Visiting Central and South America plus learning Spanish along the way has always been a dream. This dream is now coming true and tomorrow will be my last day at work - at least for a year. I'll be back - no worries.

You will be in good hands with Aunindo Ghosh (you can meet him at the Adobe Learning Summit), Marketing Manager for Director and now Adobe Captivate, and RJ Jacquez, our Senior Evangelist. Plus, you'll 'hear' from me soon - in September, we will be publishing a white paper I just wrote on eLearning going green with lots of tips and ideas for your department to adopt a sustainable strategy (once published, you'll find it on our Adobe eLearning page).

I also want to thank you - some of you have visited this blog whenever I posted new content. I loved receiving comments and suggestions and meeting some of you at conferences. I enjoy the elearning industry and will miss being in touch with you. There will definitely be lots to tell when I am back!

For new tips and tricks and product news, please subscribe to RJ's blog - he'll keep you updated of what's going on with Adobe eLearning.

See you in a year! ... or should I say - Hasta la vista ;)

Silke

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RJ Jacquez

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Make sure to use the conversion mode Interactive and uncheck Auto end capture at the last frame in the Capture Settings when using the converter. If your content has audio, you can capture that too by checking Record from current SWF file.

You may want to start recording your project where there is content on the screen - otherwise your entry will look like mine - it's just a red blob - the background color of my first slide. Once you play the video, you'll see the content fade in...

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How do you engage your learners?

Show us what you are doing with Adobe technology to engage your learners. Today, we launched our first contest to recognize learning professionals for the amazing content they create with our tools. You can enter the contest by submitting an avi screen recording of your content, a video of yourself about your use of our tools for eLearning, a screenshot image of your projects with a description, or a story how our tools helped you solve eLearning challenges.

The community will rate your entry and our team will select the winners from the top rated entries. When you submit, don't forget to tell your friends to vote for you (there is even a nifty way to include your entry in your MySpace Bulletins so your friends can vote).

The winners are invited to show their project at the Adobe Learning Summit and will also receive a full copy of CS3!

Enter the Adobe eLearning Challenge today!

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Rick Zanotti is doing a great job posting video podcasts on Adobe Captivate. Several episodes are already posted and cover topics from microphone tips to recording a movie. Rick also came down to San Diego to interview RJ, our Sr. Evangelist, and me. If you are a Mac user, you probably want to check out those interviews :)

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Here is some more info from the website:

Footprints calculates the approximate location of each meeting attendee automatically based on their IP Address and uses this to determine how far they would have had to travel to the Host location if the meeting had not been held virtually. It then calculates the CO2 savings as well as the financial savings that have been generated as a result of using an Adobe Connect Pro Meeting. Footprints is fully customizable - pick your corporate colors for the theme and include your corporate logo on the pod to show how serious your organization is about reducing its Carbon Footprint. Attendees see their personal savings for this event, the collective savings for the entire meeting and a running tally of the total savings your organization has generated across all meetings that included Footprints.

Thanks Chris for sending along!

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I attended the first Masters class in New York and wrote a little review. A class like this is also a great way to prep for the Adobe Certified Expert exam.

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The Details:

• When: November 10, 2008 – 8:30AM to 6:00PM 
• Where: The San Jose Fairmont Hotel, plus cocktail reception at Adobe Headquarters!

The Adobe Learning Summit is co located with the eLearning Guild's DevLearn conference November 11-14. There are tons of sessions there on Adobe Captivate including a workshop. We also have several team members from product management and marketing attend this conference. You'll have a unique chance to talk to them about your feature needs - keep an eye out for Aunindo, Tridib, Shreeram, and Shameer :)

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If you are interested in helping us finding any bugs and providing feedback, please complete the:

Prerelease Interest Form

FYI: If you are selected as a participant, you will be contacted when we start the prerelease program.

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• Inside Training offered a telecommuting template a couple of weeks ago.
• For instructor led classes, try Acrobat Connect Pro or conduct your classes inside Second Life - check out Tom Raftery's blog entry Reduce your carbon footprint using virtual worlds.

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• Treehugger - is probably still the most widely read/known green blog covering all kinds of topics from general environmental issues to legislation and new technologies.
• Environmental Graffiti - has topics from toilet trees to the terror blob in Venezuela! They also posted the top 10 environmental blogs online last year - you'll see several of the blogs listed here.
• ecogeek - is a great blog covering a lot of technology and business.
• Cleantech Blog - mostly covers clean technologies and next gen energy.
• Worldchanging.com - offers articles and daily blog entries on issues, progress and initiatives worldwide.
• inhabitat.com - has a design focus and unique stories you might not find anywhere else.
• Environment360 - detailed reports, opinions, analyses, and interviews (you can listen to the one Michael Pollan) by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
• Triplepundit - offers a wide range of topics and has some great nuggets. They just wrote about Go Green Tube for green videos.
• Homegrown Evolution - not so much of a business blog but helpful for you at home with tips on gardening and sustainable micro-farming.
• Green Car Congress - is about mobility and mostly new car related technologies. Might be helpful for your trainers that have to drive a lot.

Also check out Environmental News Network and ClimateBiz - both getting you the latest news in the field.

I recommend signing up for GreenBiz.com's newsletter called GreenBuzz.

Please post your own favorite green sites and blogs in the comments.

Thanks Jeff, Chris, and Rob for sending your favorites.

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>> Watch a demo of the portfolio feature

Or watch a more comprehensive OnDemand eseminar (Acrobat 9: Share Your Ideas or Enhanced ePortfolios for education using Adobe Acrobat 9).

Educators might also want to review our edu pages for ideas on using the Acrobat portfolios in the classroom. Portfolios are a great way for students to collect and submit all their work of the semester and for educators to assess and comment.

adobe,captivate,acrobat,pdf,portfolio,flash,multimedia,education,elearning

As part of this blog entry series, I would like to highlight organizations that have successfully implemented sustainable strategies in their learning practices. Please submit your green learning stories in the comments field below. I am looking especially for success stories with achieved cost savings and CO2 reductions as well as new hardware that helped meet your goals.

So, here is my first tip:

What's your learning footprint?

The first step in reducing your learning footprint is knowing how much CO2 you or your group actually generate. Luckily, there are plenty of calculators available online that help you estimate your learning footprint - check out learningfootprint.com.

If you want to go a bit deeper and more detailed, try the following links:

• Atmosfair.com to calculate flight emissions.
• Conservatree to calculate how many trees you use e.g.

  1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333.3 sheets.

• Environmental Defense Fund's paper calculator which also gives you info on how many gallons of waste water are produced.
• MIT Design Advisor to calculate your specific training facility emissions.
• I haven't yet found a good calculator for hotels but Greenlodge.com provides an estimate of 44lbs/night. I believe it's rather on the low side since merely having a towel washed is already .5lb and many hotels have the room AC set to 68 degrees in the summer, keep all the lights on, and have the TV running before you even arrive ...
• Climate Savers Computing Initiative to estimate your computer footprint
  From the U.S. PC Energy Report 2007: 1 PC wastes 635.1 kWh x 1.45 lbs or 920.89 lbs of CO2 emissions per year.

If you have more good links specifically for elearning or office carbon footprint calculations, please submit the URLs with a short description via the comments.

adobe,captivate,green,elearning,carbon footprint,environment,training,sustainable,sustainability

"Basically with the goal of coming up with the best settings to use for the perfect balance of filesize-to-audio quality, for voiceovers." Mark

Part One: Encoding Bitrate is now available.

Subscribe to his blog so you'll know when the next part is published.

Thanks Mark for setting this up!

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