Having free clip art is a big deal for those of us on fixed budgets and with limited access to stock images and clip art to use in our elearning courses, presentations, and training programs. So last week’s news that Microsoft is bringing back free clip art was a breath of fresh, kind of.

About two years ago, Microsoft got rid of clip art. Because of this many of you have been using the free stock images sites, the free images in the community, and downloading the free vector images which you can edit in PowerPoint. This works fine, but it sure is handy having quicker access to the right images while you’re building the slide.

Free Clip Art via Pickit

The good news is Microsoft has formed a partnership with Pickit which offers a pretty big library of images. However, while Pickit offers some free images that you can access via PowerPoint, it doesn’t really work the same way it used to with the old clip art gallery.

Below, I’ll show how to install it and then a few tips on using it for your courses. To get started, I recommend creating an account with Pickit.

How to Install Pickit for Free Clip Art

This part was a little tricky because the instructions aren’t quite that clear.

• You’ll need to download the Pickit add-in from the Office store.
• Click the green “add” button. This should install Pickit. However, this is where I found the instructions to be a bit confusing.

Here are the instructions that Microsoft provides:

• Make sure you’re signed in to Office. Open any Office application and, in the top right corner, click Sign in. Type the email address and password you use with Office.
• If you’re using Word, Excel or PowerPoint, press Insert > My Add-ins. In the Add-ins for Office box, find your add-in.
• If you don’t see it, verify that you’re signed into Office. Press Refresh to update the list.
• If the add-in still doesn’t show up in the add-ins for Office list, it might have been hidden. You can use the My Add-ins for Office and SharePoint page to retrieve it.
• Double-click the add-in to start it.

Those instructions didn’t work for me. First off, my version of PowerPoint 2013 doesn’t have an Insert>My Add-ins option. Instead it’s Insert>My Apps. However, I don’t see the Pickit app in the list.

Here’s how to install the Pickit app if you have the same issue as I do.

• Make sure you’re signed into your Office account because the app is part of your account.
• Go to Insert>My Apps and click on the See All link. That will show all of your apps.
• Select the Pickit app and click on Insert. This will install the app.

Here’s a video that shows how to install Pickit in PowerPoint.

How to Use Pickit for Free Clip Art & Stock Images

I’m using PowerPoint 2013 so I’m not sure if the app works different for newer versions. Here are a few key features and considerations when using Pickit:

• The app opens a side panel where you can search for images. In the image above, I searched for “meeting.” The search produced three options: 1) free images, 2) pay per photo, and 3) request an image. Pay images are provided by Shutterstock at about $5/image. I’m not sure how it works if you already have a Shutterstock account, though.
• You can upload images and manage them (and purchased images) via the “your images” tab.
• The “request a photo” feature is pretty cool and allows you to ask someone to create or share an image you require.

• Based on their tutorial video, Pickit is supposed to add an icon to your toolbar. This didn’t happen for me. You’re also supposed to be able to select a word on the slide, right click, and search for an image. However, that wasn’t working for me, either. I’m not sure why, but I was too lazy to research it. If someone figures it out, add a note in the comments.

My impressions:

• It’s free and the available images are viable (although, it’s not really like the clip art Microsoft offered before).
• It does help people not bootleg images from Google that may cause copyright issues something that Bing kind of made a bit fuzzy when they dropped the free clip art.
• You can’t sort illustrated from photographic images. Also, the illustrations come in as .JPG which means they can’t be ungrouped like the earlier clip art. To edit them in PowerPoint you are limited but can use the tips offered in this tutorial post.
• It would be nice if the image details were tied to specific keywords for better searching.
• I love the idea of people uploading and sharing their free images.
• I’m not a fan of the pink branding. I’d prefer more contrast and a less bright color. But it’s free, so I’ll live with it.
• You can always find inexpensive stock photo subscriptions. In fact Graphic Stock (which has a good selection) regularly runs a $99/year subscription with unlimited downloads.

Are you using Pickit for free clip art? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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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.

A while back we had a great challenge on how to use video as the slide background in your elearning courses. It’s a great way to add texture and novelty to screens that are usually plastered with static images and bullet points.

Video backgrounds also force us to think how we’ll lay out the content to accentuate the video. That helps us think about layouts in different ways.

