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Free OpenOffice.org Training Videos
Rollie Hawk writes "Having trouble converting your family and office mates into OpenOffice devotees? NewsForge (Owned by the same people that bring you Slashdot) can now help you convince the visual learners around you that they can do it. NewsForge is releasing a series of free video segments that demonstrate OpenOffice in action from installation to day-to-day use. According to the site, these clips will play on any browser on any operating system as long as Flash is available. One practical topic that should be particularly interesting to the would-be business converts is 'making a slide presentation in a hurry.'"
1. Fire up PowerPoint on Windows PC.
2. Quickly layout presentation using the unparalleled tools of PowerPoint.
3. Run out of office with completed presentation before OS zealots have completed building the bonfire to burn your witch ass.
It doesn't matter how many times I've told her over the phone, how many times we've gone over it in person, how many times she's taken notes... my mom can't remember how to do even the most basic things. Opening and saving she has down... but copy and paste? Double space? Changing the font? Oof! Too difficult!
Hrm... but now that I think of it, she probably won't be able to figure out how to bookmark the site, and even if she does she probably won't remember how to find the bookmark.
Oh well... nevermind...
sig.
If you're having trouble convincing someone to learn a new word processor, you can sometimes convince them using the "shame method".
I tell them that if my 85 year old, blind grandmother could learn to email, then can learn how to use Open Office. Sure she wasn't blind at the time, and was only 77 when she learned to use a computer, but some people just need to hear that someone older and frailer than they are, could do something they've never tried. It worked to convince my grandpa how to use the computer. My grandma learned first, and he got kind of jealous that she knew how to play cribbage on the machine and he didn't, so he put his mind to learning it too.
90% of teaching is convincing the person that they are capable of learning.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Open up OO.o 2 and go to:
-Tools.
-Options
-Java
Disable Java, and it will open about twice as fast. I hear it disables macros or something that most users will never use. Hopefully in 2.1 they'll disable Java by default, and load it up slowly in the background after the application is open and being used.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Most people are lazy and if they are required to watch a series of training videos to get the hang of it widespread adoption of Open Office will never happen. It's more important that the program itself is made in such a commonsense way that there's no reading/videos required for the majority of stuff. Though personally I find version 2 pretty easy and straight forward to use anyway.
They really should make use of tech like YouTube.
Those videos look fantastic. They should really help out with getting people to convert to OpenOffice.org.
Indeed, a massive Thanks! to everyone who has contributed to them.
Perhaps it is time for similar videos to be put out regarding the use of Firefox, Seamonkey, and other such open source projects. Ruby on Rails has some tutorial videos like that, and they're very helpful, too.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
until he started working for me. On his machine I did not give him a choice - for his office apps he can use OpenOffice.org or simply not work. Now that he's used it for a week he has discovered that he can do everything he needs in the OOo suite and is going to be installing it on his home PC. He hasn't run into performance issues with large files yet, but by the time he does I expect the OOo will have addressed at least some of those issues.
He was a Microsoft Office fan prior to this week (and to be fair, Microsoft Office IS an excellent product) but now sees that MS Office is not the only available option in the real world.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
the openoffice team would come up with some better icons. the program / file icons make the whole project seem amateurish
Sadly, we escalated the issue to a non-technical boss who decided that it was best to appease the other PHB and just buy MS Office instead. I'm hoping that these vids will make evangelizing the use of OSS easier for me and avoid it happening next time.
Yeah, I learned to be more proactive about educating everyone about OSS.. first demo/train and then install...
Nice start, clearly styled after Microsoft's Office demos. However, these OpenOffice videos seem slightly unprofessional and cover the sort of topics that most users don't need help with. Clearly, for initiatives like the one in Massachusetts, a repository of advanced videos should be made available (see the variety and, more importantly, the relevance of the demos at the above link).
A few basic videos won't sway anyone.
But hey, maybe the whole state of Massachusetts will buy your book, right Roblimo?
