Adobe Education Leaders

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.

Posted by Laurie Hazard at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Posted by Scott Trudeau at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Posted by David Forrester at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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:
Read Full Article
Olympia High School Website - Presentations

Dave Forrester
Adobe Education Leader

Posted by David Forrester at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Digital Business Card

I have presented at many different conferences this past year. I try to bring a set of business cards to the event and have them available after my session for others to come by and pick them up. The idea is that educators can have a card to take with them and contact me later.

At the same time, I have been doing more Webinars using Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional. An Acrobat Connect Meeting allows for placing information in a Chat Pod. The information is usually in text form, but someone can also place a Hyperlink in the chat which becomes active once placed inside. I had an idea of creating a digital business card so people could click on a link in the Chat Pod after my Webinar and get useful information about me and have a way to contact me later.

I have provided my Webinar Connect Card, plus an example of an Adobe Senior Systems Engineer’s Connect Card.

I used Adobe Presenter 7 to create my Connect Card. So, check out my examples and have fun creating one for yourself!

Dave Forrester
Adobe Education Leader

Posted by David Forrester at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I received the August 2008, Volume 9 edition of the Adobe Education Campus e-newsletter (delivered via email). The newsletter contained links to some great instructional resources, including a link to a handful of resources for creating rich PDF student portfolios.

Topics include:

• Creating electronic portfolios with Adobe Acrobat
• Digital assessment with Adobe Acrobat
• Generating lesson plans with Adobe Acrobat

Each topic includes nicely written directions with plenty of screen shots.

Resource Link

Posted by Scott Trudeau at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)