There are over 50 excellent examples in the challenge recap link above. Be sure to take a peak for inspiration. Here are a handful of the ones that stood out to me.

Examples of Free Stock Video Courses

• Great use of stock video throughout. Really elegant example.
• Just looks beautiful.
• Love the way she tied the colors and yoyo into the design.
• Beer! It’s already in the win column.
• Elegant opening screen.
• Clever way to get people to interact with the screen.
• Love the novelty of integrating real video with illustration.
• I like the way the panels animate in and out over the video.
• Great way to build a video meme: think outside the box and time travel.

There are a ton more great examples for this challenge. Be sure to check them out. Which ones do you like best?

Find Free Stock Videos

One of the first questions that comes up is where to get free stock videos. Most of us have our own media production studios in the form of our smart phones and tablets. It’s easy enough to shoot high quality footage to use in your own courses. This adds real context and a connection to your subject matter and organization. If you’re not comfortable shooting your own stock video, try out some of these free stock videos sites. And don’t forget about all of the free stock photo sites we covered earlier.

• Coverr: seven new videos every week.
• Pexels: lots of good stuff and link to free stock photos, too.
• Distill: not to be out done, ten new videos every ten days.
• Fancy Footage Club: site is closed but they provide a Dropbox link to download all of the free stock videos. Get it while you can.
• Videvo: free but want a social media share when you use the video. That’s fair for free content.
• Vimeo: miscellaneous free stock videos.
• Cute Stock Footage: some cool green screen videos.
• Videezy: decent selection, but they lead with Shutterstock examples, which requires an account.
• Mazwai: lots of videos, but the site seems to freeze when they all load.
• Vidsplay: totally free stock videos.
• Clip Canvas: free but not a big selection.
• Pond5: free stock videos found by Geraldo in Al Capone’s vault.

There’s more than enough free stock videos to keep you busy for a while. Now it’s your turn. Take a stab at the background video challenge and submit an example here.

You can always find inexpensive stock photo subscriptions. In fact Graphic Stock (which has a good selection) regularly runs a $99/year subscription with unlimited downloads. They also have a video  and audio service that is reasonably priced.

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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.

In this post we’ll look at an easy way to customize illustration in PowerPoint, since it’s a tool most of us have and it’s easy to do.

Most illustrations are vector images that are saved in a format such as. EPS or .AI that allows you to edit them. However, what happens when you have an illustration in a bitmap version such as .JPG or .PNG but you don’t have the source file to edit it?

This is an issue I run into quite a bit because I get some of my graphics from those low cost (or free) stock image sites and often they only provide a .PNG version of the file. In fact, I ran into this issue in a previous post on getting an elearning job. I’ll explain what I started with and how I made the modifications I needed.

Finding the Right Illustrations in PowerPoint & E-Learning

I found an illustration style that I liked. Then I clicked to see what else the illustrator created. This is a great way to find multiple images of the same style.

Production Tips:

• Stick with the same illustrator to have a consistent look.
• Review all of the illustrations from the illustrator.
• Don’t spend too much time trying to find the perfect illustration. Instead, identify elements of the illustration that you may extract to create your own custom illustration. For example, in the images above, the backgrounds would be perfect for elearning scenarios.

How to Edit Vector Illustrations in PowerPoint

Many of the illustrations you purchase will be in one of these formats: .EPS, .AI, .PNG, or .JPG. The first two are compiled illustrations which can be ungrouped and edited. Unfortunately, this may mean you need to learn how to work with an illustration app like Inkscape.

However, if that’s not something you feel comfortable doing, you can always edit .EPS vector images in PowerPoint. This is something I covered in this blog post on how to edit free vector illustrations. It’s not always perfect, but it works well most of the time.

Production Tips:

• Vector illustrations can be ungrouped and edited. Usually you need an illustration app.
• .EPS files can be ungrouped and modified in PowerPoint.
• Here’s a bonus tip on how to edit the illustrated characters that come with Articulate software.

How to Edit Non-Vector Illustrations in PowerPoint

Here’s the real challenge. You have a great image, but all you have is the bitmap version or it (and you’re not that great of a graphic designer). How do you modify characters to meet your needs?

