at Ramp Up, and design at .toolbox. (I know, total nerd, right?)  When school starts back, I’m going to have fun helping my boys by creating Flashcards and Math Worksheets.

There are several lab communities where Microsoft employees are developing some pretty cool projects.  Many are available for free download, some have been retired, and you can get a look into the future of development.  Education Labs develop projects related to education (such as the Flashcards and Math Worksheets tools mentioned above), Office Labs develop projects for use with the Microsoft Office products. One really fun project at the Office Labs website is Ribbon Hero.  Ribbon Hero is a game that is also a training tool for Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.  Users score points and compete against their friends and co-workers.  For users trying to learn where all of the commands are located on the new Office 2007 Ribbon, you can download Search Commands.  Seadragon and Photosynth are 2 photo services you can access, compliments of Live Labs.

Windows Live gives you an online workspace with tons of features.  (Watch for a blog post soon discussing all of the features offered at Windows Live.) We’ve been using Windows Family Safety to filter our boys’ web browsing, and Microsoft Security Essentials (previously One Care) to protect our computers from viruses and spyware for a couple of years now.

Of course, you will also find lots of free clip art, templates, tutorials, and ideas for using Microsoft Office Products and Windows 7 at their respective websites.  If you really want to get into the minds of the developers and hear about what’s on the horizon, visit the Windows Team Blogs and Office Team Blogs.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the great resources, training, information, ideas, and tools available.  As I said, I spent 3 hours surfing the various worlds of Microsoft and I was still finding more cool stuff!  Oh yeah, did I mention Mouse Mischief? Check it out – it’s a great toy for educators!

I’m sure you’ll see more follow up posts with more freebies that I’ve found.  Until then…happy downloading!

Jeri

PS – There are plenty of Microsoft ‘haters’ out there.  We all know there are open-source alternatives (Linux, Ubuntu), with devoted followers. Please spare us your rants and only comment if you have something constructive to add to the conversation. Thanks!! 

“Y” as in “Why?”  Why the heck is this person still working here? 

Perhaps this is what your supervisor is thinking about you.  Perhaps it is a thought some (or all) of your co-workers have about you.  Just because you haven’t been fired (or laid off) yet, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.  Frankly, I’m shocked at some of the people who still have jobs.  In this day of an abundance of talented, out of work individuals, why are some employers still putting up with mediocrity?

I understand that the economic situation we’ve been going through has been rough on many, if not most, of us.  I don’t wish unemployment on anyone.  But something good should come of the current unemployment situation.  You’ve always got to look for that silver lining!  The good is that we should now be seeing an abundance of highly skilled, highly motivated employees with great attitudes within our organizations and the companies with which we do business. 

These are characteristics that every employee should possess, and characteristics every employer should insist on.  No compromise.  A company is defined, in large part, by its people.  People define themselves, in large part, by their job.  How are you defining yourself?

Highly Skilled

With so many people looking for a job and companies reducing their workforce by leaps and bounds, employers can hand-pick those that keep their jobs or get hired.  Employees who are already good at what they do, who stay on top of the latest trends and technologies related to their job and their industry, and who contribute to the bottom line of the company, will be the ones who keep their jobs.  Those who do a marginal job, don’t learn new skills (whether they are told to do so or not), and just work to “get through the day,” will be the ones that are shown to the nearest exit. 

How are your skills?  Are you the ‘go to’ person for everyone at your office when they need to figure out how to do something?  Do you figure out new ways to accomplish tasks and increase efficiency?  One result of the current climate – good for the employer, bad for the employee – is that businesses are learning to survive by doing more with less.  That means employees have more to do, often without the benefit of a pay increase.  A new business model is being created, so when the economy turns around, your situation won’t necessarily change.  If you aren’t really good at what you do, you’ll have a hard time keeping up and your employer will be hard-pressed to find a reason to keep you on the payroll.

Highly Motivated

Do you come to work every day dragging in, pour a cup of coffee, and set about just doing ‘your job’? Or do you walk in the door already thinking about all you plan to accomplish?  If employees are required to take on more and more responsibility, it takes someone capable of pushing and motivating themselves to accomplish as much as possible.  This takes strong skills, it takes working as efficiently as possible, and it takes getting (and keeping) yourself motivated.

Highly motivated individuals set goals for themselves and always do the best job they can, regardless of the issues they face – not enough money, added responsibilities, a supervisor who doesn’t seem to appreciate their value, and so on.  These individuals also tend to take on additional responsibilities without being asked and are quick to help co-workers. 

Highly motivated individuals are constantly looking to learn new skills and gain knowledge any way, and anywhere, they can.  They seek to learn from every situation, every encounter, at every opportunity.

