Tuesday, May 24, 2011

An image resource you might not have considered!


I hesitate to share this little nugget of information in fear of over-exposure and the slight risk that exposing it may eliminate it as a resource, but I'm a bit of a risk taker by nature, so what the heck!

If you're not familiar with a little website called Icon Archive (iconarchive.com) you should put it on your radar immediately. This site has a ton of very cool and useful images.

Now simply pointing you to a site with cool images doesn't really warrant my big set up in the first paragraph does it? The real gem here is that although these icons are available for a price, I have been successful with legitimately acquiring some of the images royalty free. How you ask? Here's the scoop.

Many of the images on this site state that they are free for 'non-commercial' use. Now through a little research it turns out that there are varying opinions on the exact definition of 'non-commercial'. One said definition stated that as long as the user wasn't profiting from the usage of the images then it could be categorized as 'non-commercial'. Well, since most of the elearning I create is for internal employees, and we don't charge our employees to take our courses, I'm in compliance and free to use the images...right?

Now I wasn't totally convinced and still didn't feel totally confident using the images, so I went into sleuth mode and took it a step further. I emailed the creator of a particular icon set I was eye-balling and asked them if using their images in my e-learning courses for internal employees would violate the non-commercial tag, and I was very pleased when the creator emailed me back advising I could use their images in my e-learning courses free of charge. BINGO! (by the way, those blue emoticons in this post happen to be some I acquired.. I have 80 of these little dudes, all with different expressions).

So there you have it. Add iconarchive.com to your list of image resources, but I suggest you shoot over a quick email to the creator (which is easily identifiable on the site) and garner their green light first,


Saturday, May 21, 2011

Need a Free PowerPoint Course Template? Come And Get It!

I created this gray themed template in PowerPoint some time ago, and stumbled across it while cleaning up my archives recently. I used this to create two e-learning courses and my clients were happy as clams. (exactly how happy is a clam anyway?). (click here to download the template)

It has a neutral gray glossy theme. I was teaching myself how to make glossy effects in Photoshop and as a result created this. If you're interested I have a post available on how to create a glossy effect in Photoshop, so feel free to check it out.



I created it for use in Articulate, however it should work just fine in any PowerPoint to e-learning program (i.e. Snap!). Enjoy, and as always feel free to add comments and let me know what you think.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

9 Things You Must Avoid in Your Courses.


I was recently reviewing an elearning course (per the authors request) and some of things I saw is what inspired this post. Now I'll allow some latitude because the author only develops part-time and is somewhat of a newbee, but some of things I witnessed defied what I consider basic common sense. So without further ado I present to you 9 things that should be avoided in your e-learning course. Simply don't do these things and your e-learning will suck much less. (By the way, the course I was reviewing violated 8 of these 9 things).

Notice how I only have 9 things? Everybody does a top 10, but how often do you see a Top 9? Just me thinking out of the box a little (see number three below).