That’s exactly what I ran into with the blog post I mentioned earlier. All I had was the .PNG files. I liked the illustration style, but the images only had men in it and I wanted to add a female character. Here’s how I made the modifications. It’s pretty simple.

Here’s a video that walks through the production process in more detail.

Click here to view the video tutorial.

The image above shows the before after versions. I didn’t need make significant edits.

• I selected the easiest character to modify.
• I changed the hairstyle by adding some ovals.
• I used the color picker and matched the oval fill color with the hair.
• I added a yellow oval to the ear lobe and color picked from the guy’s tie.

As you can see, the results are OK. The key is simplicity and not trying to add too much detail. I also, needed more room for text, so I added a white oval over the smaller chat bubble.

This next image was a little bit more involved. I modified the face and blouse using custom shapes.

• I added an oval for the hair.
• I rounded the face a little using the curve tool and color picked from the wall to cover up the jaw line.
• I added color to the lips and softened the color by making the shapes a bit transparent.
• I used the curve tool to modify the blouse and filled with the blouse color.
• You probably can’t see it, but I added some eye liner.

Again, watch the video above to see more detail on how to make the modifications. This isn’t a perfect solution, but when you’re stuck with bitmap images (and can’t easily edit them in a graphics tool) you can still meet your needs modifying the images in PowerPoint. The good thing is that these flat illustrations are easily covered with custom shapes and filled with matching colors.

Here’s a bonus challenge for you, assuming you only had the .PNG and could only work in PowerPoint, how would you change the skin tone?

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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.

I had a couple of questions this week about elearning jobs. First, someone asked me what they should expect when hiring an elearning course developer. And on the flip side, someone I know was looking for work and wanted some tips on how to get a job.

Here’s my take and some things I’ve done in the past as a hiring manager and when looking for work. Also, I just updated a lot of the event info for this year. Be sure to check out if we’ll be in your area.

Expect an E-Learning Portfolio

For the manager:

Some people are good talkers and do great at interviews. They’re pros at answering your behavioral questions. They may also have a strong resume listing good work experience and education. All of those things are great and important to consider, but can they really do the work? How do you know?

I like to see a portfolio of projects. I want to see what they’ve worked on and know what exactly they did in those projects.

For the job seeker:

If you don’t have a portfolio, how can I see the type of work you’ve done? Often people will tell me that they can’t share what they’ve done because it’s proprietary and they don’t have the rights to show it. While that may be true for some, I’ve found that to be mostly hogwash and an excuse to not show work.

Even if it’s true that you can’t show your real projects, it’s still not an excuse for not having a portfolio. If you can’t show real work, remove the proprietary content and use lorem ipsum text, if you have to. Or participate in the weekly elearning challenge. That’s an easy and quick way to build a portfolio.

This may sound harsh and it’s your prerogative to not have a portfolio. But the reality is that the job will attract other job seekers who do have a portfolio and are better prepared to get hired. Your education and experience don’t entitle you to anything. The only thing that matters is if you can use your skills to help the hiring organization meet its needs. And a portfolio is one of the best ways to demonstrate your work experience.

Look for Diverse E-Learning Examples.

For the hiring manager:

As you know, elearning is more than a bunch of bullet point screens. If that’s what you need, you can hire just about anyone. If you want a good elearning developer you should look for one who can do more than great looking bullet point slides. Some of what I look for:

• How they got past bullet points with unique layouts or small interactions
• Types of interactive content and learning activities
• Scenario driven content
• Software training: simulations or screencasts
• Creativity

For the job seeker:

When assembling a portfolio, pull together diverse elearning examples with different types of courses and interactions. Don’t expect the hiring manager to click through 30 slides to get to the one interesting interaction. Pull the interaction out and show just that.  Don’t show twenty click-and-read compliance courses that are all essentially the same. Also, don’t lock the navigation. That guarantees that the reviewer won’t click past the first slide.

One last point on this: looks matter. You may have the most instructionally sound course to show, but the ones that get the eyes are the ones that look good. Something to keep in mind.

