The Best Free Training

Adobe’s PDF document format is everywhere! PDF stands for “Portable Document Format” and its used by publishers to distribute eBooks, user manuals, course study guides, and all sorts of documents. PDFs may be downloaded and displayed on computers, ebook readers, and many other hand-held devices.

Since most computers come with the free Adobe Reader software, almost everyone is able to view PDFs as soon as they turn on their device.  However, if you use Adobe’s free Reader software to view these documents, you won’t be able to make changes or annotations.

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(Above: A Sample eBook Page Annotated by PDF XChange Viewer)

Enter Tracker Software’s amazing free software, PDF-XChange Viewer.

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Topic: Overview of Windows 7 Professional Features
Format: Web-based training with text, screen shots, and comparison table (free registration required)
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

Have you been wondering if its time to switch to Windows 7? This tight little mini-course from the HP Learning Center can help you decide. According to the website: “This quick lesson is designed for small business owners and their employees all around the world.”

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Topic: Technical and not-so-technical info & how-to guides to help WordPress bloggers
Format: Website with many, many videos and blog posts
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

WordPress is an open source (i.e., free) blog publishing application. And it’s also one of the most popular tools used by bloggers everywhere. Both of my blogs, The Best Free Training and Inspired Project Teams, have the powerful engines of WordPress running underneath their hoods. (Each of these blogs has a different “look and feel,” since each uses a different “theme” or layout/design scheme. But both are operational thanks to WordPress.)

WordPress is also a community of hard-working and dedicated folks who create, maintain, and help each other use the many tools and add-on stuff that has grown up around this amazing application. And, as if it’s not enough that these dedicated people keep WordPress running & free, they have now launched a giant collection of free video resources for all us WordPress bloggers.

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Topic: Overviews of technology-related topics, finance, and more
Format: Website featuring ultra-brief (under 5 minutes!) videos that are uniquely animated, fun, and filled with big ideas.
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

So how much content can you cram into 5 minutes (or less) of video…. and still have powerful, clear explanations? You can see for yourself at the amazing Common Craft website! It’s recently been completely reworked and has a great, easy-to-use new interface.

If you want tight (and fun) little explanations of all sorts of complex topics, then you gotta check this site. And if you are a video producer or a trainer, you need to see what these guys are up to! They set the bar very high indeed for quick, clean, efficient, and effective training tools!

I’m a big fan of Common Craft and have reviewed several Common Craft videos on this blog in recent months. And they are all amazing, fun, and information-packed.

You’ll find links to my past reviews, as well as a complete list of all Common Craft videos available at the website, below:

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Topic: User training for the Microsoft Office family of computer software (many titles)
Format: Web-based self-study training with screen shots, animations, audio, sample file downloads and hands-on practice
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

Most of us use one or more of Microsoft’s Office productivity-enhancing software tools. But if you’re like me, you are using only a small fraction of the features and functions of any of these powerful products.  The good news is that Microsoft has created a large collection of well-designed, easy-to-use, and highly effective courses that will help you learn to get the most from your MS Office software… no matter which product you’re using.

And all of these great courses are free!

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Topic: Basic computer and IT (Information Technology) skills and business applications
Format: Narrated slides with animations, software screen shots, interactive practice, and quizzes [free registration required]
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

This “course” is really a curriculum… an extensive collection of well-designed mini courses and lessons that will introduce you to everything you need to know about computers and how businesses and organizations use them. What’s more, it’s got plenty of hands-on, interactive, step-by-step training in the “big four” software applications (MS Word, Excel, Access, & Powerpoint) and use of the internet. And no computer experience is needed. From the website, comes this understatement: “The ALISON Basic Computing (ABC) IT course is for anyone who needs to learn basic computing skills, or has a need to demonstrate to an international standard that they are fully competent in the use of a personal computer and common computer applications.” This is simply the best introductory computer course I’ve ever seen!

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Topic: How to use RSS feeds and Google Reader
Format: Collection of web-based resources from several different publishers
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

I am hooked! Before I turn on the TV or go to a news site on the web, I now go straight to my Google Reader to check the latest posts from 1) my favorite blogs, 2) news sites and, 3) updates from other sites I’m tracking, including education and training sites. And I don’t have to navigate to a zillion sites to check what’s new. It’s all there, in headline form, in a single little box in my Google Reader’s headline list. Two things make all this possible:

• Ongoing streams of content from sites sporting that little orange “RSS feed” symbol (below, left).
• My free subscriptions to these content streams that are collected by the free (and easy-to-use) Google Reader (below, right).

If you’re engaged in self-directed learning, you should know about these two amazing tools and how they can deliver a custom stream of continually-updated content to you. In this post, I’ll share some videos and tutorials that will help you learn how to use both.

[By the way, this blog is available via RSS feed! See upper right corner of this screen, RSS symbol.]

(See Complete List of Videos/Tutorials in Comment Below.)