Every time a new communications technology has been born, from printing presses to radio and television and now the Internet, farsighted and creative thinkers in education have been ready to use it for teaching purposes. In the last century alone we have seen technology advance from simple radio broadcasts to television in the 1950s, both of which were quickly drafted into the educational enterprise. When cable television systems began proliferating, Tennessee businessman Chris Whittle founded Channel One, which following several ownership changes is still providing news, lesson material and other programming for in-school broadcasts. Truly, educators have always been among the earliest of the early technology adopters, using anything they possibly can to augment and improve the education of their students.
Today it is not just about delivering lectures and audiovisual teaching materials to rooms full of students. The Internet lives up to its educational promise by providing many different ways that people can learn, from unstructured and freeform studies to degree programs from leading universities, public and private. The technology has also spawned an entirely new kind of education provider, the online-only school, and corporations have adopted these ways and means to deliver their own training and education to employees. The options and opportunities are virtually unlimited, which is quite in keeping with the nature of the new medium of the Web.
Targeted technology
online training has not stopped evolving since it began right at the dawn of the Web era, the early 1990s, when the graphical Web interface was added to the Internet architecture. In the early days of the Internet, there were not many high-speed connections and it was difficult to get video going both ways for videoconferencing. Today, with most people using high-speed internet connections, the educational enterprise can be improved with one-on-one counseling sessions, teacher-student interaction, group meetings online and other trappings of community that are important in some classes.
With the Internet as classroom, all study materials can be delivered as PDF files or other readable formats, and students can even record classes and lectures. All of the computer technology can be targeted toward the delivery, retention, archiving and recall of study materials, lectures and research, saving time, money and quite a bit of paper, as well. As further advances are made in Internet and computer technologies (bigger and better displays, eventual 3D monitors, etc.) they will be integrated into the education providers’ offerings. Even today, large wall-sized screens are being installed into meeting rooms and lecture halls that will bring live, life-size interactivity to Internet education.
Multiple paradigms
With the advent of all this computing and communications power, the standard model of education (teacher lecturing class) can be accomplished in a distributed manner, with class members either at school in the classroom, or at home signed in over the Web, or even at some other location with an internet-connected computer or smart phone. (There will be fewer and fewer reasons that students will have to miss class, and they may need to create new excuses about batteries dying or Wi-Fi signals being unavailable!) There is room with the new technology for multiple paradigms to flourish, and advances will be made by trying out a variety of settings and setups. Experimentation is always a strong contributor to progress, even as necessity is still called the mother of invention.
There are many companies out there in the for-profit education field now, many more than just five or ten years ago. The Internet has provided a means by which smaller, less well-funded organizations can begin to bring their own teaching and instruction to those that want it. At the same time, it has provided yet another channel (in addition to regular day schedules, night schedules, distance learning, special schedules, etc.) for established schools, public and private and at all levels, to bring their educational offerings to more and more people.
Bottom line
It is not exactly about the Internet when we speak of the evolution of education, but the Internet is currently the medium that offers the best quality for distance learning. In a few years, it will be the next generation of communication, whether it is 3D holographic, or four-wall-monitor immersive technology, or a combination of things. Educators will always keep their eyes open and their minds aware of techniques, tools and technologies that can help people learn and help the world advance past the horrible effects of ignorance. Right now, the Internet lives up to its educational promise every time a student switches to an online schedule instead of dropping out. To add to that, there’s also an influx of people pursuing online training options who would have otherwise thought they were done with education!
LearnQuest provides complete education solutions for organizations that need to train their staff on the latest business skills and Information Technology tools, methodologies, and languages. Through private online java training, LearnQuest can tailor all aspects of training to the goals and objectives of the client and the background of the participants.
There will be times within your Excel VBA code where you want to lock down the value of a variable but make it a variable nevertheless. For example, if your application makes reference to a tax rate, having the rate in a variable will offer you a mechanism for changing the rate wherever you have used it in your application. Thus, instead of entering code like “TaxAmount = SubTototal * 0.15″, you would use statements like “TaxAmount = SubTototal * TaxRate”, where tax rate would be a constant.
Constants have to be declared and initialised in one statement: for example “Const TaxRate as Currency = 0.15″. This is the only time that a value can be placed in the constant and herein lies one of its key benefits; the value it contains cannot later be accidentally overwritten because the programmer confuses this variable with another. The other key benefit is the ease with which constants allow us to update our applications. Thus, in the tax rate example, when the tax rate changes, we only need to modify one line of code and that change will update our entire application.
