eLearning Dialog

Courses that meet your technology needs.

Are you ready to take advantage of the latest technology tools and techniques but you don’t have the time to research and teach yourself the skills required to get a payoff?

SkillQ has designed workshops just for you. Our new Personal Technology
Series helps you improve your productivity, or gain a competitive edge at work. Learn to use leading edge tools that are free or in many cases already sitting in your gadget bag. All it takes is a little knowledge, guidance and creativity. Each workshop is two hours and packed with hands-on practice, and opportunities for questions and personal attention.

Each workshop is only $30. When you pay for 4 workshops, you get a 5th for free (exclusive Advisor promotion, through August 2009). Sessions are scheduled every week with times convenient for a “lunch & learn”. We also host selected workshops on Saturday for your convenience. Click here for class descriptions and enrollment form.

Take Our Survey

Help us improve our products and services by completing our Training Needs Survey. This brief survey will help us shape our business to better serve you.

New! Business Writing Course

Dechay Watts - Course Instructor & Freelance Copywriters

The class instructor is Dechay Watts of Watts Writing Studio.  Dechay has worked as a marketing director and communications strategist for several global brands, technical companies and public relations agencies. With more than a decade of writing experience, a Bachelors degree in Public Relations and a Masters degree in Business, she bridges the gap between awareness and action.

Our first class is scheduled for June 11th.  Advisor readers receive a special price of $250 per person.  Additional discounts are available for groups.

Sign up for our Captivate 4 class today!

We are excited about the new opportunities offered by Captivate 4.  SkillQ is now scheduling classes for Captivate 4: An Update.

This one day class is designed for students who have completed Adobe Captivate 3 Essentials training or have been using Captivate 3 on projects.  In this class we bring you up to date with Version 4’s exciting new features including: Advanced Actions, Scripting, Variables, Text to Speech, and importing Photoshop files.  Adobe has made significant changes to Captivate since its previous version. Extend your capabilities and sign up for the Captivate 4 update class today!

Advisor readers receive a special price of $250 per person.  This fee includes take-home materials and a box lunch. Click here for the class description and enrollment form.

Learn more about Flash in our Flash class!

Graphics and animations for eLearning and training content often build on each other as new graphic concepts are layered onto foundational concepts.  This layering of ideas can result in multiple composite graphic files that share common underlying graphical elements.  As the number of graphics in a project increases, the challenge of managing these files becomes increasingly complex.  This is particularly true when changes in an underlying graphic cascade to all graphics that share the common underlying element.
At SkillQ, many of our graphics and animations are designed in Flash CS4. To keep track of the files and assets used in a project and simplify the change process, we frequently use “shared libraries”.  Among many other uses, shared libraries are a means of accessing and managing the graphics and action script used on a project. Instead of embedding graphic elements in multiple Flash project documents (FLAs) in which they are used, categories of graphics may be shared and dynamically linked with each project.

A shared library is external and can be linked to many projects.  This can be helpful when changes are required for graphics that have many instances.  For example, lets assume you need to update a logo graphic that is an element of several animations used in multiple lessons.  If the graphic is contained in a shared library, it can be updated in one location and all Flash projects that reference that file will also be changed.

Shared libraries that are used by other Flash documents should be kept in a folder apart from the other Flash documents, preferably higher up in the directory structure hierarchy. Only the graphic elements that are unique to a specific document will be kept in that document’s internal library.

The benefit of using an External Flash Library is that you can store and categorize your graphics in one place and use them in as many projects as you need. Additionally, changes to underlying graphics are immediately reflected in all the Flash projects that contain instances of a graphic. You only have to re-publish the flash document that reference the library.

For more information on this topic sign up for an upcoming Adobe Flash Basics class.