While I’ve covered audio recording tips and tricks in the past, one of the most frequent questions I’m still asked is about microphones. So today, I’ll show you the different mics I use and demo how they sound.

I’ll have to admit, I’m no audio pro and I’m also a bit less dogmatic about audio quality than some elearning developers. My main goal is to get decent sounding audio without a lot of post-production.

The reality is that most end users are hearing the audio through cheap headsets or small device speakers where everything sounds hollow. Also, if you record tutorial videos or do webinars, the audio compression mitigates some of the distinctions you hear in different qualities of audio.

With that said, here are a few thoughts and some recommendations based on the mics I use.

Simple Audio Recording Tips

Here are a few simple ground rules. You learn more by clicking on the links below.

• You want to record the best audio quality you can initially. There are some things you can do to clean up the audio, but you can’t make bad audio good. If you can only do one thing, get crisp audio.
• Try to eliminate background noise like air conditioners. Sometimes if I can’t get rid of the noise, I will play some music softly in the background–not Eminem, but something a little softer.
• Don’t worry about being perfect. You can spend a lot of time finagling your audio only to have you end user listen to it through cheap headphones or speakers where everything sounds muffled and tinny.
• You should learn a little about audio and some basic editing. You don’t need to be an audio engineer, but learning some recording techniques, how mics work, and how to do some post-editing will really come in handy.

Microphone Recommendations

There are a lot of good microphones out there and they’re not that expensive. I’d plan on spending from $100-$200 on a microphone. You should also invest in a pop screen, a stand, and perhaps some sort of barrier. Here are some of the microphones I use.

I created a quick demo in our new Rise application to show the different mics in use. You can view the link on your mobile devices and compare how they sound versus how they sound on a desktop. I noticed that my iPad which has one speaker masked the issues that I could hear on my desktop. I also noticed that with my iPhone, the ambient audio was more evident that elsewhere.

Click here to view the microphone demo.

Desktop Microphones

• Blue Yeti Pro. This is what I have in my home office. I like it because I can control the gain and the pickup pattern. This is a big plus. The pickup pattern helps eliminate unwanted sound entering the mic. The Pro costs about $230. But you can buy the Blue Yeti (which is also a good mic) for about $120 and it comes in a bunch of colors to placate the needs of easily distracted millennials.
• Blue Raspberry. I’ll be doing a lot more recording on the road so I wanted to upgrade my microphone. I just purchased this microphone and will do an update after a few road trips.
• Samson C03U and Samson C01U. I’ve used both of these mics and think they’re great a great value. Both mics are in the $80 range but for about $120, you get the microphone, a pop filter, and shock mount. Not a bad deal. I’d choose the C0U3 because it has better pick up patterns. I quit using the mics when I received the Blue Yeti Pro. If you’re on a budget the Samson mics are worth it.
• Samson Go Mic. I love this little mic. At $40, it’s a great price and sounds good. The build quality is really solid and I’ve gotten lots of use out of it over the past few years.

The links to Amazon microphones may produce a slight commission.

Headset Microphones

I’m not a fan of headset microphones for recording narration because they tend to pick up a lot of breath sounds. However, they are relatively inexpensive and decent enough in output. But because they’re headset microphones you don’t get a lot of control over the pickup.

I do like to use headset microphones for recording tutorials and doing webinars because it allows me to operate hands free and not worry about moving around and away from the microphone. I also prefer wireless headsets over wired ones.

ModMic: I haven’t used this mic but I really like the idea. You attached the microphone to your headphones. Many of the headphone mics are uncomfortable so you can use your own headphone and attach the ModMic with a magnet (which means you can remove it).

Here are the three headset microphones I currently use:

• Plantronics Audio 995. It’s wireless which gives me some range of motion. I don’t like having a bunch of cables running over my desk when I record. Having the wireless mic is nice if I have to record some audio narration from my subject matter experts.
• Plantronics 478. This is similar to the one above but it has a USB cord. Both of those microphones have noise canceling features. Usually that means there’s one mic that records your audio and another smaller one that records ambient sound and cancels it out.
• Logitech H800. I just got this one. I like it because it’s wireless and has a built in charger. I also like it’s portability for traveling.

