{"id":1202,"date":"2010-02-02T10:30:09","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T15:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2010-02-02T13:43:28","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T18:43:28","slug":"jm2010-engaging-users-with-powerful-visuals-on-the-cheap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/?p=1202","title":{"rendered":"JM2010: Engaging Users with Powerful Visuals – On the Cheap!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Evonda Copeland, Supervisor of Library Services, Scottsdale Healthcare, Scottsdale, AZ.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Contributed Paper: Engaging Users with Powerful Visuals \u2013 on the Cheap! Kelli Ham, Consumer Health Coordinator, NN\/LM Pacific Southwest Region, UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, Los Angeles, CA.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Kelli Ham discussed affordable, easy-to-use programs to help you incorporate effective visuals into your instructional modules:<\/p>\n

1. Microsoft Office templates<\/a> provide a simple starting point for any instructional module and often include special effects. A word of caution on using special effects – use them judiciously. You don’t want to over-stimulate your audience so much that they are distracted from your content.<\/p>\n

2. Picasa<\/a> (free download) is an easy-to-navigate image editor that can help you edit, organize and share your images. It’s now a part of the Google suite & ties in with Google accounts. Picasa can also help you edit poor quality photos – even the pictures you think are a “lost cause”. For example, if your photo is too dark, Picasa will let you add “fill light” to brighten people or items within your dark picture. Picasa also provides red-eye removal, contrast adjustments, drop-shadows and backgrounds for your images. There’s even an “I’m feeling lucky” button that will attempt to clean up your photos for you.<\/p>\n

3. SnagIt<\/a> (free 30-day trial, $50 for full version) is a screen capture & image editing program that helps you provide fast, easy, on-the-spot instruction to your users. Through its “Send” tab, SnagIt provides a one-click export to Word or Powerpoint. Its image editor has drawing capabilities, color correction and batch resizing for very large pictures.
\nSnagit will also capture scrolling webpages and pull-down menus (i.e. PubMed dropdown fields), and once a webpage has been captured you can drag-and-drop different components of the webpage in order to reduce any wasted (white) space on your image.<\/p>\n

4. Jing<\/a> (free basic version, $15\/yr full version) is an on-screen video & audio capture program that allows you to capture computing action with voice-overs. Jing Pro expands functionality to include Webcam recording and YouTube sharing.<\/p>\n

5. Screencast<\/a> offers a free account (2GB storage\/2GB monthly bandwidth) and an expanded version (25GB storage\/200GB monthly bandwidth) for $9.95\/mth or $99.95\/yr.<\/p>\n

Posted 2\/2\/10<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Evonda Copeland, Supervisor of Library Services, Scottsdale Healthcare, Scottsdale, AZ. Contributed Paper: Engaging Users with Powerful Visuals \u2013 on the Cheap! Kelli Ham, Consumer Health Coordinator, NN\/LM Pacific Southwest Region, UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, Los Angeles, CA. Kelli Ham discussed affordable, easy-to-use programs to help you incorporate effective visuals into your instructional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,31,19],"tags":[35,157,149],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}