The Internet Lives Up To Its Educational Promise
August 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Every time a new communications technology has been born, from printing presses to radio and television and now the Internet, farsighted and creative thinkers in education have been ready to use it for teaching purposes. In the last century alone we have seen technology advance from simple radio broadcasts to television in the 1950s, both of which were quickly drafted into the educational enterprise. When cable television systems began proliferating, Tennessee businessman Chris Whittle founded Channel One, which following several ownership changes is still providing news, lesson material and other programming for in-school broadcasts. Truly, educators have always been among the earliest of the early technology adopters, using anything they possibly can to augment and improve the education of their students.
Today it is not just about delivering lectures and audiovisual teaching materials to rooms full of students. The Internet lives up to its educational promise by providing many different ways that people can learn, from unstructured and freeform studies to degree programs from leading universities, public and private. The technology has also spawned an entirely new kind of education provider, the online-only school, and corporations have adopted these ways and means to deliver their own training and education to employees. The options and opportunities are virtually unlimited, which is quite in keeping with the nature of the new medium of the Web.
Targeted technology
Online training has not stopped evolving since it began right at the dawn of the Web era, the early 1990s, when the graphical Web interface was added to the Internet architecture. In the early days of the Internet, there were not many high-speed connections and it was difficult to get video going both ways for videoconferencing. Today, with most people using high-speed internet connections, the educational enterprise can be improved with one-on-one counseling sessions, teacher-student interaction, group meetings online and other trappings of community that are important in some classes.
With the Internet as classroom, all study materials can be delivered as PDF files or other readable formats, and students can even record classes and lectures. All of the computer technology can be targeted toward the delivery, retention, archiving and recall of study materials, lectures and research, saving time, money and quite a bit of paper, as well. As further advances are made in Internet and computer technologies (bigger and better displays, eventual 3D monitors, etc.) they will be integrated into the education providers’ offerings. Even today, large wall-sized screens are being installed into meeting rooms and lecture halls that will bring live, life-size interactivity to Internet education.
Multiple paradigms
With the advent of all this computing and communications power, the standard model of education (teacher lecturing class) can be accomplished in a distributed manner, with class members either at school in the classroom, or at home signed in over the Web, or even at some other location with an internet-connected computer or smart phone. (There will be fewer and fewer reasons that students will have to miss class, and they may need to create new excuses about batteries dying or Wi-Fi signals being unavailable!) There is room with the new technology for multiple paradigms to flourish, and advances will be made by trying out a variety of settings and setups. Experimentation is always a strong contributor to progress, even as necessity is still called the mother of invention.
There are many companies out there in the for-profit education field now, many more than just five or ten years ago. The Internet has provided a means by which smaller, less well-funded organizations can begin to bring their own teaching and instruction to those that want it. At the same time, it has provided yet another channel (in addition to regular day schedules, night schedules, distance learning, special schedules, etc.) for established schools, public and private and at all levels, to bring their educational offerings to more and more people.
Bottom line
It is not exactly about the Internet when we speak of the evolution of education, but the Internet is currently the medium that offers the best quality for distance learning. In a few years, it will be the next generation of communication, whether it is 3D holographic, or four-wall-monitor immersive technology, or a combination of things. Educators will always keep their eyes open and their minds aware of techniques, tools and technologies that can help people learn and help the world advance past the horrible effects of ignorance. Right now, the Internet lives up to its educational promise every time a student switches to an online schedule instead of dropping out. To add to that, there’s also an influx of people pursuing online training options who would have otherwise thought they were done with education!
LearnQuest provides complete education solutions for organizations that need to train their staff on the latest business skills and Information Technology tools, methodologies, and languages. Through private online java training, LearnQuest can tailor all aspects of training to the goals and objectives of the client and the background of the participants.