One question you may ask is why I have so many microphones, especially headset mics. I travel a lot so I want good portable options and I like the choice of desktop and headset microphones. I do recommend getting a few extra headset mics, one for you and the others to share if you do recording with subject matter experts.

Previous Posts on Using Audio for Narration

• 4 Simple Tips for Recording High-Quality Audio
• Should You Add Background Audio to Your E-Learning Courses?
• 10 Free Audio Programs to Use for E-Learning
• Tips & Tricks for Recording Audio Narration
• 6 Free Audio Editors for Your E-Learning Courses
• Three Reasons Not to Use Audio Narration in Your Online Training
• Free Audio Sound Effects for E-Learning
• Free Audio Files for E-Learning
• When It Makes Sense to Pay for Professional Narration

Again, I’m not an audio pro and recording in a controlled recording environment. Instead I’m a one-man recording studio, in a home office, with a limited budget. I want good quality audio at an affordable price. From my experience most rapid elearning course authors are in the same boat.

Which microphones do you use and why? Feel free to share in the comments.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Free resources always come in handy when building courses or slide presentations. At most of my workshops we take a few minutes to share different free resources people use. It’s a great way to be reminded of resources you may have already bookmarked but have forgotten. And of course, there’s always something new to learn from others when the share what they use.

At this point, I find that there’s not a lot of new free resources being added. So I compiled the resources and put them in some sense of order to make it a bit easier to parse. I can’t vouch for all of the sites but from what I can tell, they’re all legit.

Most of the resources are free. And with all things free, be sure to check on the usage terms and give proper attribution. Here’s a post on how to did this: how to use free assets in commercial projects.

Where to Get Help from the Community

• E-learning 101
• Free downloads
• Free ebooks
• Weekly challenges & examples

Where to Get Free Resources from Your Organization

• Marketing team: they usually have graphics and other collateral
• Web team: collection of online resources
• Public relations: public facing graphics

Create Your Own & Share

• Take your own pictures of people and share
• Walk around organization and get background and ambient images
• Get inspiration from stock photo sites and try to mimic them

Free Resources: Icons

• https://www.iconfinder.com/
• http://www.flaticon.com/
• https://thenounproject.com/
• https://icons8.com/
• http://icons.mysitemyway.com/

Placeholder Content

• http://dummyimage.com/
• 3 Ways to Get Placeholder Text for Your E-Learning Courses

Free Stock Photos

• Search most free sites: https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/stock-up
• Ditto above: http://librestock.com/
• http://www.1001freedownloads.com/free-photos/?order=popular
• https://unsplash.com/ or search http://www.arthurweill.fr/Unsplash/en
• http://startupstockphotos.com/
• http://www.lifeofpix.com/
• http://deathtothestockphoto.com/
• https://stocksnap.io/
• http://mmtstock.com/grid/
• http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/
• http://publicdomainarchive.com/free-stock-photos/
• http://getrefe.com/downloads/category/free/
• https://goodstock.photos/
• http://www.splitshire.com/category/technology/page/2/
• http://magdeleine.co/people/page/2/
• http://nos.twnsnd.co/
• http://www.gratisography.com/
• http://kaboompics.com/
• http://jaymantri.com/
• https://graphicleftovers.com/dashboard
• http://www.freeimages.com/
• https://pixabay.com/
• http://morguefile.com/
• htt/p://www.stockvault.net
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
• https://community.articulate.com/articles/free-stock-photo-sites-for-e-learning
• https://www.graphicstock.com This isn’t free but I switched to this when the Dollar Photo Club shut down. It’s only $99/yr.

