Welcome to my little page filled with lots of goodies to help you in your efforts to make a great WebCT course. My goal was to provide a central area where you can come and find things that may not have been covered during your training or that needed more attention. In addition, I will list links to several PC applications that will help you create or edit content for your courses. I will try and list the mainstream programs and some similar freeware ones as well. Depending on your budget and willingness to experiment you can choose which programs are right for you. Enjoy!
Oscar Villarreal P.S. If you have any questions or would like to request specific information to be added to this page just let me know. Simply contact me via email (kaov002@tamuk.edu) or by phone (361.593.2749). I plan to add tutorials for some of the programs listed below in the near future. |
Class Misc Downloads |
Click icons below to view or download |
| WebCT "Circle" Edition Icon Set - Some of the icons in the Jump Start WebCT training course have a circle around them. If you would like to use these for your own WebCT course you can download this zip file containing a full set! I tried to reproduce all the photo ones for you. | |
| WebCT "Circle" Edition PSD Template - If you would like to try and make your own WebCT icon for your course and use the circle design you can download this PSD file. It can be edited with Adobe Photoshop CS or Gimpshop. See below for more information on these applications. | |
| Jump Start "Jump Started" Flash Buttons - For any of our Jump Start participants that have completed their courses here are some buttons to show your dedication and display that it was Jump Start approved. They are several color available, just choose the date that your course passed all it's requirements and went gold. |  |
| How to embed a flash file into your WebCT course - This is a work in progress tutorial showing you how to embed a flash file into your WebCT course. You can have audio, video, and call-outs from Camtasia as well. Even in a quiz! Check out this PDF file for a short tip sheet of how the code is used. |  |
| WebCT 4.0 Manual - Read up on your spare time. There is nothing like giving it the ol' college try on your own! Here is a great WebCT manual with lots of information. | |
Web Resources |
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| Web Monkeys HTML Cheat Sheet - If you do not have access to a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) HTML editor here are some handy html tags. These really come in helpful when you have to code from scratch or need to fix some bad code in your WYSIWYG editor. | |
| Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) - The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an invaluable source for learning how you can make your web pages ADA compliant. Check out this link for more information. | |
| Free Play Music - This is an excellent site for downloading all types of royalty free music. If you are ever in a pickle and need some great tunes, check it out. | |
| Stock Xchng - You can a lot great free stock photos from this site. Simply sign up and start browsing. Most photos can be downloaded on the spot, some will require you to ask the author for permission first. It is a valuable site none the less. | |
Graphic Applications |
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Adobe Photoshop CS2 ($$$) - There ain' t nothing like the real thing. This is it and it is also "really" expensive. This is one of my favorite programs for image creation and editing. You can get an educational version for a lot less than retail. If you can afford it, it is an excellent program. Try the demo free for 30 days!  |
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Gimpshop (FREE) - I just recently discovered this program. It is a freeware application that is very powerful. Many people have compared it to a free imitation version of Photoshop. For the price (did I say free?) this one is worth checking out. Keep in mind that this is beta software still in active development and may have bugs and various crashing issues. Check the website for updates often.  |
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Color Scheme Generator 2 (FREE) - If you need some help coming up with some colors for your site or images this application is a life saver. It can generate many types and styles of color scheme for you. It is free and highly recommended! You can use it online from the provided link or download a local copy.  |
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Flash Applications |
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Swishmax ($$.$$) - The full blown Macromedia Flash program is a monster. It even scares me. You could make a profession just out of Macromedia Flash in itself. I found this excellent program about a year ago and love it! It is more user friendly and comes with a lot of pre-made effects for you to use. The interface is a little confusing but easier to use than the actual Macromedia Flash program itself. This is what I used to create the Jump Start intro you saw on Day 1 of your training. The educational version is much cheaper than the retail one.  |
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| Coffeecup Flash Firestarter ($$.$$) - Firestarter is a great little application if both Flash & the above Swishmax seem to difficult for you. It has a stripped down interface and really gently introduces you to flash effects. You can rather easily add effects to text and images with this program. |
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Web Applications |
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| Macromedia Dreamweaver ($$$.$$) - This is my favorite (WYSIWYG) HTML editor. I prefer it over Microsoft Frontpage. It can be a little pricey and hard to use right out of the box. However, the learning curve is worth it. |
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| Nvu (FREE) - Touted as the free alternative to Dreamweaver. I just recently discovered it and need to test it some more. However, in the short time that I have tried using it. It seems to be very promising for an open source application. Give it a try! | |
PDF Applications |
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| Adobe Acrobat Professional ($$.$$) - There is no denying that PDF documents are extremely useful. You can find them on the web, in your emails, and around your office computers. However, how do you create one and do you need a high priced program such as this one? With the Adobe Acrobat Reader you are limited to only viewing a PDF you cannot create one with it. Thankfully Adobe has three versions of Acrobat for you to pick from. This professional version might be overkill for your needs. This program is like the Swiss Army knife of PDF programs. You can convert from and to and to and from file formats with it. You can also do some basic editing directly to the PDF document as well among many other things. If you really only need to convert a file into a PDF document look at the other products below. |
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| Adobe Acrobat Standard ($$.$$) - This is light version of professional and can offer you similar features for a lot less. To get a full feature comparison please visit the website or click here for a pdf. |
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| Adobe Acrobat Elements ($$.$$) - Update: Sorry folks this budget version of Acrobat is only available in batches of a minimum 100 copies (licenses). Maybe we can call CIS and ask them to get it for the College as a Christmas gift ;-) | |
| PDFCreator (FREE!) - This is an excellent open source PDF creator that is available for free. PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application. You cannot edit the PDF after it is created but it is excellent otherwise. |
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| Docudesk DeskPDF Professional ($29.95) - If you main goal is to simply convert a file into a PDF than this is your program. With this very inexpensive application you can print to PDF from any application within Windows. You cannot convert from a PDF to say an HTML or Word file like with the Adobe programs. However, I have not been to impressed with Acrobats output of those features. In fact I recommend using the program below if you need to convert your PDF into a word document for full editing capability. |
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| Solid Documents Solid Converter PDF 3.0 ($$.$$) - Medium to high complex PDF documents are nearly impossible to edit even in Acrobat Professional. If you do not have access to the original document then this little program will save you a lot of time. Instead of having to recreate the PDF this program can convert it to a word document for you. You might be asking yourself why not use the "save as word" feature from Acrobat Professional? In my tests, this Solid Converter did a much better job of keeping the layout of the PDF document intact. |
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| Flash Paper 2.0 ($$.$$) - If you are not happy putting a PDF on your web site try this alternative from Macromedia. Converting a document into a flash file might make it integrate into your site better. Note: This program can also create a PDF file for you as well. I need to test it a little more but it seems worth investigating. | |