Another variable technique which allows us to “tighten up” the values which may be entered into a variable is to use User Defined Types (UDTs) which, essentially, allow you to define your own variable types. You can then declare as many variables of this given type as you need. Type definitions must be placed at the top of a module; they cannot be placed inside sub routines or functions. The definition consists of a code block inside which the various elements of the type are detailed as well as the data type associated with it. Here is an example of a type definition.
Type Employee
Name As String
Department As String
JobTitle As String
DateOfBirth As Date
StartDate As Date
Salary As Long
End Type
To use your UDT in our code, we use statements like the following:
Dim empNew As Employee
With empNew
.Name = “Gillian Spencer”
.Department = “Information Technology”
.JobTitle = “Web Developer”
.DateOfBirth = 12/05/1982
.StartDate = 25/03/2010
.Salary = 27500
End With
UDTs provide a very useful way of storing related variables in one place. In this regard, they resemble arrays; but, unlike arrays, the elements they contain are named rather than simply referred to by a numerical index.
You can get up to date information on Excel VBA training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Excel VBA Classes in London and throughout the UK.
Microsoft Excel 2007 has many differences from Excel 2003. Therefore, when you or your staff upgrade, you will almost certainly need training. But what kind of training will work best? Do you need an upgrade course that shows you the new features? Do you need a training course that compares Excel 2003 and 2007 and shows you how features have changed and evolved in the new version? Or do you need Excel training to take your skills to a new level, whatever the version?… Well, why not find a course that does all of the above?
One of the first things you should look for in having training on Excel 2007 is a full explanation of how the new interface works. You should be shown the new way of working and learn useful tips and shortcuts which will enable you to become at least as productive in Excel 2007 as you were in 2003.
In addition to this, however, you will want to learn the new features that Excel 2007 has to offer: the stuff that either wasn’t available in previous versions or which has undergone considerable enhancement.
One fundamental new feature in Excel 2007 is the dimension of a worksheet which is now about 1000 times bigger (in terms of the number of cells) than previous versions. A good Excel 2007 training course should show you how to fully exploit the space available and how to quickly navigate and manage the larger worksheets that will result.
Pivot tables are a key area where Excel 2007 has made improvements. Ensure that any Excel 2007 training that you book includes first of all an explanation of pivot table essentials (pivot tables often confuse users) and then moves on to the new ways of creating and manipulating pivot tables offered in Excel 2007.
Do you or your organisation use charts and graphics when creating Excel reports? If so, be sure that your Excel 2007 training covers the new and improved charting engine within this new version. You should learn how to fully exploit the new chart ribbons: format, layout and design. You should come away from the training knowing all about SmartArt graphics, adding trendlines, scatter charts and pivot charts.
Conditional formatting has been around in Excel for some time. However, this feature has now been considerably improved. If you are getting trained on Excel 2007, you should definitely make sure that you will learn about these improvements and how to use the Color Scale and Data Bars features.
Formulas are the lifeblood of Excel. They analyse the raw data entered in other cells and provide most of Excel’s awesome power. You should definitely request that your Excel 2007 training shows you the improvements that have been made to the entry of formulas in the formula bar and the key new functions that have been introduced, especially AverageIf, SumIfs, and IfError
The alignment section of the Home Tab of the Excel ribbon contains a number of options relating to the way in which your data is position within the cell. Perhaps the most familiar and the most frequently used buttons in this section are the three relating to the horizontal position your data: left, centre and right. However you’ll notice that when you click in the cells of an unformatted worksheet, none of these three icons is highlighted, which indicates that none of them is the default. The reason for this is that Excel treats data differently depending on the data type.
If you type text in a cell, your text is aligned on the left; if you type a number, the number is aligned on the right; if you type a date, it is also aligned on the right. To change the horizontal alignment, either select a range of cells or click on a column letter to highlight the entire column then click on one of the alignment icons.
Haven chosen one type of horizontal alignment, you can change it in two ways. You can either click on a different form of alignment or click again on the already selected alignment. For example, if your text is centred and you click on the Centre button a second time, this deactivates centre alignment and returns you to the default alignment which, for text, is left. Thus we have, effectively, four types of horizontal alignment: left, centre, right and unspecified (or default), which is the alignment that applies when none of the alignment buttons is highlighted.