Hire for Desired E-Learning Skills

For the hiring manager:

Understand what role you’re trying to fill and then craft questions to collect the information you need to assess whether the person can fill that role. It also allows you to be consistent in the process across candidates. I like to create a rubric so that I’ve consistent and can compare candidates based on the same question.

This appears to be an obvious point, but often the interviews get sidetracked. And sometimes the hiring staff gets enamored with the person’s personality or other things and never gets around to finding out if they’re really qualified.

For the job seeker:

I used to make a two-column list. On one side I listed what the organization identified in the job announcement. And on the other, I listed my response and my experience. This helped me prepare custom resumes specific to the job application. It also helped me with practicing my interview answers.

Collect some job posting and make a list of what they want and then compare what they want to your skill set. Even if you’re not looking for work, this is a great way to identify areas for personal development.

Assign an E-Learning Project

For the hiring manager:

Some people are good talkers (our industry is filled with good talkers) and sometimes it can be hard to assess whether or not they actually have the skills you desire. When I get to the next round of interviews, I assign a simple project. I tell them I don’t expect a polished module. I just want to get a sense of what they can do and then walk through what they did. It’s a way to establish some context for talking together and for them to show off what they can do.

Here is what I like to know:

• Why did they take the approach they did?
• What part did they like best? Worst?
• Where do they feel they best demonstrate their skills?
• If they could do it again, what would they change?

Some people put in a lot of effort and some put in the bare minimum. Again, they can do what they want. But to me it says a lot when a person who’s competing for job does the bare minimum to impress you.

I’ve had people tell me that it’s ridiculous that I expect them to build a simple module for the interview. That’s fine because it helps weed out candidates. Again, this may seem harsh, but as a hiring manager I usually have more than enough qualified candidates, so if someone is kind enough to make the screening process easier on me, that’s great.

For the job seeker:

If you made it to this point in the process you have a great chance of getting the job. Now it’s time to impress the hiring manager. Here are a few key things to consider:

• Do your best. You’re competing against other qualified people.
• Looks matter. Even if it’s a simple project, make sure it looks tight.
• Focus on activities and interactions.
• You probably don’t have time to build a whole course, but be prepared to talk about what you’d do if you did have the time and resources.
• Humor is good and can make you stand out. But it can also make you stand out for the wrong reasons in our hyper sensitive culture.

The key in all of this is to find the best person for the job. Hopefully these tips help. And for the person who’s looking for a job, you want to be the one who stands out.

If you’ve recently hired an elearning developer or gone through an interview for an elearning job, what tips to do you have? Feel free to share them 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.

A few years back working with video was not all that easy. Most networks couldn’t support the delivery of video and producing video was expensive and really time-consuming. However, that’s changed quite a bit over the years.

Rapid E-Learning Makes Interactive Video Easy

Here’s one of my favorite examples of how things changed with the advent of rapid elearning. A few years back, one of our Flash developers was a little behind on a project to create a flash-based video player for one of our courses. When I looked at what he was doing, I asked why he didn’t just use Engage’s media interaction since it was easy enough to insert the video and required no programming.

Click here to see an example of an Engage interaction with video.

Of course, since he was an experienced Flash programmer (who took pride in his programming chops) he hemmed and hawed about why rapid elearning sucked and how it was better if he did it on his own. However, with some prodding he relented and gave Engage a chance. And guess what? 5 minutes later he was done which meant he could use his advanced programming skill on other projects that required it more.

The point is that today’s tools have made video production so much easier. Gone are the days of burdensome programming. On top of this, most of us have smartphones and tablets that are pretty awesome media production tools. And now delivery over the organization’s networks is also much better.

So that means today producing interactive and engaging video-based courses is viable and a great way to deliver your training. Here are a couple of easy ways to use interactive video for your online training.

Interactive Video: Click and Collect or Explore for More

In this example the video plays and at certain points a clickable object displays. The user can ignore it and continue viewing the video or she can click on the object which pauses the video and exposes additional content. Here’s quick demo I created using this video from YouTube produced by Union Gas.

Click here to view interactive video example.

Here are a couple of other examples of similar interactive videos:

• Learn to cook
• Brew a cup of coffee

This approach works great for annual refresher training where the experienced person watches the video, but the less experienced person has the option to stop and learn more. It’s also a great way for the user to collect information that may be critical for other interactions in the course.

