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February 1, 2003
Web Tutorials
By Carol Holzberg
Looking for an opportunity to learn more about your favorite software? Don't want to spend big bucks to do it? No problem! With an Internet connection, you can work through interactive tutorials and courses at no charge. Take your pick and become application savvy!
Online Classes - Learning Center
Sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, these instructor-led online courses are free, taught by experts, and offered at a variety of levels. The courses are designed to help busy career people learn the new technologies. Learners progress at their own speed and at times convenient for them. There are courses on Excel, PageMaker, desktop publishing, HTML programming, Web site construction, Microsoft Word, and even business etiquette. I've taken their Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop online classes. An electronic Message Board allows you to post questions and get answers from the course instructor and students registered for the class. Sign up for email notification and the Learning Center will even send you electronic reminders about course start dates and newly posted lessons.
Beginner's Guide to Dreamweaver and Fireworks
Dreamweaver and Fireworks are considered industry-standard web authoring and graphics production tools These hands-on tutorials serve as an online companion to Kim Cavanaugh's Osborne/McGraw-Hill texts (Dreamweaver 4/Fireworks 4 Studio: A Beginner's Guide and Fireworks MX: A Beginner's Guide). They also teach program basics. Dreamweaver tutorials explain how to work with text, design templates and create a swap image that sets up a link to display an image in another part of a page. Fireworks tutorials offer practice in using bitmap selection tools, creating animated GIFs that fade, and working with rollovers. You'll also find several tutorials targeting MX versions of both products. The DreamweaverFAQ.com page offers answers to frequently asked questions and by itself is worth the price of admission.
Barnes & Noble University
The site offers a mix of free and "Premier" (pay) courses. There are free courses in beginning programming, graphics and Web page design. A team of experts creates each course. Sign up and you'll get an email with new class listings every month. The Premier courses, for which students pay a fee, cover more sophisticated topics such as programming in C, JavaScript, and SQL, or learning power-user applications like Dreamweaver 4, Photoshop 6, Fireworks 4, Illustrator 9, Flash 5, Paint Shop Pro 7 and Quark XPress 4.
Atomic Learning Library
It's not radioactive. The site calls them "atoms" because they're little particles that taken together build knowledge. Each is a downloadable narrated movie tutorial on a different aspect of some popular software application. Just click the application you'd like to learn more about and view the offerings. An annual fee of just $50 gives subscribers access to all of the "atoms." Visit the site and click on the tutorials listed in red, which are free and require no password. Atomic Learning Library has lessons on AppleWorks, Dreamweaver, Excel, FileMaker Pro, Inspiration, Photoshop, PowerPoint, Word, iMovie 2, Mac OS X, Kidspiration and many more. To view the movies you'll need a recent version of your favorite Internet browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer) and an installed copy of Apple's free QuickTime plugin. Similar QuickTime movie tutorials are available from VTC (Virtual Training Company) Online University.
Several are accessible free of charge, but you must pay $25/month to view all lessons in the library.
Adobe OnlineTraining
Learn your way around Adobe Photoshop type layers and layer effects and Adobe InDesign document setup with Adobe's free sample online tutorials. Additional instruction can be purchased on a subscription basis ($59/course, per year). Don't be too quick to sign up! You can usually find several free step-by-step lessons for Adobe products by selecting the application about which you want to know more at the Adobe Products Web site, select a specific Adobe product, such as PageMaker, and then follow the free tutorial links by clicking on "Training and Events" on that specific product's page. The Recent Pagemaker Tutorials page will lead you to learn how to use layers, to hyperlink Pagemaker documents, etc.
Microsoft Education : In and Out of the Classroom
Microsoft's amazingly multi-faceted Website adds yet another dimension with this educator's section featuring, among other things, a collection of tutorials on Office XP, Office 2000, Windows NT, FrontPage 2000, Publisher 2000, and even Windows 98 or Word 97. The idea is to select a product, browse the table of contents, read a brief description of topics covered, then download a chapter and work through it offline. There are even downloadable tutorials for user of Office 2001 and Office v.X for Mac For other Office product tutorials viewable online, visit the Microsoft Office Assistance Center. There are also the "Nail it Now Tutorials," such as that available for Microsoft Word.
ShortCourses
Maybe you're just beginning to think about a digital camera, or maybe you've bought one and want to learn more about it, or perhaps you're seeking to become a real digital expert, this is a great site for learning everything from the basics, like how to use a digital camera to tech-heavy topics like capturing digital video, calculating image size, and much more.
iMovie 2
Written by Nona Weiner and hosted by the SCCOE (Santa Clara County Office Of Education) Internet Institute, this well-written iMovie tutorial introduces visitors to several program features. Learn how to preview clips and put them in a movie, move clips from shelf to movie track, work with clips in the Clip Viewer, edit clips, add transitions, attach music, voice, and other sound effects, and export to tape or QuickTime movie. There's also a helpful glossary of iMovie terms. Other tutorials offered by SCCOE include Dreamweaver, HyperStudio, Inspiration, and Kid Pix.
Putting Kid Pix on the Web
Part of "Kid Pix Across the Curriculum" this easy-to-follow lesson shows Mac users how to save Kid Pix slide shows as QuickTime movies for "publishing" on the Web. When saved in QuickTime format, a Kid Pix slide show can be viewed by both Windows and Mac users if they have installed the QuickTime plugin. To download a free copy of QuickTime, visit Apple's QuickTime Web site.
Designer-Info Tutorials
Tom Arah, Publishing and Graphics Contributing Editor for PC Pro offers an impressive collection of free desktop publishing, photo editing, drawing, and Web page design tutorials at his Designer Info Web site. His lessons teach visitors the basics of several popular applications including Acrobat, Corel Draw, PageMaker, Flash 5, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and FrontPage. There's even an advanced tutorial for Photoshop users.
Online Software Tutorials
Presented by the School of Architecture and Building Engineering of the University of Liverpool, this site offers several interactive tutorials introducing the basics of popular applications such as AutoCAD, Macromedia Director, Dreamweaver, PageMaker, PaintShop Pro, Photoshop, and Premier. Choose an application, then work through the numerous lessons presented. While each tutorial has been created for Liverpool University students, you don't have to be one to benefit. Course instructors allow all visitors to download lesson graphics and related documents.
FrontPage in the Classroom: FrontPage Tutorials
Aimed at classroom teachers who want to use Microsoft FrontPage for Web page design, Cathy Chamberlain's Electric Teacher Web site provides step-by-step instructions for several common FrontPage tasks. Topics include: importing an existing Web site, working with graphics, hyperlinking, site navigation, tables, themes, and special components. Chamberlain's Web site also offers tutorials for PowerPoint, PhotoDraw, and Word. Just follow the links to the featured application directly from her home page.
Growing Your Macintosh Know How
This site by Cindy O'Hora (Web Master, Mac guru, parent volunteer and Technology writer) is chock full of fascinating links for Mac users. Among those are tips for those of us still using AppleWorks and/or ClarisWorks. The site tries to acquaint visitors with several AppleWorks Drawing and Paint features with a collection of online lessons. Topics include how to draw a daisy, create shadow text titles, mat and frame an image, make a card or poster, work with Paint module colors, add shadow to a paint project image, and paint text with gradients and fills. Many of her lessons download to computer in Acrobat PDF format and require the Acrobat plugin (PDF Viewer) for viewing in the browser. Visit Adobe's Web site for the latest version of Acrobat Reader (free) if you need a copy of PDFViewer.
Email: Carol S. Holzberg
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