Excel also allows you to specify vertical alignment. This setting normally only becomes apparent when you increase the height of the cell and this time there is a definite default which is that text is aligned at the bottom of the cell. This setting applies to text, dates and numbers alike.
To set the vertical alignment, either make a selection or click on the row number to select the entire row then click on one of the buttons to make the change: align middle, align top and so forth.
Excel also features the ability to change the orientation of text within the cell. This is particularly useful in those situations where your column headings are wider than the data in the cells. To change the vertical orientation of your text, just select the cells in question and then choose the appropriate angle in the Alignment dialogue.
If you rotate your column headings by 90 degrees, you can usually make the columns much narrower. Excel has a very useful way of doing this: simply select all the columns that contain data then in the Cell group of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon, choose Format then AutoFit Columns. This command makes each of the highlighted columns no wider than it needs to be in order to display all the data it contains.
Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 5 (CS5) has formally been released, and We would like to talk about a number of the latest features with this tutorial including a few Photoshop CS5 video tutorials, that will help you fully understand the latest edition of Photoshop, Creative Suite five.
The actual team at Adobe Photoshop appears to have been focusing their initiatives around enhancing a couple of main areas of development like they did with regard to each and every one of the recent CS versions. First they will check out exactly what ought to be improved upon in CS4 – There’s nothing better than person suggestions, thus they will have undoubtedly put in a lot of time looking at improving existing CS4 features and software.
While we’ll now be checking out the brand new Adobe Photoshop CS5 functions, We must point out at this time that the overall brand new CS5 item is going to be virtually 90% similar to CS4, therefore in the event you do decide to update, there may be just 10% with the total program that you will have to learn to make use of successfully.
You need to check out a number of the most recent Photoshop CS5 video tutorials, which have only just been released on the subsequent Weblogs;-
Meanwhile we’ll take a look at the key section of development, found within the revolutionary features that Adobe photoshop have included with CS5, permitting you to work with the newest tools letting you modify images just like no man has edited them before. Think you’re getting enthusiastic now???
To start with, CS5 provides for important advancements to the means “paint brushes” as well as “painting” can operate inside Photoshop. We are able to start using a photo (or any kind of graphic) as being a template canvas or even color palette for painting. Through clicking on a particular area it is possible to simulate dipping your brush directly into paint. Then you’ll be able to pull that color out to get spread around while simulating the wet brush. You can also mix colorings as much as appeals to you, and accomplish a variety of final results that will give your pictures an entirely new look.
The 2nd improvement enables you to simulate brush physics while you’re painting. An animated 3D brush preview can display changes according to pressure, and rotation. This in turn can have an effect on the methods in which the actual paint is actually placed on the canvas like you possessed a genuine brush. A variety of presets are available, although you’ll have to have the ability to make use of your creativeness to be able to develop any.
Remember to have a look at the Adobe Photoshop CS5 video tutorials on the previously referred to weblogs, and you’ll soon begin to create some excellent digital edits that will be made possible by understanding this latest CS5 edition of Adobe Photoshop.
Excel’s AutoFill feature relies on the program’s ability to recognize patterns in the data that you enter. For example, if you type “Week 1″ in a cell, you can have the program automatically fill in “Week 2″, “Week 3″, etc. by using the AutoFill handle. This is located in the bottom right of the cell. As the cursor moves over it, the cursor changes appearance to a plus sign (+). When it does so you simply click, hold, drag in any direction and Excel will pick up the pattern and extrapolate it to create automatic data entries.
Each time you use the AutoFill handle Excel displays the AutoFill Options drop down menu just below the last cell which has been automatically created. If the program has not entered the data you wanted it to, just choose one of the entries in the AutoFill Options to tell it what you wanted it to do. For example, if you choose Copy Cells, Excel will generate an exact copy of what was in the original cell.
Excel is also capable of automatically entering an arbitrary series of data using a feature called Custom Lists. There are certain lists built into Excel, for example, the months of the year. To use the AutoFill feature, you need to enter the first value in the list, for example, “January” or “Jan”. Next, you drag the AutoFill handle (located in the bottom right of the cell) in any direction to have Excel automatically enter the rest of the custom list.
In addition to Excel’s built-in lists, you can also create your own custom lists. For example, let’s say we work for a company that has branches in several towns. We would almost certainly need to list these towns quite frequently in our spreadsheets. We could save ourselves a fair amount of time by setting up the towns as a custom list.
