Digital Web Guide

Here is something which I learned quite recent in connection with the designing of e-learning modules. Before reading down, you should be well aware that the e-learning tool which I am talking here about is Articulate Presenter, not Captivate, Camtasia, or anything sophisticated.   You know about the side bar view of a module published in Articulate. There you have the option to sort the topics into titles and subtitles. The main titles appear along with either numbers or triangular shaped bullets, which point to the right side when we are yet to reach at it (►), and point to down when we are at it (▼). The below picture will clarify my today’s topic of discussion. As you all know, for defining main titles, and sub titles of 2nd level, 3rd level, etc.,  we need to go to the slide properties, and prescribe in the Level tab, the preferred level number in the corresponding column of the titles. For example, if you want ‘Topic A’ as the main title, and ‘Topic B’ a...

I am starting with the assumption that all of you are well familiar with the E-learning software 'Articulate'. It is a very useful tool as far as E-learning is concerned, and we can say, it is almost impossible to create effective e-learning tutorials without the help of a software, like Articulate. For making tutorials, Articulate mostly depends on the Microsoft's PowerPoint. Well, why should I tell all these well known facts to educated and well-learned people like you? Ok, let me just share some creepy observation, which I happened to notice, while publishing a tutorial. When you publish something in Articulate, it is almost like your system has some hysteria or fever. It won't allow you to do other things normally, or even if we are able to do it, Articulate's publishing components will be influencing it like an epidemic. Last day, when I was publishing a module in Articulate, I tried to do just a normal copy paste activity. I opened a web page, copied a text,...

Do you know what did I use to do if I was asked at a stretch to perform a multitude of hard tasks within a short period of time at the work place? To tackle the initial turmoil, I would have sat still for some time, and when the emotional pressure slightly smoothens, I would just login to my instant messenger and would chat freely with someone, who was simply killing free time at his/her office sitting at somewhere in the world. Another method, which I practiced and found as a successful stress-buster was playing computer games. If you have card games or chess or even some comic fun games available in your PC, dealing with them also are proved as capable to kill the workplace pressure. Ok, so that was the introduction. And, this time, what I try to introduce as part of my PowerPoint Learning Series is another tricky method to ease the difficulty that you might have faced while creating PowerPoint based e-learning modules. How many times have you faced the necessity of changing an imag...

So, I am here again with another trick, which may be applicable while you polish your images with a creative touch for your elearning modules. In PowerPoint 2007, you can really mould an image in the format of many default shapes. You might have noticed an array of shapes you are able to draw in PowerPoint 2007 and in advanced versions. These shapes are shown in the Home Tab. Now, will you believe, if I say you can draw your images in any of these default shapes? And believe me, you will not need any advanced options like ‘picture or texture fill’ to do that. You can do it with a single click. It is as simple as giving specific default picture effects. The steps to do this are given below. 1. Insert your image to your PowerPoint slide. 2. Double Click on the image 3. From the Format Tab select 'Picture Shape' drop down menu. 4. You can see all the default PowerPoint shapes there. Click on the one in which you want your image get cut. 5. Now, you can see ...

Ok, so my experiments with MS Paint go on. This time I learned how to write for our e-learning modules with handwritten letters using a PENCIL. It is very simple, and I don’t think it needs a blog post to demonstrate how we are going to write with hand-written fonts in lead color. Anyway, let us first dig the internet to find a clean notebook paper. The following one will be suitable, I think. Open this image in your PowerPoint. Now open the MS Paint (Windows 7 version). In the brushes menu, among many artistic and creative brushes, you will find a ‘natural pencil’. Pick that one and start to ‘write’ on the white area. (Remember to choose black color and a 4px size.) Point to remember: Here, writing does not mean typing. You have to actually ‘draw’ the letters, sentence, paragraph or whatever you want to get written, using the pencil tool. - Select the written things with the select tool and copy it. - Go to your PowerPoint, where you have the image of the notebook sheet ...

The traditional methods of removing backgrounds of images in PowerPoint 2007 version have become obsolete now with the advent of the innovative background removal tool in the 2010 version. But since what the proverb reminds us is being late is better than being never’, I decided to post a small tip, using which we can make the background removal in 2007 version a little bit finer with the application of MS Paint. We know two methods of background removing in PowerPoint 2007. In the first method , we draw an outline of the main object in our image using freeform shape and fill the shape using the picture or texture fill option. In the second method , we draw outlines of the background areas of the image using free form tool, give same colour to all shapes, and after making the entire group into a PNG image remove the background portions using set transparaent colour option. But while using this second method, many of you might have found the light outline of the shapes as a disturbnace...

Let me share you a small tip which I learned during my first months of e-learning job. This one is regarding the fonts which we use to make our e-learning courses appealing. I know there are a lot of professional as well as artistic fonts available online to be used while designing your e-learning course. Of course, some fonts look exactly like the hand written letters or the chalk-drawn ones. Here, I want to share a simple method to create chalk-written letters (or images). Apart from PowerPoint, what I use additionally to create the letters is the MS Paint version available with Windows 7. You can use the image of a chalk board in PowerPoint seen as below. You can browse the image of a chalkboard from net or you can find one in the PowerPoint's clip arts section itself. If you don’t have the chalk-written fonts installed on your computer, try doing the steps which are described below. Open your MS Paint (Windows 7) and manage some blank white space. Select the Brushes from t...

Did you ever wonder about the difficulties of effectively instructing the tech illiterates on certain how-to-do’s? Even in the case of filling some online forms also, you might have come across people with trouble in grasping the ‘seemingly sophisticated’ procedures and steps. Then what about senior persons who are trying to learn a new thing, say a language? A teacher or a professor has certain limitations in this aspect. Despite of class room teaching, we need some advanced tools to plant ideas into the minds of the aforementioned group of learners. An approach that incorporates technology and creativity equally can do wonders in this new-generation method of learning. This new method of learning may generally be called elearning. Coming to the terminology, you might have noticed the spelling of the name given to this new learning system. Well, 'elearning' is a neologism, which is nowadays being commonly used by the techies around the globe. The word is derived from ‘electro...