Recently in Adobe Acrobat Category

Ancient civilizations used Adobe to build houses which led to the building of communities. The low cost of using mud and straw to build infrastructure was accessible to the masses. Today, modern educators are using Adobe to build educational communities and web infrastructure for the future. The mud and straw has been replaced with air, clouds, and Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. The low cost of a Hosted Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro account will make a tremendous impact and improvement on any school district. The technology delivered from Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro can bring in new tools and services to a school organization. One low cost Hosted Acrobat Connect Pro account resource can be spread across a school district to: build a help desk system, allow for online meetings with telephone integration and recording capabilities, long-distance interviewing for new positions for the district office or school buildings, online professional development, online training, live recordings of teacher lectures posted to the web for students who are sick or need extra help, digital newsletter, web presentations, software trainings and simulations, collaboration and sharing of expertise beyond school district boundaries. I would encourage every educator to use Adobe to build a new place for learning, growing, and help students strive for excellence. Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is the modern building block, so roll up your sleeves, reach for the sky, and start building a new educational community for the future.

Adobe Connect Pro Resource Map
Online AP Calculus Lectures - Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro/Smart Board Integration

My Connect Card
Jackie Specht's Connect Card

Many educators have heard about the wonderful ways you can use Adobe Acrobat to create classroom materials like worksheets, forms and portfolios. Don't get me wrong. This is really cool stuff. But today I want to talk about a hidden gem. Bundled with your Windows version of Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro Extended is a lesser known, elegant and robust application called LiveCycle Designer ES. LC Designer is a full-featured form design application that enables you to create electronic forms using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface. I will be honest here. LC Designer is not for the novice user. If all you want to do is take an MS Word document, convert it and make a nifty form, then by all means use the Form Wizard in Acrobat. But if you want more form options, a more flexible layout, and the ability to easily edit your form design, then you really should give LC Designer a test drive.

Last year, I was asked to make changes to our school's progress report card. I had previously created the progress report card in MS Word and then used Acrobat's Form Wizard to create a pdf form. This seemed to be a great solution until I had to make changes to the content in the progress report card. Of course, I couldn't edit the text in the pdf document. To make the necessary changes I had to revise the original MS Word document, convert it to pdf and then create all of the form fields again. I had close to 80 form fields in the progress report card and I wasn't happy about having to create them again. Clearly, I needed a different product to tackle this job. Out of desperation I scoured my hard drive for something else and stumbled across LC Designer. With LC Designer I was able to create all the elements I needed in my form from scratch, including static text, design elements and a wide variety of form fields. I had more control over the layout and functionality of the form, and best of all, it was a breeze to edit when I needed to make changes after publishing the form. The following screenshots show the LiveCycle interface and what the final progress report card looks like in Adobe Reader.

I recently had to build a form that required a column of multiple check boxes. Hand drawing each of the check boxes would have been a major pain in the derrière, so I decided to use the "Place Multiple Fields" dialogue box in Acrobat. What a time saver!

In this tutorial I will create a Thanksgiving checklist in Adobe Buzzword, export it to PDF, and use the "Place Multiple Fields" dialogue to create a column of check boxes. My stomach is already grumbling at the thought of next week's feast!

Speaking of Thanksgiving feast, what are the top 5 items that make your Thanksgiving checklist? Any unusual foods consumed at your harvest table?

-Scott Trudeau

I have been using Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro for the past couple of years and have discovered four professional staff development workshop models which anyone can create and deploy. The models are from beginner to advanced. A person just needs Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro and/or Presenter 7, a Powerpoint, a simple VoIP headset and/or microphone and an audience. I have provided everyone with a link to four Powerpoint slides that will visually describe the set-up and resources needed to create and deploy these types of workshops.

Staff Development Workshop Models

Dave Forrester
Adobe Education Leader

School counseling teams face similar challenges across the K-12 education system when it comes to communicating with students and parents: How do we develop and distribute information to large audiences in our school community on an annual basis? A solution to this question is to use a simple tool that converts a PowerPoint presentation with recorded audio to a professional web presentation. Presenter 7 is the tool of choice for our school counseling team when we want to create a professional web presentation to parents, students, and the community. The beauty of creating a presentation with Presenter 7 is the challenges of distribution and access to information are solved immediately. The content that was once accessed one time during an evening parent night can now be viewed twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.

Links:
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Olympia High School Website - Presentations

Dave Forrester
Adobe Education Leader