To do this, simply select cells in one of your worksheets that contain the information. Next, click on the Office button and choose Excel options. Click on “Edit Custom Lists” in the “Popular” category. Excel displays the contents of the cells that we highlighted. To convert the selected data into a custom list, we simply click on the “Import” button.
Once you’ve created a custom list, it can be used in any of your worksheets, not just the sheet that contained the original information. To generate the entries in the list, simply type the first value. Next, drag the AutoFill handle to conjure up the remaining entries. When using this facility, we can drag in any direction and we don’t have to start with the first member of the custom list.
Custom lists can also be entered directly in the “Custom Lists” dialog box. To do this, click on the “List Entries” button and type the list separating entries with a carriage return. After entering the list, click on the Add button to make it permanent.
To delete an unwanted custom list, just click on it and press the “Delete” button. Excel checks that you want to delete the list and when you click “OK”, the custom list is removed.
If you would like to learn more about Excel VBA training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Excel VBA Classes at their central London training centre.
One of the most recognisable elements within the interface of Microsoft Word 2003 was the toolbars. There were an awful lot of them, each offering a series of features on a related topic. With the launch of Word 2007, toolbars are no more. To some extent, their place has been taken by the Ribbon. However, there is another element in the Word 2007 interface which perhaps resembles toolbars even more: the Quick Access Toolbar.
The Quick Access Toolbar is normally displayed in the top left of the Microsoft Word application window. When the program is first installed, it contains just three icons: Save, Undo and Redo. To the right of these icons is a drop-down menu which allows you to customise the Quick Access Toolbar. It contains a selection of frequently used commands, such as a New, Open, Quick, Print etc. To add a command to the Quick Access Toolbar, simply choose its name from the drop-down menu.
As well as these frequently used commands, the drop-down menu also offers an option labelled “More Commands”. This displays the Word Options dialog with the Customise category selected. Here, all the various commands built into Microsoft Word are available and this includes commands not normally displayed on the Ribbon.
If you are an existing Microsoft Word user and have recently upgraded to Microsoft Word 2007, you may find it useful to add some of the commands which you have become used to in previous versions. For example, if you like the icon which enables you to draw tables rather than insert them, simply scroll down to Draw Table, highlight the command and click on the Add button. When you click OK, you’ll see that this command has been added to the toolbar.
Another simple way of customising the Quick Access Toolbar is to add Ribbon commands. If there are commands you find yourself using frequently, you may find it convenient to add them to the Quick Access Toolbar. Simply click on any command and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar from the drop-down menu.
When you have finished customizing the Quick Access Toolbar in this way, you may find that you start using it more and more frequently. If that’s the case you may also find it convenient to place the Quick Access Toolbar below the Ribbon. To do this, in the Customize drop-down menu, simply choose Show Below the Ribbon.
As well as this, if you find yourself relying more on the Quick Access Toolbar than the Ribbon itself, you can also minimise the Ribbon by choosing Minimize Ribbon from the drop-down menu on the right of the Quick Access Toolbar. When minimized, the Ribbon remains active: simply click on any tab to bring up the options. However, once you’ve used a command in that tab, the Ribbon will be minimized once more.
Finally, if you would like to remove items from the Quick Access Toolbar, simply right-click on the item and choose Remove From Quick Access Toolbar.
If you would like to learn more about Word training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Word Classes in London and throughout the UK.
To create any chart in Microsoft Excel, you must begin by selecting the data that you want to plot including any headings. You then have the choice of creating either a stand-alone chart or an embedded chart. To create a stand-alone chart, right-click on one of your worksheet tabs and choose Insert. Next, click on the chart icon and click OK. Excel creates a chart using the default chart type.
Having just created a chart, you will notice that Excel displays three contextual tabs headed “Chart Tools”. The contextual tabs consist of Design, Layout and Format. The Design contextual tab enables you to change the chart type and the basic information about the chart such as the underlying data.
The Layout tab offers you a more intricate level of control over the various components of your chart. For example, by default, Excel adds a legend to each new chart. If a chart has only one series of data, we don’t need a legend to tell us what the chart colours mean. We can therefore click on the Legend drop-down menu and choose None.
The Format contextual tab gives us the most primitive control over the chart elements. It is here that we are able to click on individual elements and change them at the object level. In other words, we are working on these elements purely as drawing objects rather than as elements of the chart. However, even at this primitive level, Excel still shows us the relationship between the chart elements and the underlying data. Thus, for example, when an individual data point is highlighted, Excel displays the corresponding worksheet address in the formula bar.