Interactive Video: Click & Quiz

This example is similar to the example above. The main difference is that you can pause the video to assess the users understanding at certain points in the instruction.

Click here to view the interactive video quiz example.

The example above also introduces two options. One is for quick assessments where tracking is not required. And for those times where tracking in the LMS is required, the lightbox method works perfectly.

Here are a few other examples of similar interactive videos.

• Two Truths and a Lie: have the learner review multiple videos and choose the correct one. Great for role playing, soft skills, or product training.
• Interactive Video Quiz: includes a how-to tutorial and free download to create your own.

This use case is perfect to confirm that they’re acquiring information from the video to quiz them on what they’ve learned. While the quizzes in these examples are basic, there’s no reason why you couldn’t make them more complex using variables or branched video interactions.

As noted earlier, interactive video for e-learning is a viable solution. Check out some of the other examples here and try your hand at your own interactive video. And of course, if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask. We’re always there to help.

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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.

Here’s an easy way to turn a single image into an interactive image. This tip comes in handy if you use collage images for interactive stories or have a great illustration but no way to break it into separate pieces. That’s what I ran into with this recent demo I built for the blog post on simplifying variables for e-learning.

Click here to view demo.

I had a great image of multiple characters, but all I had was a single .png file. I needed a separate image for each character to create my interaction. In my example, I wanted the individual people to have a hover effect. Since I couldn’t separate them into individual images, I used the crop tool to isolate the characters and create a simple interaction.

E-Learning Tutorial Step-By-Step

Learn more by following the steps of the e-learning tutorial below and then watch the video for more detail.

• Insert the image and duplicate it. Make sure the duplicate is on top of the original and perfectly aligned. I also recommend naming all of the assets you place in your slide. I like to lock the original image so I don’t accidentally nudge it out of place.

• Create a state for each character. Add a new state for each character on the duplicate image. Then crop each state to isolate the character. You’ll want to make the state visually different so that when you switch to a character state there’s some sort of contrast to the original. Some people like to add glows or resize the new state.

• Insert a hotspot over each character. Since you only have a single image, you’ll need multiple hotspots on top of it to simulate the interaction and change the large image to the isolated character states.

• Add a trigger to the hotspot. Each hotspot triggers a state change to a specific character. Add the first one, and then duplicate it to speed up production. For this demo, I’m using on mouseover, but you can use any action appropriate to your interaction.

Now you have an interactive image built from a single image. It didn’t require you to break the image into smaller pieces or manipulate an illustrated vector.

E-Learning Tutorial Video

Here’s a video that shows the steps in a bit more detail.

Click here to view the e-learning tutorial.

This is a great technique when you’re stuck using an image that you can’t edit. And as you can see, it doesn’t take long to convert the static image into something a bit more interactive.

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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.

Consistency is one of the most important parts of the course production process. And one way to maintain consistency is to determine your naming conventions. And this is especially true of variables for e-learning.

In a previous post, we looked at ways to manage and name your course files. And if you’re working inside an authoring tool like Storyline you want to name your objects and layers. You can also name your objects in PowerPoint using the selection pane.

Following these steps will make your production process less frustrating especially if you put the project away for a period of time and revisit it later. Poor names and sloppy file management will really slow down your work flow and often introduces errors in the production.

And now for naming variables for e-learning….

How to Name Variables for E-Learning

I’ve been working on a series that covers the basics of using variables in elearning. And be sure to check out these examples and tutorials.

One of the most frequent questions for those getting started is why did you name the variable the way you did? I learned to name variables a certain way (without spaces) but there’s some latitude.

Don’t Use Spaces. 

Here’s the deal, you can name your variables anything you want. However, there are usually a few constraints. One of them is that you can’t use spaces. Which means your variable name can’t be Module 1 Complete. So instead of using spaces, you can use some of these tricks:

• Use underscores to separate the words (Module1_Complete) or
• Use capital letters to separate words (Module1Complete).

Be Descriptive. 

Name the variable so it’s specific and make sense. For example, if I am tracking completion of a module, which name is the most descriptive?

• Variable = Complete1 or
• Variable = Module1Complete

If you don’t use descriptive names and use lots of variables you’ll find it a challenge to quickly process what you see.

