Downloads
This is the place to sample training software, calculators, cool web services, and other helpful workplace tools. All demos, trials, and tools are FREE!, but some of the tools require registration. Each month we will take a look at a new suite of tools. Send submissions to rellis@astd.org.
October: ROI Calculators
Free Training Cost Forecasting Tool
BNH Experts offers free access to ADVISOR’s forecasting tool. You can easily assess start-up and recurring costs, as well as personnel and resources required. Moreover, the results are presented in concise charts and reports to provide the clarity needed for making decisions.
Training Costs Comparison Worksheet
MediaPro created the ROI Calculator (a Microsoft Excel workbook) to help you compare costs and calculate the return on investment (ROI) between varying methods of training. Using the ROI calculator you can compare training costs by student, class, or year; by life expectancy of the course; and by cost of facilities, maintenance, or equipment.
Online vs. Traditional Calculator
CUNA offers this free online tool to help its members calculate the net cost and ROI of online training vs. traditional methods. Fill in the white blanks (without commas) to the best of your ability. The grey blanks will have their figures calculated automatically.
September: Virtual Classrooms
WebEx 14-Day Free Trial
WebEx is an on-demand, interactive web conferencing you can access through any web browser. You can subscribe to WebEx service and get unlimited use for a set monthly fee, or you can use our meeting service on a pay-per-use basis. Connect without regard for platforms, firewalls or distances. Integrate WebEx with other applications, such as Outlook. WebEx offers integrated audio, giving users the choice to engage the capabilities they need on a flexible basis. Also, you get multilayer security including user authentication and encryption.
Saba Centra 30-Day Free Trial
Saba Centra is an online learning environment that combines a highly interactive virtual classroom learning, e-meeting, and web seminar platform with a learning content management system to deliver optimal blended learning. And, Saba Centra extends Saba’s learning management platform to include real-time training and collaborative sessions. Features include Centra recording studio, Surgient Virtual Labs extension, and enhanced browser and OS support.
Microsoft Live Meeting Demo
Microsoft® Live Meeting is a fully hosted real-time solution that lets you connect multiple people in multiple locations with just an Internet connection and a web browser. The service offers a choice of either low pay-per-use or flat monthly subscription pricing. Features include Power Point presentation sharing, online attendee registration and reporting, polls and surveys, virtual breakout rooms, audio streaming via the PC, and Microsoft® Outlook integration. Expert training and live 24x7 technical support is available at no extra charge.
Adobe Connect Pro 30-Day Free Trial
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro enables live, interactive web meetings, virtual classes, on-demand presentations and courses, and group collaboration. It allows organizations to effectively share a wide range of content, including Microsoft PowerPoint slides, live and recorded video, Adobe Flash® content, live screen sharing, application sharing, audio, and multiuser text chat. Running on ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player software, already installed on more than 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops, Acrobat Connect Pro enables easy access to live sessions with no software downloads.
August 2009 – eLearning Guild eBooks
The eLearning Guild offers several eBooks that are FREE for everyone, and Guild membership is not required to access them. While each eBook is focused on one theme, some are collections of tips it gathers from Guild members from around the world, and some are collections of articles from key industry leaders. Recently published offerings include
In either case, you'll find valuable information that you can use in your organization.
July 2009 – MicroSharing Tools
Twitter
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Facebook.
Yammer
Yammer brings micro-sharing to the enterprise. Each employee has a Yammer profile displaying their photo, title, expertise, background and what they are working on. Only employees with a valid company email address can participate in your private company network. You can form groups within your company network to enable collaboration with the people in your departments, teams or projects. In addition, employees stay connected wherever they are through Yammer's free BlackBerry, iPhone, IM, email or SMS clients.
Social Text Signals
Socialtext Signals provides social messaging integrated with Socialtext’s enterprise collaboration platform. While it provides a lot of the same great benefits of other micro-blogging tools like Twitter™, it provides many additional benefits as colleagues in a company use it to work towards common goals.
June 2009 – Favorite YouTube Downloads
Common Craft "Plain English" Series
Rather than point to a list of suppliers on a certain topic, this month LC is recommending that readers download Common Craft’s educational videos on YouTube. Common Craft produces a series of short online videos (average length is 3 minutes) to explain current technology in an accessible and entertaining way. Their “Plain English” videos are an excellent way to easily point colleagues, family, and friends at concise descriptions of technical advances, such as social networking tools, blogs, and RSS. And because they’re on YouTube, they’re free.
Here are a number of videos that are likely to be of interest:
For more, just go to YouTube and type in any topic + the words “Plain English” to see a video.
May 2009 – Mashup Editors
Mozilla Ubiquity
Mozilla Labs, the same group that created the Firefox web browser, has launched a prototype of a software service that lets nontechnical Web users create mashups, those marriages of applications, such as Google Maps and other information to create more useful apps. Ubiquity is fairly Web 2.0-centric, with emphasis on inserting maps anywhere, using social network sites like Digg and Twitter, as well as searching Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and YouTube.
Jackbe
Jackbe delivers trusted enterprise mashup software that empowers organizations to create, customize, and collaborate through enterprise mashups for faster decisions and better business results. Its innovative enterprise mashup software, Presto, provides dynamic enterprise mashups that leverage internal and external data while meeting the toughest enterprise security and governance requirements.
Yahoo! Pipes
Yahoo! Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs. Here are a few popular ways the service can be used create your ultimate custom feed by combining many feeds into one, then sorting, filtering and translating them; geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map; remix your favorite data sources and use the Pipe to power a new application; and build custom vertical search pages that are impossible with ordinary search engines.
IBM Mashup Center 60-Day Trial
IBM® Mashup Center is designed to provide an easy to use business mashup solution, supporting line of business assembly of dynamic situational applications, with the security and governance capabilities IT requires. With this lightweight mashup environment, organizations can unlock and transform enterprise, web, personal and departmental information into consumable or "mashable" assets, including information feeds and widgets.