When creating a standalone chart, you are not given the option of choosing the chart type during the chart creation process. If you want to change the chart type, you have to do so at a later stage by choosing a Chart Type option in the Design contextual menu.
As regards the chart sheet which contains the chart, it behaves in much the same way as Excel worksheets. For example, it can be renamed or deleted by right-clicking the sheet tab and choosing Rename or Delete from the context menu.
If you would like to learn more about Excel and Excel VBA training courses, visit On Site Training Courses . Com, a UK IT training web site offering Excel Classes all over the UK.
Upgrading to Excel 2007 may be something of a shock to you and your staff. The initial reaction of most people is: “where is everything?” Bearing this in mind, you may well find that a training course on Excel 2007 is a good investment. The training should first of all get you past the initial state of confusion caused by the fact that 2007 looks so different from previous versions. Then it should give you some guidance on the new features in Excel 2007 such as the enhancements to charting and graphics, functions and conditional formatting.
At the end of any training on Excel 2007, you should feel that you have grasped the logic of the new interface and be able to navigate the ribbon and find all the basic commands. You should be getting used to doing things the Office 2007 way rather than the Office 2003 way.
In addition to this, however, you will want to learn the new features that Excel 2007 has to offer: the stuff that either wasn’t available in previous versions or which has undergone considerable enhancement.
One fundamental new feature in Excel 2007 is the dimension of a worksheet which is now about 1000 times bigger (in terms of the number of cells) than previous versions. A good Excel 2007 training course should show you how to fully exploit the space available and how to quickly navigate and manage the larger worksheets that will result.
Pivot tables have been considerably improved in Excel 2007. However, given that so many users are a bit vague on getting the best out of pivot tables, why not ask that your training on pivot tables begins with a review of fundamental pivot table concepts before moving on to look at how Excel 2007 implements pivot table features.
Charts and graphics are a great way to add impact to your Excel reports. Does your organisation use them? If so, make sure that your Excel 2007 training course incorporates gives you plenty of practice examples in using Excel 2007’s new features to create and manipulate charts and graphics. You should become a dab hand at using the new charting ribbons: the format ribbon, the design ribbon and the layout ribbon. Do you need advanced features too? If so, you should also be looking to learn about pivot charts, scatter charts and adding trendlines to your charts.
Conditional formatting has been around in Excel for some time. However, this feature has now been considerably improved. If you are getting trained on Excel 2007, you should definitely make sure that you will learn about these improvements and how to use the Color Scale and Data Bars features.
An Excel spreadsheet without formulas and functions is not much use to anyone. Functions are what Excel is all about. Microsoft have improved the way in which function are entered and edited and added several new functions. When you book training on Excel 2007, make sure that your course will include coverage of new functions like SumIfs, IfError and AverageIf as well as a demonstration of the improvements to the editing of formulas.
We all have been around computers and some of us use them on a daily basis but we all have to admit that we don’t use all of the programs chances are we don’t even know all of the programs on the computer itself. By taking time to go through Microsoft Excel Training you will have more knowledge of what your program and computer can do for you?
Computers are full of programs that some of us don’t even know about because it just isn’t an everyday program that we use. With Microsoft Excel Training you can now learn these programs and how to use them for what they are worth.
Microsoft Excel is one of those programs that you don’t use on a daily basis unless you have a company or business. Many things can be done with Microsoft Excel such as spreadsheets, charts and more. The program can be fun, exciting and do anything that you want to do with a matter of a few simple steps.
Microsoft Excel training can be very useful and can teach you many things such as what buttons perform which functions and how to use them effectively and to your best ability.
There are many ways to get Microsoft Excel training such as private instructors, videos, classes and more. Most computer programs offer a step by step tutorial that shows you simply and briefly how the program works and how to install it but the features and functions that it shows you are limited. In order to use a program effectively you need to know all the features not just a few.
Private tutors can cost a lot of money but if you really need the help to understand the program then it is worth it and you can get the attention that you need so if you don’t understand a specific thing or function then you can ask and get one on one attention.
There are a variety of online products ranging from videos, online classes and DVD’s if you don’t have much time to go somewhere and need something more catered to your bust life then chances are an online program is the right one for your situation.
There are many advantages and disadvantages to training in Excel such as learning the program, cost and more it is up to you as the consumer to decide which program best suits your needs.