Free Medical Images

• https://visualsonline.cancer.gov/
• http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/home.asp
• http://www.stockphotosforfree.com/

Free Illustrations

• http://www.freepik.com/
• https://www.canva.com/
• http://www.vecteezy.com/
• http://www.designcomics.com/
• https://graphicmama.com/freebies
• https://pixabay.com/
• https://thehungryjpeg.com/freebies/ (weekly)
• https://openclipart.org/
• http://www.wordle.net/
• http://opengameart.org/

Free Templates

• Articulate community
• Rapid E-Learning Blog
• E-learning community members
• http://www.duarte.com/slidedocs/

Free Audio

• https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder
• Free audio for elearning
• Free audio sound effects

Free Fonts

• https://fonts.google.com/
• http://www.fontsquirrel.com/
• http://www.dafont.com/

Free Video

• Dozen free video sites
• http://www.wingclips.com
• http://www.coverr.co
• https://videos.pexels.com/
• https://pixabay.com/
• https://www.unstock.io/

Deal Sites

These sites aren’t free but they often offer great deals. For example, I’ve been able to get a lifetime membership to a graphics site for $49 and picked up a bunch of cutout people images for just a few dollars. It’s worth subscribing to these types of sites just to see what deals come your way. Most of the deals are not relevant to elearning but you can just delete those emails.

• http://www.mightydeals.com/
• https://www.inkydeals.com/
• Appsumo.com

If there’s a free resource or site you like to use, feel free to post in the comments. Spammers will be deleted.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

The other day someone asked for some links to free audio files to use as background audio. Personally, I’m not sure how much demand there really is for free audio files but to help you out, I’ll share some of the resources I’ve collected.

Of course, here’s the easiest answer when people ask how to find free audio files.

There are thousands of free audio sites. But most of them are either kind of spammy, merely link bait, or repeats of other sites.

Despite the abundance of free audio sites, there’s only a handful of decent resources. So I’m not providing a long list of lame sites. Instead I’ve reviewed the sites and the links I share are the ones I think you’ll find most valuable.

Before we get started, here is a list of sites that offer free audio sound effects that I featured in a previous blog post.

Free Audio: Background Music

Background audio serves a number of purposes. It can set a mood or some context. Sometimes it can mask audio narration that sounds a bit hollow. Just be sure to keep the background audio levels low. You also want to consider the impact background audio has on retention. If it’s distracting or competes with cognitive processing it may make the course less effective.

Some of the sites below require an account or they ask for donations, but they’re still free. If you do use the free audio files, I recommend supporting them with a mention, link, or donation.

• YouTube: free music for your projects that you can download.
• Vimeo: music library of Creative Common music
• BenSound: one of the best organized sites; songs under creative commons or you can pay for less restrictive licensing.
• Soundcloud: a lot of free music; commenting and ability to follow the music creator
• OrangeFreeSounds: a lot of good background music
• South Hills Records: over 700 free downloads from electronica to soundtrack
• DL Sounds: free, as in free. Can’t beat that.
• Opsound.org: a boatload of free music under Creative Commons license.
• FreeMusicArchive: a ton of curated music. Click on the song title to see licensing.
• Jamendo: lots of songs under Creative Commons license; requires an account.
• freeSFX: free sound and music
• BradSucks.net: Brad Turcotte is a one man band and he shares his songs freely. Many of you have probably heard, Making Me Nervous, at some point. It seems like it was on every tutorial video and YouTube video a few years back.
• JoshWoodward.com: Josh Woodward shares songs freely. He has vocal and instrumental versions of his music.
• Sonic Squirrel: lots of free music; check the song’s Creative Commons license
• Audinautix: free music created by Jason Show. Sorted into easy categories.
• Epitonic: a nice catalog of music curated from different genres. They claim they’re free and legal, but you need to verify the rights to use.
• CCTrax: a host of songs and music available under Creative Commons license.
• Opensource Music: a list of free songs and music
• Purple Planet: free with attribution
• Machinama Sound: good for gamified courses; free with attribution

Not Free Audio

When you’re doing corporate work and need audio it often makes sense to use a fee-based service. You avoid potential licensing issues and the quality is pretty good. Here are some inexpensive ways to get good audio files.