Great Attitude

Motivation and attitude tend to go hand-in-hand.  But sometimes people are motivated every where but at the office and it shows in their attitude and work ethic.  People with a great attitude are great for business!  They interact well with customers (both internal and external) as well as co-workers.  Rarely do individuals with great attitudes gossip or contribute to low morale, on the contrary, they set a good example for others and help lift morale.  These people make you think they love their job and are happy to help no matter the request.

Have you ever asked someone to help you on a project and they huffed and puffed and grumbled the entire time you were explaining it to them?  Is that the kind of person you want to work with?  Can you trust that they’ll do a good job on a project that will have your name on it?  Have you ever asked someone to help you figure out how to do something and they act angry or disgusted because you don’t already know how to do it?  Is that a person you’ll ever go to for knowledge sharing again? 

I am more shocked to encounter a person with a poor attitude at companies I do business with, than I am when I encounter a person who is less than highly skilled.  When choosing a company with which I will do business, I am more swayed by my interactions with their employees than any other aspect of the business transaction.  The best way for a company to compete in this economy is in the customer service arena and employees who have a bad attitude don’t contribute to the competition.  If you work in a position with no outside interaction, don’t think for one minute that you don’t still need to possess great customer service skills.  You interact with customers every day.  Your customers, at the very least, are your boss and co-workers. 

Technology and the economy are changing the way we do business – the old normal isn’t normal any more.  The person with an, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, I think I know my job,” attitude, will find that they can’t compete in the job market should their current employer decide their lack of new technology skills, lack of motivation, and poor attitude are no longer acceptable.

“Y” as in “Why?” or “Y” as in “Yes!”?

It’s time to reevaluate the kind of employee you are – or the kind of employees you allow to interact with your customers or influence the rest of your organization.  Decide if you need to make some adjustments.  The characteristics discussed here should be non-negotiable, for yourself and for those with which you choose to associate. 

Everyone has the ability to acquire new skills, that’s the easiest adjustment to make.  Seek knowledge and you will find it in the most amazing places. 

Changing your attitude is simple, if not necessarily easy.  You simply have to choose the attitude you will adopt on any given day, in any given situation. 

Becoming more of a self-motivator is probably the most difficult change to make.  If you never learned how to motivate yourself, then this will likely be your biggest struggle.  The best advice I can give is the same advice you’ve heard on countless Nike commercials…”Just Do It.”

I believe that challenging times are necessary for growth.  When we stretch ourselves during these times we become even more effective trainers.  Some of the most important characteristics of a good trainer are precisely the ones that help us to shine in challenging times.  And a good bag of tricks won’t hurt!  It is my intention to share with you some great tools, tips and ideas in this series of posts.  Add the ones you like to your bag of tricks and ignore the rest.  You can access all of the posts as they become available by clicking the Training link at the top of the page, or click the Training Toolbox tag at the bottom of this post.

The tips and tricks alone won’t get you through the challenges you are and will face, but they will help.  The best advice I can give is to stay flexible, keep a positive, enthusiastic attitude, find innovative ways to deliver more training to more people in less time, and maintain high visibility in your organization, you will come out on the other side stronger and more valuable to your organization that ever.  Many of the tips, tricks and tools I will share with you will help in the area of innovation, I’ll throw in some posts to help you stay positive and motivated, but the rest is up to you.

Author’s Note: I haven’t tested each and every tool that I will be sharing with you, but I will indicate those that I have or have not used personally.  If you see a post about a tool that you have used, please comment and let everyone know your experience with it.

Evernote Tip #1: Email

I get LOTS of email newsletters – most of which I subscribe to and really want to read.  Some of them have great ideas I want to save, some I don’t have time to read right away so I usually end up moving them to my ‘to read’ folder of my Inbox.  Using Evernote, email newsletters that I want to read later, in their entirety, I can email directly to my Evernote notebook and delete them from Outlook. 

Once the newsletter arrives in my notebook, I add a tag and it’s categorized so that when I’m ready to research, read, or learn about a specific topic – organization ideas, for instance – I click on my ‘Organization’ tag and there it is!

If you’ve set up your Evernote account, you can find your Evernote email address in the web version by clicking on the Settings link at the top of the page.  Scroll down to the bottom of the window and you’ll see the section titled ‘Emailing to Evernote.’  By the way, if you start receiving spam to your Evernote email address, you can click the Reset incoming email link.

P.S. I’m having so much fun with Evernote today, it loooks like I’m going to have to upgrade to the Premium edition!