Shorter is Better. 

Be as descriptive as you can with the fewest letters possible.

What and when.

Some people use a What_When process. For example:

• CountClicks is what do you do (Count) and when do you do it (on click).
• Another example, Module1Complete_Exit indicates that the variable changes when the module is complete on exit.

The main point in all of this is to come up with a protocol that makes sense and apply it consistently. If you’re working with a team you’ll find this saves a lot of time and confusion, especially as you revisit projects and make updates.

What are some things you do to maintain consistency in the production process? How do you name variables for elearning? Feel free to share in the comments section.

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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?

Events

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.

Who doesn’t like some help when it comes to building courses? How many times have you tried to identify a font, or find the source of an image, or tried to find just the right stock photo?

Well, today you’re in luck. I’m going to show you a few simple search techniques to find the right multimedia when you need it.

Multimedia for E-Learning: How to Find and Identify a Font

There are so many times I have to go back to old projects but can’t recall what font I used or where to get it. If that’s something you’ve also run into, then here are a couple of simple ways to find fonts.

What the Font?

Upload an image with the font you want to identify and the site tries to locate the closest font based on the font’s characteristics.

• Step 1: Upload image to What the Font.
• Step 2: Align fonts to letters.
• Step 3: Review possible fonts. Take a quick screen grab of an image with the font.

It’s not always perfect but for the most part it does a great job.

A few other similar sites:

• FontMatcherator
• WhatFontIs
• Identifont

And if you need some free fonts you really can’t beat Google Web Fonts because they’re all opensource and truly free to use. And be sure to check out these free hand written fonts.

Multimedia for E-Learning: How to Find the Source of an Image

A while back I started working on a demo module and used a temporary image. However, I forgot where I got the image and needed to know so I could purchase it for the demo.

TinEye

TinEye is a reverse image site that searches the Internet for the image and lists sites where it’s found.

You upload the image and it tries to locate where else it is being used. You can also install a browser plug-in and search right from your browser.

Another source for doing a reverse search on images is via Google. Upload an image and it searches for a matching image (or similar images).

Multimedia for E-Learning: How to Search Free Stock Photos

This one I’ve mentioned in the past. There are all sorts of free stock image sites. However, it’s time-consuming to stay on top of them all, especially considering that most of the images, while nice, have little value in the world of elearning.

StockUp

StockUp’s a collection of free stock image sites so all you have to do is enter a search term and see what comes up. Pretty simple, huh? Here is a previous post on searching for free stock images that includes a few other sites.

If you’re ever looking for just the right font, image, or free stock photo, then these three resources will sure come in handy. Are there any similar search services you use to find multimedia for your elearning projects?

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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.

Here are some scenario background images that are great for your next interactive branched e-learning scenario course. These backgrounds go really well with the illustrated characters that come with the Articulate applications or those you may find at some of the free vector image sites.

I got the original backgrounds by ungrouping some old PowerPoint clip art (unfortunately no longer available). After ungrouping them, I made some modifications so they’d work with the branched e-learning scenarios. Of course, these images are relatively simple to make using basic shapes in PowerPoint or Storyline or by downloading some free vector images and making your own edits.

Be sure to check out these free office images for branched scenarios, too.

Breaking Down the Free Background Images

The image files are saved in the master slides as distinct layouts. To change from one background to the next, just go to the Home>Layout tab and select the layout you want to use. If you want to make edits to the backgrounds, you’ll need to do so from the master slide.

Once you have a background layout selected, add one of the illustrated characters. I like to play around with different sizes and cropping. There are a lot of ways to display the characters so feel free to play around with different looks.

The download file includes the template and the background images to be used with branched e-learning scenarios.

• Download Storyline file
• Download PowerPoint file

If you use the backgrounds, be sure to let me know how they work for you. Enjoy.

Events

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.

I like to play with new apps and test them to see how they help me be more productive or get better at building courses. Today I share three free apps that you may find to be time-savers or help be more productive.

Help with Google Docs

We use Google Docs here at Articulate. If you use Google Docs, then you know that when working on projects, you don’t just have one Google Doc. Instead, like dandelions they grow exponentially, and you end up with dozens of Google Docs. In fact, I was thinking about writing a follow up to the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie books based on giving someone a Google Doc, because chances are…

Here’s an easy way to add links to a Google Doc from other Google Docs.