• Amazon: you can buy a bunch of sound FX CDs for about $8. Save time having to search a bunch of sites.
• JukeDeck: create custom soundtracks timed to your video. Great for quick tutorials.
• Vimeo Music Store: buy tracks or use SmartSound to create tracks for your projects.
• BenSound: one of the best organized sites; songs under creative commons or you can pay for less restrictive licensing.
• AudioHero: can’t go wrong with hero in your title. Good library with flexible pricing.
• AudioBlocks: a lot of music, sound FX, and loops. Requires an annual fee. $99 for unlimited downloads.
• Jamendo: I like them because they have a nice, modern library and searching is easy.
• BeatPick: license songs with different use cases; flexible and good selection.
• JewelBeat: library of music. They have previews on YouTube to see the music in action.
• Kompoz: interesting site to collaborate on making music

I tell you the truth, I don’t see a lot of courses that use much audio outside of the narration and an occasional sound effect. I’m curious, if you do use background audio, how are you using it?

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Had a question about finding good free audio sound effects for elearning courses. Do a search and you’ll find hundreds of sites. However, most of them are lame and pain to go through. So I pulled together a list of sites that you may find worthwhile. The truth is once you find a good one there’s no need to look at dozens more.

As with any free content, if you’re using the free audio files for real projects, be sure to check the license agreements. Many of these free audio sites are under Creative Commons licensing, but check to be sure.

If you need to give attribution to the free audio source, here’s a post where I shared a few ways to do so.

Free Audio Sound Effect Sites for Commercial Use

• FindSound: a good search engine for sounds. Be sure to verify the license when you pull free audio files from one of the sites.
• Freesound.org: a mix of all sorts of free audio sound effects. Review their Creative Commons licensing.
• OrangeFreeSounds: background audio, sound effects, and various sound loops. Need to attribute the source.
• Archive.org: lots of stuff, but a bit cluttered. Click on the audio title to see how you can use the files.
• freeSFX: free sound and music. Requires an account, but all files are free to use.
• MediaCollege.com: some good reaction sounds; free for commercial use.
• FreeSoundEffects: a mixture of free and paid sound effects.
• SoundBible: what more can you do to describe free sound effects?
• iBeat.org: a lot of music loops under Creative Commons.
• Sound Board: user created soundboards; registration required. Not sure about licensing.
• Get-Sounds: free but limited selection; no licensing info.
• ZapSplat: free sound effects and SFX packs.

Commercial Audio Sound Effects

• Amazon: buy sound effect albums for as little as $8.
• SoundDogs.com: thousands of very specific sound effects. I like the rollover preview option.
• AudioJungle: lots of good sound effects and relatively inexpensive.
• SoundSnap: probably one of the largest libraries. Can buy sounds individually or subscribe.

Personally, I don’t use sound effects very often and when I do, I have a bunch of sound effects from some CDs I purchased a few years ago. I also like to search discount bins in used software and half-price book stores. Often I’ll find media DVDs with audio and graphic files I can use.

So there you have it, a good starting point if you’re looking for free sound effects. Are there any free audio sound effects sites you recommend?

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Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Audio narration is part of multimedia and adds a lot of value to your elearning courses. However, there are times when it makes sense to NOT use audio in your courses.

Do Not Use Audio Narration When They Can’t Hear It

If those taking the course can’t hear the audio narration, then it makes sense not to include it. This probably seems obvious, but often we don’t get to meet those who take the courses so we’re not always aware of their audio limitations. In fact, many of the people I talk to get handed the course content with no access to the intended audience.

There are usually three main reasons why the person can’t hear the course:

• Technology. Many access the elearning courses from computers that don’t support audio. The computers may not have sound cards or speakers. This is not as common as it used to be, but it’s still a good idea to ask your client if the end users will have access to computers that support audio and if they need headsets.
• Environment. Some people access the online modules from shared computers in a production environment. Many of those systems don’t have audio output, and even if they did, the environment is too loud to hear it.
• Hearing disabilities. You may have learners with hearing disabilities. In those cases, you’ll need to make modifications so that they can learn what needs to be learned. Some organizations already require accessible content. Even if it’s not required for your course, it’s a good idea to add closed caption text or some sort of transcript for those who may need it. Here’s a free e-book that discusses best practices for 508 and accessible content.

