Teacher's Pet - A List of Affordable and Free Adobe Tools Training
A "Teacher's Pet" has always been defined as a pupil who is perceived to be favored by the teacher. My take on this old school concept is there's a new teacher's pet definision out there these days and it has nothing to do with an educator's students at all. For my Adobe Education Technologies Blog post for today read on and learn all about the new Teacher's Pet - Affordable and free Adobe tools training!
The number one request I receive from educators after they sit through one of my hands on trainings, Adobe Connect webinars or meeting face to face after I demonstrate our products at an education trade show is, "Richard, where can I obtain affordable and easy to learn training on Adobe's tools!?" My consistent answer, "Online, of course!"
Now if you're like me the world of online training offerings I've experienced over the years has been pretty darn poor and downright frustrating: small grainy screen captured videos, awful sound quality that constantly drops out, no way to pause or rewind the videos during viewing, and oddball convoluted pricing or subscriptions that take a corporate mergers and acquisitions contracts attorney to figure out! Even worse content offered that was woefully out of date.
And let us not forget those super boring monotone robotic presenter voices that sounded a lot like those Apple Computer speech recognition default voices, Fred or Deranged! Many of the presenter’s titles I’ve sat through frankly have put me to sleep, even when they were presenting a very cool Adobe tool like Flash.
Thankfully online training offerings have come a long, long way over the last few years. In fact a few of these companies and their wonderful offerings are not only the cat's meow with educators now, they're also the new Teacher's Pet as well!
I've heard back from many educators over the last few months that I referred to several of these online training companies after they attended one of my very own trainings; many of the teachers I heard from simply couldn't stop raving about their great experiences with them, how much they learned and the great price they obtained by subscribing with one (educational pricing).
One educator told me she chucked an expensive two day Flash intensive at a hotel a long way from her school; not to mention the cost of gas, lodgings, meals and more after signing up with an online training provider. She was also very pleased she got access to dozens of other Adobe tool training titles besides just Flash as part of the training providers online library of Adobe tools titles.
The feedback I've heard has been so positive lately from educators that I thought I'd share with you a list of some of my top picks of online training companies that I'm currently aware of that do a great job delivering top notch Adobe tool training at an affordable price and some offerings that are even free!
First do note there are most likely many additional online training companies out there that I'm not aware of. If you have had a good experience with any, please let me know about them by commenting here on the blog. I'll check them out in the near future and add them to my list (see below).
My intention here by creating this list is to not favor any one company, simply to share with you my personal favorites that I think do an outstanding job and offer a good value. There was however some criteria I used to filter out some companies from this list. All of the training providers listed here had to have education pricing or multi-user discounts. They had to offer the latest versions of Adobe software tools (CS4 or the latest Adobe Elements tools) or are about to release CS4 or Element titles in the next couple of weeks.
Not included in my list are the hundreds of fantastic Audio and Video podcast out there on Adobe tools and technologies, Terry White's Creative Suite Podcast as one good example. I'll be posting a separate list of excellent Adobe tools podcast in a near future Adobe Education Technologies Blog post.
Richard's Favorite Adobe Tools Online Training Provdiers (in alphabetical order)
Adobe Online Events (Free)
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=list&type=online_event&loc=en_us
Adobe eSeminars (Free)
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=list&type=eseminar&loc=en_us
Adobe OnDemand Seminars (Free)
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=list&type=ondemand_seminar&loc=en_us
Adobe TV (Free)
http://tv.adobe.com/#
Atomic Learning
http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/home
ElementK
http://www.elementk.com/
Keystone Learning
http://www.keystonelearning.com/
Lynda.com (first few sample chapters are free)
http://www.lynda.com
Peach Pit Press
http://www.peachpit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=135766
Scott Kelby Training
http://www.kelbytraining.com/
Total Training
http://www.totaltraining.com/
Virtual Training Company (Several chapters are free)
http://www.vtc.com/index.php
xTrain
http://training.xtrain.com/
I encourage you to check out some if not all of these training providers and their excellent training offerings on Adobe tools. Let me know if any of them become your Teacher's Pet! ;-)
Warmest,
Richard John Jenkins