Finnberry does Ed-Tech

Just over a year ago, I subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud. It's a suite of applications for photo editing, graphic design/creating, video editing and loads more. It was quite expensive, even with a substantial discount but I really wanted to develop some new skills that would sit alongside my Articulate skills. Each week, the Articulate community posts a challenge. Usually, it's something to do with Storyline and eLearning but this week's was to create a cloned interview.  Cloned Interview "What on earth is a cloned interview?" you may ask. Well, I had no idea either. I watched a couple of examples and soon it became obvious. It's a video where you have two of the same person and they interact with each other.  It kind of reminded me of The Lady in the Van. Alan Bennett has two personas in the film and they talk to each other. It's quite an interesting technique but I figured the subject has to fit that kind of thing. Positive Self-Talk I've had vario...

Wow! What a year 2019 has been! It's hard to believe that this time, last year, I was still working for the local adult learning service. I feel like I've been in my current role for much longer. This time, last year, I was desperately trying to learn Storyline 3, in preparation for starting my new job. Now, as I look back, I think I have learned so much more, both from a techie perspective and also as a designer. Articulate 360 I have learned so much about this amazing suite, that I could probably fill a whole book! So what are the highlights? What have I learnt, that is more than I expected to learn?  One of the most important things I have learned, is about compliance with assistive technologies. It's ironic that, as a Dragon user, I wasn't more aware of this before, but I tended to only use Dragon for speech-to-text. It was basically a dictation software for me, when writing assignments. I had also 'bumped into' JAWS, whilst studying for my Master...

If you've been following my blog, you'll already know that I recently acquired Adobe Creative Cloud. I'll be honest, even the name 'Illustrator' turned me right off. I am notoriously bad at art. Many years ago, when I was a childminder, I would draw basic shapes - stick men, house, tree - and small children would screw their faces up, look utterly baffled and exclaim, "What is it?" Illustrating is never going to be my forte! I'm not being negative. I just can't draw, or paint, or do many things that are arty farty. What I can do, is use a computer and learn to use new software. So I decided to find out whether Illustrator could maybe bridge the gap for me... give me some artistic skills that are otherwise lacking. And I was pleasantly surprised! The first surprise was that, for the first time in my life, I found myself enjoying art. My last art lesson (at age 13) was marked by the teacher, who may have been a trifle drunk (this was the 1980s)...

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for a year of Adobe Creative Cloud. I'd been looking at it for a while, as a professional development activity, but the price had put me off. Then a special offer came along, which made it a wee bit more affordable, so I splashed out! It comes with more than twenty apps, which is more than I can process in one go, so I decided I would start with Photoshop and Illustrator. I watched dozens of the online video tutorials, which were a great introduction to Photoshop. I haven't really touched Illustrator yet, though I will be doing. What I have discovered, which I really like, is Lightroom. Lightroom stood out because, as well as the app, there is a web version of it, so I can use it wherever I happen to be. It will take a while of playing with the different sliders to know what works best, but it certainly helps solve one of my main photography problems. I have a black dog. Black dogs are a pain in the backside to get good photos of. ...