Do Not Use Audio Narration If You’re on a Tight Budget

Producing good audio narration takes time and doing it right costs money. You need to write, rehearse, and approve scripts that sound like real people talking. Here’s typically what happens:

• Write the script.
• Review the script with subject matter experts.
• Re-write the script.
• Review again.
• Re-write the script.
• Record audio narration and realize the script doesn’t sound right.
• Re-write script.
• Record audio narration.
• Review final course and have upper-level manager tell you that they don’t like the audio and the legal team needs to make a few edits.
• Rinse and repeat.

Seriously, producing audio narration takes time and adds many variables to the production process with a lot of extra meetings. If you don’t have the resources, it’s better to skip it than doing it wrong or wasting time.

Do Not Use Audio Narration If the Narrator is Not Professional

I have mixed feelings on this next point. There’s a lot to be said about the authentic voice of a real person. And the reality is that in many cases, it makes sense to record your own audio narration. However, there is a big difference between a good speaking voice and a professional narrator.

• You want a voice actor. Someone once told me that you don’t want a professional narrator, instead you want a voice actor. And recording your subject matter expert who has a good speaking voice is not the same as the person you’d qualify as a voice actor.
• You don’t need to spend a fortune. There are a lot of ways to hire good voice talent at reasonable cost. Fiverr and services like Voice123 are worth exploring. And you can even find some freelance elearning developers that can produce their own audio.

On the flip side, if you do record your own audio narration:

• Get a good microphone. I have used the Samson C01U & C03U. Travel with the very portable GoMic, and currently use the Yeti Pro for most of my recording. They’re all good mics. You can get a decent microphone for about $75.  The links to Amazon mics may produce a slight commission.
• Learn some of the basics with these tips and tricks.

In an ideal world you have a budget to create the best course possible. And this includes inserting great audio narration. Keep in mind that bad audio is the least tolerable form of multimedia. People will tolerate less than perfect image quality before they accept bad audio narration. If you can’t do it right, perhaps it’s best to not do it at all.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

If you do a search online you’ll find all sorts of free assets like free stock images, icons, fonts and other media that work perfectly for your elearning courses. But often you find that free isn’t really free. Instead, free is free with strings attached.

One of my pet peeves is people who give away free assets and then only allow them to be used for personal use. I guess there’s a big demand for free stock images and free fonts for family use. While it’s the asset creator’s prerogative to attach strings, personally I find it kind of lame. Either it’s free or not. Why work to get eyes on your product and then create that sort of friction? However, if that’s the stipulation then we need to stick by it and respect the desires of the content authors. Mostly likely those resources won’t work for your project.

Another issue is that the free content comes with attribution requirements. That’s much better than free for personal use only. But it still creates some friction because the attribution requirement may conflict with your project.

How to give proper credit to the creator of the assets and still maintain a professional looking course is a challenge. Here are a few ways to attribute content to the asset creator.

Add Attribution Credits to the Image or Slide

• Credits on the image. This is the easiest, but doesn’t always look good.
• Credits as a caption. This is also easy and easy to template. It also creates consistency, but still can be a bit distracting.

The two options above are fine for school projects, but don’t look very professional. They also only allow for text descriptions and URLs. But no hyperlink to the creator’s site.

• Mouseover credits as the person moves the mouse over the image the credits appear. They can be over the image or as a caption box and you can link to the site.
• Add credits and links at the bottom of the screen. This works but may look a bit busy and not many clients want to see a bunch of outside content in their course screens.

Add Attribution Credits to the Course Player Tabs

• Use the player’s resource tab. Change the resource tab to read “credits” and then add links to the sites. This is really easy and looks nice.

• Use Engage to create an “About” player tab. Add information about the organization and course developers. An additional section could be attribution for free resources with a link back.
• Lightbox slides on player tabs. Create a custom slide and insert it using the lightbox feature. This lets you make it look any way you want and add any type of information and links back to the site.