Understanding User Defined And Constants Types In Excel VBA
August 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Sometimes, in your Excel VBA code, you need to have a variable which always returns the same value. For example, if your application makes reference to a tax rate, having the rate in a variable will offer you a mechanism for changing the rate wherever you have used it in your application. Thus, instead of entering code like “TaxAmount = SubTototal * 0.15″, you would use statements like “TaxAmount = SubTototal * TaxRate”, where tax rate would be a constant.
In VBA, constants must be declared and initialised in one statement: for example “Const TaxRate as Currency = 0.15″. This is the only time that a value can be placed in the constant and herein lies one of its key benefits; the value it contains cannot later be accidentally overwritten because the programmer confuses this variable with another. The other key benefit is the ease with which constants allow us to update our applications. Thus, in the tax rate example, when the tax rate changes, we only need to modify one line of code and that change will update our entire application.
VBA offers us another variable technique which allows us to “tighten up” the values which may be entered into a variable is to use User Defined Types (UDTs) which, essentially, allow you to define your own variable types. You can then declare as many variables of this given type as you need. Type definitions must be placed at the top of a module; they cannot be placed inside sub routines or functions. The definition consists of a code block inside which the various elements of the type are detailed as well as the data type associated with it. Here is an example of a type definition.
Type Employee
Name As String
Department As String
JobTitle As String
DateOfBirth As Date
StartDate As Date
Salary As Long
End Type
To use create and initialise variables of this type in our code, we use statements like the following:
Dim empNew As Employee
With empNew
.Name = “Gillian Spencer”
.Department = “Information Technology”
.JobTitle = “Web Developer”
.DateOfBirth = 12/05/1982
.StartDate = 25/03/2010
.Salary = 27500
End With
UDTs can be very useful; they offer us a very useful way of storing related variables in one place. In this regard, they resemble arrays; but, unlike arrays, the elements they contain are named rather than simply referred to by a numerical index.
You can find out more about Excel VBA training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Excel VBA Classes at their central London training centre.
Microsoft Excel Text Alignment Options Are More Flexible Than You Might Think
July 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment
The alignment section of the Home Tab of the Excel ribbon contains a number of options relating to the way in which your data is position within the cell. Perhaps the most familiar and the most frequently used buttons in this section are the three relating to the horizontal position your data: left, centre and right. However you’ll notice that when you click in the cells of an unformatted worksheet, none of these three icons is highlighted, which indicates that none of them is the default. The reason for this is that Excel treats data differently depending on the data type.
If you type text in a cell, your text is aligned on the left; if you type a number, the number is aligned on the right; if you type a date, it is also aligned on the right. To change the horizontal alignment, either select a range of cells or click on a column letter to highlight the entire column then click on one of the alignment icons.
Haven chosen one type of horizontal alignment, you can change it in two ways. You can either choose a different alignment or you can click again on the already selected alignment to deactivate it. For example, if your text is right-aligned and you click on the Right-align button a second time, this will deactivate right alignment and return you to the default alignment which, for text, is left-aligned. So, in fact, Excel has four types of horizontal alignment: left, centre, right and unspecified (or default), which is the alignment that applies when none of the alignment buttons is highlighted.
Microsoft Excel also allows you to specify the vertical alignment of your text. This setting becomes apparent when you increase the height of the cell and there is a definite default; text is normally aligned at the bottom of the cell. This default vertical alignment applies to text, dates and numbers alike.
To change vertical alignment, either make a selection or click on the row number to select the entire row then click on one of the buttons to make the change: align middle, align top and so forth.
The alignment option also includes the ability to change the orientation of text within the cell. This is particularly useful in those situations where the headings are wider than the data within the cells. To change the vertical orientation of your text, you simply select the cells in question and then choose the appropriate orientation in the Alignment dialogue.
Having changed the orientation of the headings, you can probably make the columns much narrower. Excel offers a very useful way of doing this: simply select all the columns that contain data then in the Cell group of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon, choose Format and then AutoFit Columns. This option makes each of the highlighted columns no wider than it needs to be to display all the data it contains.
You can find out more about Excel VBA training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Excel VBA Classes at their central London training centre.