Because we tend to have a lot of documents for each project it’s easy to lose sight of what’s there. Some people create a master document with links to all of the other docs. However, it’s a pain to dig around finding links and adding them to the master document.

However, if you use the Link Chooser add-on, it’s just a matter of quickly finding and adding a link right from the document. This creates a link and title for the link. Here are the steps:

• From inside Google Docs, select Add-ons > Get add-ons and select “Link Chooser.“
• To add a link from a different document, go to Add-ons > Link Chooser > and then select the file or folder you want to link.

• A link to the document will be added.

This is a great way to create a master document for your project with links to all supporting documents in Google Drive. There are all sorts of additional add-ons that will extend your Google Docs. Be sure to check them out.

For you Google Docs users, are there any extensions or add-ons you like to use?

Share Your PowerPoint Slides to Twitter & Facebook

I like to tweet some of my workshop presentations. I used to convert my slides to images and then tweet the images. However, Microsoft has a new app that lets you share your PowerPoint slides and files via Twitter and Facebook.

Get the Social Share app here, and it installs as a tab in PowerPoint.

Using Social Share via Twitter & Facebook

• Select a PowerPoint slide and from the Social Share tab, do a screen capture of the slide.

• Add your comments and send the Tweet. Here’s an example of a tweet I sent using the app.

• You can also send PowerPoint slides to Facebook as an image, album, or video.

Create Simple Explainer Videos and Whiteboard Courses

Here’s another cool app from Microsoft that is free and helpful. This is also great to have if you one of those 2-in-1 computers with a stylus.

• Download the Snip app. It’s persistent on your desktop and easy to access.

• Once you create a snip you can record audio to quickly explain an image or create a quick whiteboard video.
• Save the video as .MP4 and insert into your elearning courses. Here’s a quick video test I made based on one of my PowerPoint slides on interactive elearning.

It’s a simple tool, but one that may come in handy for quick explanations. And it’s free.

Of the three tools the one I find the most useful is the Google links because I use Google Docs every day. Do you use any of these free apps? If so, how’s it going? If not, which one do you like best?

Events

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.

As you know, we have all sorts of free templates to download for your elearning courses and PowerPoint presentations. The challenge sometimes is figuring out when and how to use the templates for your own projects.

At a recent conference I was chatting with someone who wanted to make her software training look better. Her training was mostly a series of quick video tutorials. She wanted a nice way to present the tutorials. I recommended that she start with one of the free templates and use it as a way to package the tutorials.

Here’s a quick mock up I created for her using a template I gave away in a recent blog post.

Click here to view the demo.

You’ll notice that the free template is a little different than the final product. That’s because the free template is just the starting point. You don’t want the template design to dictate how you’ll build your course. So feel free to make the modifications that help you meet your project objectives.

• In this particular template I got rid of the different sized boxes and created the same size box for each video title.
• I also covered up the connectors lines that were a little busy-looking and possibly distracting.
• The slide layers were also cleaned out to accommodate the videos and playbar. These videos work fine in the preset size. Otherwise I would have set the player to scale up so the end user could make the videos larger.

Here’s a quick video tutorial where I show some of the changes I made to the template so that it worked for my demo. Hopefully that’ll give you some ideas on making your own modifications.

Click here to view the tutorial video.

For the most part, software training centers on explainer videos. In those cases, the template is a frame to hold the videos. What I look for is a good starting page that can serve as a menu or sorts and then space to hold the individual videos.

Here are some other templates I think would work great for software training.

• I like the bookshelf metaphor. The shelves can represent sections and the books are smaller teaching chunks. Each book cover would link to a video.

• Any tabs interaction would work well. The tabs are the menu and they link to the videos. Tabs also make efficient use of the screen space.

• Here’s another example of the free template, Business Circles, modified to add some gamified mechanics for a new hire orientation.

There are all sorts of great templates to use for your elearning courses and software training. Find a template and use it to create your next software training.

If you do, be sure to tell us how it went. Any particular template that you’d use for your software training?

Events

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.