Personally I like the resource tab and lightbox options. The resource tab is simple and the lightbox means I can make the credit page look anyway I want. Icons8 allows this for their free content. You can find it in their licensing. And I’m sure most of the others would, too.

If you’re not sure, ask the source of the free content. I’ve found that often they’re happy that people are getting use out of the free assets and appreciate that I’ve even bothered asking. Often they’ve given me permission to use their assets. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

Here’s a published version of the different ways to attribute the free resources if you want to see them in action.

Click here to view the attribution demo course.

What do you do when you get free assets that require attribution? How have you attributed free content in your elearning courses?

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

We’ve looked at understanding the customer’s perspective, how to jump start you project, what you should know about designing a course, how to build a project plan, and working with your subject matter experts.

Today’s rapid e-learning tools make creating e-learning courses so much easier. It’s possible to build good e-learning courses with a limited understanding of the technology. However, you can really leverage the rapid e-learning tool’s capabilities and make more engaging content if you have a basic understanding of the multimedia technology.

In this post, we’ll take a quick peek at graphic, audio, and video technology. I’ve also included some additional resources and links to free software.

What Should I Know About Graphics

When using images in your rapid e-learning courses you want to maintain the best quality possible. A lot of this has to do with the image formats. The challenge is to understand the various formats and what’s best for your project.

This article from Wikipedia does a great job explaining image formats and their differences.

Typically, you’ll find the best success if you can stick with vector-based images because they scale better. Here’s a good post that explains more about images in e-learning.

In addition to understanding how the formats work, it is worth having a good graphics editing program to help you with your rapid e-learning development. It allows you to manipulate and customize images, as well as convert and save to various formats.

What Should I Know About Audio?

Good audio quality is a combination of equipment, location, and talent. You need to begin with the best audio quality because you cannot increase it over the original.

The microphone you use affects the quality of your audio. There are many resources online to teach you about microphones. The main thing to understand is that microphones are not the same and how they record audio is different. Take some time to learn the basics of microphone technology. It’ll help you get the best results when you record narration. I also recommend visiting a community forum to ask others what mics they use and how they record their narration.

Ideally, you get to record your audio in a controlled environment like a studio. However, this is usually not the case. Many times you’re forced to record the narration in a conference room with limited control over the ambient sound like office chatter, copying machines, and air conditioning. In this case, make do with what you can. Turn off the air conditioner. Unplug office machines. Ask people to be quiet. Before I record, I like to stick my head out the door and tell everyone to “shut your stinkin’ traps.” This way they know something serious is going on.

The quality of your narration is important to your e-learning course. If you choose to go with non-professional talent, expect that you’ll get what I like to call “presentation quality” audio. The advantage to this approach is that you can produce it quickly and at a good cost. For many projects, this is fine. However, you get what you pay for.

If you find that you want a polished sound, you might want to budget for professional narration. While it appears to cost more than going with non-professional narrators, you can save a lot by avoiding time-consuming edits and audio retakes.

What Should I Know About Video

Rapid e-learning’s popularity means that there is an increase in the demand for video. It is important to have a basic understanding of the different video formats, frame rates, streaming, and how to get the best quality for web delivery.

PC Magazine has a good article on using video in PowerPoint. A lot of the information is relevant to rapid e-learning.

Video quality is like audio. You are not going to get better video than the video you start with. It’s important to learn some basics about creating good quality video. Videomaker magazine is a good resource for non-expert video making. They have good tips and techniques and they write to those of us who don’t create videos for a living. It’s a great place to start.

As the rapid e-learning tools evolve, you’ll need to have good end-to-end skills. You don’t need to to be an expert at everything; however you do need to understand the basics. Learn more about multimedia and built a good network of resources to help you when you need it.

Additional resources

Here is a list of some additional resources.

• Learn more about graphic formats
• Learn more about digital audio
• Learn more about video

Our last post answers the question of what to do when you’re through.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.