/ Training people for free means we \
| clippies are gonna lose our jobs! It's |
| untollerable! Clippies worldwide, |
\ unite! /
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\ O| |O|
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cpu0: Microsoft Clippium ("GenuineClippy" ChromedMetal-Class). Paperbinding, lockpicking, fish-hook-hack support.
So what do you expect of the them, to wait till they fix it and then release it.
I'm sorry to say that doesn't happen. It's the way open source works.
Open source application development is an ongoing process where the whole community contributes and overtime we have a nice working version.
And by releasing the videos, even if they can get a small number of users. It'll be useful, it'll be useful for Open office, for the user and for the open source community.
Great thing to help users by recording this kind of videos :)
Do anybody knows what program was used to mae thos videos?
Might be some ViewletBuilder opensource/free replacement?
Regards,
Ego
Wow, thanks! That actually works. Took it from 30 seconds to under 5 when opening w/out the Quickstart initially opened.
Hogposh! OpenOffice takes under a second to load, with the 50meg memspace QuickStarter opened up! (/ducks)
/ Did you mean: \ /
| Untolerable |
\ Intolerable
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There are people (like me) who refuse to install Flash (well, at least until GPLFlash is done and does not ruthlessly crash my browser on load any more ;)) on their systems, so an alternative download for (non-interactive, if applicable) MPEG4-encoded, via a free codec like XViD, for example, versions of the files would be highly appreciated, methinks.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
At work (a small college), we are concidering giving out OpenOffice to students who cant afford MS office Student/teacher since we dont have a campus agreement with MS, Training for end users is the only area where we see weakness in OOo, These videos could really help, can they be redistributed? A lot of students usde dial up so for us it would be better to put them on the CD or maybe have a DVD that they could borrow.
See, that right there is the number one reason to convert. The satisfaction of killing Clippy! I hate that little bum. I got him disabled, but the idea of him out on the street instead of in my harddrive space is a great reason to convert!! Not that I'm generally for booting people out of their houses, but in the case of Clippy and Dubya, I can make an exception.
I can't wait to watch these helpful videos! Now could somebody just point me to a free training video explaining how to play a video on Linux? Or if that doesn't exist, maybe somebody's written some documentation in OpenOffice format?
Find free books.
I said it would be like this at the beginning of "The Information Age" (or at least when the public at large first heard of the term): I said that the information age would propegate fiction as easily as truth, and thus computers would not make us smarter as a people. Computers only magnify human intellect, and if that intellect is rotten, the rotteness gets magnified a thousand-fold.
Anonymous cowards -> the line forms to the right.
"Default installation folder. I use it, never gone wrong with it." "Look at the license. I'm going to accept it, I think it's a nice license." "My name is already there on the computer. You don't have to put it in. Anyone who uses this computer, I'm going to share the program, not just for me, but you can install it any way you like." Hey man, this video is pretty relaxing. The guy reminds me of Bob Ross. Wonder if in the next episode he tells me how I can write whatever I like? Maybe I'll write about a squirrel who lives in a happy tree. And let's give him a little friend, Mr. Owl. In your document, you can write about anything you want. I just love writing about our furry friends.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
They are flash. If you have a distro that is less than 3 years old, it has flash on it. As to the other media, that is also on distros that are less than 2 years old.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nifty tip - thanks.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
It being basic is a fine start, I think they would fit in for the novice and the experienced to get a feel for OOo. Around our office this is what most staff need to know.
I agree with another poster that if communities have access to the technique used to create thier own screenshot videos, we would see some really good and abundant open training videos (it would make a great college project kids!)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
...and start creating. F/OSS such as OO.org is community-driven. Stop complaining and go help out with making new, more pretty, artwork then.
x-shockwave is not working on linux, so we can't see that.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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If you pause the first video where Rob clicks on his start menu, you'll see an eMachines folder. Wow, whatever respect I might have had in the first place went completely down the toilet. You'd expect any geek to put together their own computer or, short of that, maybe grab a Dell machine if they're short on time. But eMachines? After seeing that, I was certain I'd find an AOL icon too.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
After playing with version 2 for a bit now I've really been considering migrating my organization from MS Office to OO. Of course the biggest hurdle, as usual, is getting users to accept the change.