Beginners Training Taking A Look At Photoshop Creative Suite 5
July 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Photoshop CS5 is a highly optimized version brought out by Adobe. This particular version is certainly skilled with supporting videos, movie and multi-media pros. With its streamlined capabilities as well as potent editing software, Photoshop CS5 has introduced a revolution in the field of film / photo editing and also format. Extremely compatible for architects, scientists, engineers, template designers, graphic designers and medical professionals, this particular version gives you the higher end, and extremely user-friendly blend and quick range software to make your own modifying understanding a wonderful sensation.
Photoshop CS5 is actually aimed to help amateur photography fans and video publishers attain efficiency in their occupation. Let me provide a listing of a number of the exclusive functions:
Smart croping and editing applications: Having a smart cropping and editing tool box, you can effortlessly do no matter what it takes to accomplish perfection within your resourceful production in terms of videos as well as graphic. From adjusting colors, to blurring and sharpening areas of the photo, to improving the quality in the photo, this edition is definitely packed with all of the editing resources you can imagine. This editing program makes it one of the better versions so far regarding photo as well as video clip modifying.
Artwork and illustrating resources: With a myriad range of creative brushes, sketching software, color settings may change the appeal and excellence of your image. With these types of simple to gain access to paint brushes, it is possible to create exclusive photographs out of your regular pictures.
Edge refining and assortment tools: Selecting a portion of your picture couldn’t be easier using these tools. The actual advanced refining top features of Photoshop CS5 permit consumers to select a certain part of the particular image with simply a click and perfect it towards excellence.
Compositing features: With this feature, you can easily align layers within your image to include a special result.
Better printing quality: The actual improved color management features allow you to bring reality to your otherwise normal looking image. Along with improved print preview windows and many more features within the print option, your imprinted picture is going to genuinely match the expectations of a specialist ten-on-ten photo.
In addition to the above characteristics, this Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 5 variation comes full of simpler to use features including Smart Objects, Red Eye Reduction tool, InDesign, Healing Brush, ImageReady, Illustrator, AfterEffects, and so forth. These characteristics makes this variation totally user targeted. This software program is highly appropriate for virtually all the formats of pictures, that is, TIFF, PSD, BMP, OpenEXR, LPEG2000 and JPEG.
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Photoshop “Newer Function” CS5 Training Videos
July 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 5 (CS5) has officially been published, and I would like to share with you a few of the new features with this particular article including several Photoshop CS5 video tutorials, that will allow you to fully comprehend the latest edition of Adobe Photoshop, Creative Suite five.
The actual team at Adobe Photoshop have been focusing their efforts on improving a couple of key regions of development as they have done with regard to each and every one of the latest CS versions. Initially they will take a look at what should be improved upon within CS4 - There is nothing greater than person comments, thus they’re going to have already put in lots of time looking at bettering current CS4 features and apps.
Although we’ll now be checking out the new Photoshop CS5 capabilities, I ought to point out at this stage that the general brand new CS5 item is going to be practically 90% like CS4, and so if you plan to update, there’s no more than 10% with the overall system that you will have to learn how to work with effectively.
Please have a look at a number of the most recent Photoshop CS5 video tutorials, which have just been posted for the following Sites;-
http://www.LearnPhotoshopNow.com/adobe-photoshop-cs5-video-tutorials-3
http://www.PhotoshopRevealed.com/sb?blog_ah_adobe_photoshop_cs5_video_tutorials
In the mean time we are going to check out the key area of development, found within the brand new features that Photoshop have combined with CS5, permitting you to make use of the new tools enabling you to modify photos like no man has edited them before. Think you’re getting ecstatic now???
First of all, CS5 provides for key developments to the way “paint brushes” as well as “painting” will be able to perform in Photoshop. We have the ability to work with a photo (or even any graphic) as a web template canvas or color scheme with regard to painting. Simply by hitting a specific area it is possible to replicate dipping your brush straight into paint. Next you will be able to pull that color out to get spread around whilst simulating the wet brush. You can even blend colorings as much as you wish, and achieve a number of different effects that should provide the pictures a completely new appearance.
