Low Cost Tools for eLearning

I found out my speaking time at Total Connection 2009.  I’ll be speaking on Wednesday from 4 to 5PM.

My topic, if you didn’t remember, is Introduction to Web Analytics: Measuring the Use of your LMS.

Hope to see you then, and if not, I’ll be posting notes here as well so you can see how to, for little to no cost, measure the effectiveness of your website.

If you attened eLearners Guild Annual Gathering, you know I try to give you all something to walk a way with.

I’ll be doing the same at Total Connection 2009 (not sure which day I’m speaking on yet).  However, I will be presenting Introduction to Web Analytics: Measuring the Use of Your LMS. It is being offered as part of two (2) different learning tracks (Metrics and Report Tracking and Pathlore Deep Dive) .

As is normal for me, I’ll be showing how to use the free tool Google Analytics to measure how users interact with your site, and how to help determine if your LMS, or learning website, is helping or hurting your ability to  train.

So if you can attend, I’d love for you to stop by so I can go over how to help you with measuring the usage of your learning site. If you can’t attend, I’ve written about analytics measurements on websites before on my own blog, http://blog.waltdesign.com/

As normal, you can expect to see my slides later one as well.

For those who are used to Photoshop, Gimp is a good, but secondary type of tool. While Gimp is very strong, it does lack some core features which make it a little more difficult to use.

However several people have worked on adding plug-ins and skins to make Gimp more like Photoshop. Smashing Magazine has a list of  “tweaks”  to Make Gimp Replace Photoshop.

Definitely worth checking out if Paint.Net doesn’t do everything you need it to, and Gimp isn’t quite what you were looking for, but Photoshop is a little too much.

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GIMP is another free image editing software tool. It is more advanced than Paint.Net, if you need the added funcationality, and it supports linux as well as Mac OS X in addition to the standard Windows.

GIMP, is a full featured image editing application, supporting layers, plug-ins, as well as standard features for editing your images. Standard editing tools include perspective fixing, wide range of image reading and writing, photo editing, and more.  So it is full of strength.

Unfortunately, it is not as easy to use as some other tools. However, some people have added plugins and skins to make it easier to use.  Well look at those shortly.

If you are working on brainstorming ideas, using a “Mind Map” tool is often a great tool to see how things interrelate to one anonther.

Here is a tool I found recently Mind Node , which works on the Macs for developing Mind Maps. Designed to be simpler to use, it might provide what you need if your looking for an easy to use tool.

Mind Node has a free as will as a paid ($14.95) version. Something to look at if you run OS X (10.5 or greater is required).

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