I tell you all of this to give you a sense of the variety and volume of information I must deal with on a daily basis.  Keeping track of what I’m working on, what I want to work on, training that is in development or needs to be developed, scheduled training sessions, and information resources.  I have about 10 notebooks going at any given time with notes, to do lists, ideas, resources, etc. and I can never find what I’m looking for.

Enter Evernote.  Evernote is a great tool to help me easily access all of my different sources of information.  It’s an electronic notebook that I can use on any device.  I can open Evernote from my desktop computer at the office and find a web scrap I grabbed from my laptop at home last week.  I can read notes I took at work from my Blackberry.

Everything that is added to my Evernote notebook is completely searchable.  I can add tags to make finding things even easier.  Evernote lets me take notes, clip web pages, grab a screen shot, upload pictures from my Blackberry, create to do lists, record audio, and upload scanned handwritten notes.  All captures are processed and indexed making them automatically searchable.  It can recognize handwriting in scanned notes as well as text and handwriting in images.  You can even send useful Tweets directly to your Evernote account from within Twitter!  How awesome is that for staying organized?

The software comes in both free and premium editions.  With the free edition you are limited to 40MB in monthly upload allowance and can only synchronize images, audio, ink and PDF files.  With the Premium edition you get 500MB for monthly upload allowance, have more versatility in file types allowed (any file type and synchronization of all file types), and have additional security with and additional layer of protection with SSL encryption (though even the free version has great security).  In addition, the Premium edition gives you the ability to let other users edit your notes, making it a powerful collaboration tool.  The premium version only costs $5/month or $45/year.  But even with the free version you’ve got a powerful organization tool!

People are finding all kinds of ways to use Evernote.  Some examples, found on the Evernote Blog, include using Evernote for house hunting, to research your next big appliance purchase, to run a restaurant, to organize a busy family life, as a small business tool, as a recipe keeper, as a trip planner, as a wedding planner, to keep track of favorite places, and so much more.

So, if your internal brain is running out of space, set up an account at Evernote and start using your external brain!

If you have read any of my past posts, you may know that I recently overhauled a friend’s Blogger site so that it was easier to navigate and so that she could sell her artwork.  As I was working through the process, trying to figure out how to customize the theme, set up the PayPal buttons and organize the posts, I realized that there were probably others who would like to do the same thing.  I found very little assistance in the Blogger FAQs or anywhere else for that matter.  So I’ve decided to offer a class to teach others how to do these tasks.

The class will cover:

• Account Setup.  I discuss setting up your Blogger and PayPal accounts, and how to get started with your blog-store.
• The basics of customizing a Blogger Theme.  I’ll take one Blogger theme and tell you exactly how to customize certain elements of that them to make it more navigable, less “common”, and more personalized.
• Posting to your blog-store.  I’ll show you how to post, the not-so-basics of working with images and laying out your posts.
• Creating PayPal buttons.  I’ll show you how to create a custom PayPal button and add it to your products.

The class will be held online and will span a 5 week period.  Each week there will be a webinar that will last approximately 1 hour. Participants will be given homework assignments that I will review and comment on prior to the next session.  We’ll have an online discussion area where you can post questions to me and have private online discussions with other registered students and I’ll post additional training resources and material that you can use to help you through additional topics related to the class.

The first 5-week offering of this class is free, enrollment is limited to 10 participants.  If you are interested in registering, send an email to me at jerisires [at] gmail [dot] com*.

Registration deadline is February 25th.

Class schedule is as follows:

• Session One: Account Setup –  March 4th; 7:30 PM EST
• Session Two: Customize a Blogger Theme, Part I – March 11th; 7:30 PM EST
• Session Three: Customize a Blogger Theme, Part II – March 18th; 7:30 PM EST
• Session Four: Posting – March 25th; 7:30 PM EST
• Session Five: Shopping Cart Buttons – April 1st; 7:30 PM EST

*for the email address, convert [at] to @; convert [dot] to .

Anyway, back to the “for Dummies” series.  The self-deprecating side of me says, “If the shoe fits…”, but the proud side of me says, “Hey, I’m no dummy!”.  But then there’s the cutesy-title-loving part of me who loves the Dummies titles.  

I know that folks interested in my materials are all smart people who don’t know much about the given topics, but somehow I don’t see naming the series for smart people who don’t know much about this topic.  Just doesn’t flow off the tongue very well (nor is it even remotely “cute”). 

So maybe I’m not really a “dummy” but I do like the book titles.  I admit it.  Maybe I could write a for stupid people series, or for self-deprecating people. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll give up the idea of trying to come up with a cutesy title.  Nah.  That would mean I could stop spending time thinking about a title and actually create the materials!  Give me a sec, I’ll come up with something.

Jeri