The 2nd advancement allows you to simulate brush physics while you are painting. An animated 3D brush preview will be able to display modifications according to pressure, and rotation. This in turn can affect the methods with which the actual paint is actually put on the canvas as if you possessed a real brush. Many different presets are available, even though you’ll have to have the ability to use your personal creativeness to be able to develop any.
Remember to check out the Adobe Photoshop CS5 video tutorials found on the aforementioned weblogs, and you will soon enough learn to produce some excellent digital edits which are allowed by studying this most recent CS5 version of Photoshop.
Did you enjoy this article? Interested in receiving Adobe Photoshop CS5 Video Tutorials? Well now you can by watching this Photoshop Photoshop CS5 Video Tutorial
Correct Spelling And Grammar Errors With The WhiteSmoke Grammar Check Software
June 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment
If you received a business letter with lots of grammatical errors and misspelled words in it, how would you react? Maybe you’d cast aside the letter thinking the sender wasn’t too serious about things. But here’s a fact: these days, it’s not unlikely for business letters to be flooded with mistakes! Save yourself from joining the bandwagon. Get a trustworthy grammar check software.
Good thing there’s a powerful application to help you out on that department: the WhiteSmoke grammar checker software. Despite the name, it does more than just spot errors in grammar. It also corrects punctuation marks, spellings, and it can even help enhance your style of writing. This application suggests words and phrases as you write, giving your style an instant boost.
You might think that the incorporated grammar check software on word processors will suffice. But the truth is they won’t! Studies have found out they’re terribly bad. It’s true they can provide some form of help for those who are really good with grammar and writing. However, they can do little to help out bad writers. Those who are in most need of help benefit the least.
WhiteSmoke is capable of checking spellings, misplaced or missing punctuations marks, and grammar errors. It can also suggest words like adverbs, adjectives, synonyms and many more. As you’re writing, this grammar checker application checks its online database. So you might be wondering: what if I’m not hooked up on the net? The answer’s simple: finish what you’re writing, then run the application once you got access to the net.
When it comes to compatibility, it can work well with a Mac or a PC. It’s flexible enough to work on several different word processing software. In fact, it’s so flexible that it can get into action even when composing your e-mail on the net. The WhiteSmoke icon may be present on the toolbar of certain word processing software. If not, the application may be launched by pressing the F2 key.
There’s more relevance to this software that just helping you out write flawless business letters. It’s also great for use when writing blog entries, essays, legal documents, and practically everything else. Its text enrichment feature makes your writing style appear more refined and expertly done. For example, when you write “I think”, WhiteSmoke may suggest “I firmly believe” for you to use.
If you’re looking for a grammer checker software that are able to give you writing confidence, look no further. The WhiteSmoke grammar checker software corrects grammar, spellings, punctuations and more. It’s also possible to get to write faster and finish a lot with many readily available templates to choose from. No matter what the word processor used, you will be confident that what you are writing is error free.
You can get more information on the fantastic grammer checker software available today! When an individual has the best software available, they can check all grammar errors and correct them quickly and submit perfect work every time!
Plotting A Chart In A Chart Sheets in Microsoft Excel
April 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment
To create a chart in Microsoft Excel, begin by selecting the data that you want to plot including any headings. You then have the choice of creating either a stand-alone chart or an embedded chart. To create a stand-alone chart, right-click on one of your worksheet tabs and choose Insert. Next, click on the chart icon and click OK. Excel creates a chart using the default chart type.
Having just created a chart, you will notice that Excel displays three contextual tabs headed “Chart Tools”. The contextual tabs consist of Design, Layout and Format. The Design contextual tab enables you to change the chart type and the basic information about the chart such as the underlying data.
The Layout tab offers you a more intricate level of control over the various elements within your chart. For example, by default, Excel adds a legend to each new chart. If a chart has only one series of data, we don’t need a legend to tell us what the chart colours mean. We can therefore click on the Legend drop-down menu and choose None.
The Format contextual tab offers us the most primitive control over the chart elements. It is here that we can to click on individual elements and change them at the object level. In other words, we are working on these elements purely as drawing objects rather than as elements of the chart. However, even at this primitive level, Excel still shows us the relationship between the chart elements and the underlying data. Thus, for example, when an individual data point is highlighted, Excel displays the corresponding worksheet address in the formula bar.
When creating standalone charts, you are not given the option of choosing the chart type during the chart creation process. If you want to change the chart type, you must do so at a later stage by choosing a Chart Type option in the Design contextual menu.
As regards the chart sheet which contains the chart, it behaves in much the same way as Excel worksheets. For example, it can be renamed or deleted by right-clicking the sheet tab and choosing Rename or Delete from the context menu.
You can find out more about Excel and Excel VBA training courses, visit On Site Training Courses . Com, an independent computer training web site offering Excel Classes all over the UK.
Chopping And Changing Adobe Acrobat Document Pages
April 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Having created a PDF file, you will quite frequently need to manipulate the pages within the document without wishing to have to return to the original pre-PDF version. You may for example need to update, remove or add pages. Acrobat contains a number of menu commands and other techniques for working with pages. There are two ways of working with pages in Acrobat: firstly, you can use the commands in the Document menu and, secondly, you can use the Pages panel. The pages panel contains its own panel menu offering all of the page manipulation commands found in the Document menu as well as other useful commands and techniques.
Adobe Acrobat offers four main menu commands for manipulating pages within a PDF document: Insert, Extract, Replace and Delete. These commands are found both in the Document menu and in the Pages panel menu. The Document menu also contains one extra page manipulation command: Split Document.
When you use the Insert command, you are presented with two options: From File and From Clipboard. If you choose From File, you are presented with a browse dialog where you can navigate to the appropriate file and double-click its name. The Insert Pages dialog then appears, allowing you to specify where the incoming file will be inserted: either before or after a given page. If you choose the Clipboard option, the contents of the clipboard will be converted into a one page PDF document and inserted at the specified position.
The Extract command can be used to copy or move a single page (or a range of pages) into a separate new file. When the command is used, you can specify the page range to be extracted and whether or not the extracted pages should be deleted from the original document. Thus, the Extract command can be used to split an original document into several new and smaller documents. However, if the document has bookmarks, the Split document is more useful, since it will perform the operation in one step.
The Split Document dialog allows you to split a document mechanically (x number of pages in each file, for example). However, more usefully, it also offers an option called Top Level Bookmarks. This causes Acrobat to use each bookmark as the signal of where each of the new documents should start and end. You also have the option of placing the newly created PDF documents into a separate folder and using the bookmark names as the names of the new documents.
It’s not uncommon that one or more pages in a PDF document need to be updated. Rather than recreating the whole PDF, the Replace command can be used to choose an incoming PDF file and then specify which page or pages it should replace. Thus, Replace is equivalent to inserting a document and then deleting the pages which it is designed to replace.
Finally, we have the Delete command. No prizes for guessing that this allows you to choose a range of pages which will be permanently deleted from the document. This command cannot be undone; so it is probably a good idea to ensure that a backup version of the document exists before using it.
If you would like to learn more about Adobe Acrobat training courses, visit Training Company . Com, a UK IT training web site offering Acrobat Classes in London and throughout the UK.
Using Hidden Worksheets In Microsoft Excel 2007
April 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment
A Microsoft Excel workbook is essentially a container, a bit like a folder. Each Excel workbook can hold one or more worksheets and it is the worksheet that is the actual container of one’s information. Worksheets are identified by a tab which shows the name of each sheet. Clicking the appropriate tab activates a particular sheet.
In exactly the same way that Microsoft Excel allows you to hide columns, it is also possible to hide entire worksheets. Hiding a worksheet is particularly useful where you have a workbook that contains a lot of sheets. Naturally, hidden worksheets can be made visible again by using the Unhide command. It is possible to hide either an individual sheet or to hide a group of sheets. However sheets can only be unhidden one sheet at a time.
To hide a single sheet, just right-click on the sheet tab and choose Hide. The corresponding worksheet will then vanish. There is also a ribbon command which achieves the same thing. First, select the sheet by clicking on its tab and then, in the Cells section of the Home Tab of Excel Ribbon, choose Format-Visibility-Hide and Unhide-Hide.
To hide more than one sheet, simply highlight the sheets by clicking on the first holding down the Control key and clicking on each of the others. Next, right-click on one of the highlighted sheet tabs and choose Hide.
To make a hidden worksheet visible once more, you can right-click on any sheet tab and choose Unhide. The Unhide dialog will then appear. Unfortunately, it is not possible to select more than one sheet to unhide; if you try Control-click or Shift-click, you’ll soon find that only one sheet can be highlighted. Highlight the name of the sheet that you wish to make visible and click OK.
If you prefer, you can also use the Excel Ribbon command Format-Visibility-Hide and Unhide-UnHide Sheet. When the Unhide dialog box appears, highlight the sheet you would like to unhide and click OK. You will notice that when sheets are unhidden they very conveniently return to the position that they originally occupied.
You can find out more about Excel training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Excel Classes in London and throughout the UK.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint’s Audience Handouts Feature
April 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Audience handouts are a way of giving the attendees of your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations something to remember you by. They normally consist of printouts of the presentation; one, two, three, four six or nine slides to a page. Naturally, however, whether or not the essence of your presentation can be captured by this kind of printout depends on the nature of the presentation.
You will almost certainly want to personalize the look and feel of your handouts. To do this, click on the View tab of the PowerPoint ribbon and then click on the Handout Master button. In PowerPoint, masters allow you to determine the format of the three main elements within a presentation; slides, speaker notes and handouts. When you are in handout master mode, the Handout Master contextual tab appears. It contains a Page Setup section which allows you to choose the orientation of both the page as a whole and of the individual slide miniatures. It also contains buttons for activating or deactivating the header, footer, date and page number as well as for formatting the background of the slide.
Given that Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to produce three separate elements (slides, speaker notes and handouts), when the print command is used, you need to specify which of these elements you wish to print. This is done by choosing an option from the Print What drop-down menu. In addition to the three elements mentioned above, you can also print the outline of the presentation.
If you have created a presentation with a fair amount of important detail, it may be more useful to print out the slide outline and distribute it to the audience in place of PowerPoint’s usual handouts. Better still, you can export your presentation into Microsoft Word and then customise it for your audience. To export an outline, from the Office button, choose Publish and then Create Handouts in Microsoft Word.
Using the Create Handouts in Microsoft Word command brings up a dialogue box which allows you to choose one of five page layout options. Firstly, you can have speaker notes next to slides. This will create a two column layout with a slide miniature in column one and speaker notes next to it in column two. If you have used the speaker notes feature in your presentation, this may be a useful solution. The second option is Blank Lines Next to Slides: this produces the same two column layout as the first option but the right hand column is blank, so that you can enter notes next to each slide.
The options we have seen thus far don’t offer you much room for text. If you have made or wish to make extensive notes on each slide, options three and four (Notes below Slides and Blank lines below Slides) provide a layout with the text below the slide miniature and leaves approximately 60 percent of the page free for notes.
Perhaps your main aim is for the audience to take away a summary of the content of the presentation. In this case you can choose the final option: Outline Only. This simply exports the text on each slide into Microsoft Word.
As is often the case when transferring data from one Microsoft Office application to another, you have the choice of activating the Paste Link option. This will create a link between the exported file and the original PowerPoint presentation, such that, if the presentation is modified, the exported Word file will also be updated.
You can find out more about Microsoft PowerPoint training courses, visit On-site Training Courses . Com, a UK IT training web site offering PowerPoint training courses in London and throughout the UK.