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These videos are great, but I do have a couple critcisms:
1) My users range from novice to intermediate when it comes to using MS Office, but these videos are almost geared towards someone who has never used this kind of software before. Spending a great deal of time explaining how to change fonts and correct spelling isn't that beneficial when OO works almost identically to MS Office in this regard. In this respect these videos aren't really "training" as much as they are an overview of features.
It would be great then if *more* features were covered in a shorter amount of time. It's things like working with numbered lists, program integration (using tables from a spreadsheet in a text document, etc), positioning of graphics and text, change tracking, headers & footers, formulas, advanced document layouts, creating charts, and so on that are often difficult but very important for users in an office environment. I can imagine my users watching these videos...the first thing they'll say will be something like, "that's great, but what about
Sometimes it takes people a great deal of time to figure out how to do something in a particular document, and the thought of having to figure out a new way to do it is very frightening....whatever those things may be, they won't be as trivial as changing font sizes or inserting pictures.
So the videos are great for grandma, but not meaty enough for people who work with these kinds of tools as part of their day-to-day job (which, in my experience, does not make them experts...these folks are often "memorizers").
2) I realize that these videos were improvised, and while that does give them a bit of charm, there were several times where he said the *exact opposite* of what he meant, or where he just didn't explain something very well. A pre-written script or at the very least better planning would have improved the educational value of these videos.
Anyhow, I hate to be overly critical because it's great when people take the time to do things like this.
I just watched the "Draw" video...thinking of entering some Fark Photoshops. The guy says "....uhhhhh....you just have to dick around with it a little bit."
I think more training videos should contain slang. I'm going to go "fuck around" with my playstation now.
Good try, Hal. Notice that my post was not talking about the video itself. I think such videos are great, be them from Microsoft or anyone else.
In the post you linked to, it is clear that I have no problem with the video. I do not like the GUI that Microsoft has chosen for their latest release of Office. My complain is with the product that the video is showing, not with the video itself.
As for people switching, I just sent that link to several relatives. Some of them have already gotten back to me by saying that they're impressed by what they saw there, and are now going to give OpenOffice a try. I don't know if they'll stick with it, but at least they are now aware of its capabilities due to these videos, and will have given it a shot.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Funny how the grandparent poster was "a bit of a zealot" yet those who distribute the movies exclusively in formats that can't yet be read with free software merit no mention at all. Such one-sidedness in examining the issue effectively stigmatizes free software advocacy and endorses proprietary software without explicitly calling attention to the one-sidedness. Perhaps we should call refer to such files and programs as "freedom subtracted" or somesuch, and explicitly frame the debate along the lines of software freedom instead of letting proprietary software inducements pass as the uncommented norm.
Digital Citizen
This remains a show-stopper for me. The word processor has got to have a galley view ("Normal" in MicrosoftWord) for text editing.
Then again, 99% of the people I know can't understand that document layout is something you do only after completing the writing and editing process, so I suppose the lack of a galley view won't stop most folks from switching to OO.o .
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
But...you're only looking at *some* videos from a CD that accompanies a book, Point & Click OpenOffice.org, that'll be in bookstores by mid-December. You only saw an excerpt of the complete work, which goes into lots more depth than what you've seen. Plus I'll be making and posting more videos soon. Email me (robin at roblimo dot com) with your suggestions. I'll (obviously) start with the ones for which I get the most requests.
:)
Format choice side note: Like it or not, Flash offers the most bandwidth-efficient way to reach the most computer users, on the most platforms. Those who want to redistribute these videos in other file formats are welcome to do so as long as they preserve attribution and all that (Creative Commons License), although I'd suggest emailing me to get AVI or MPEG copies instead of trying to retrack the compressed Flash versions. This will give a better end result.
I'd also like to point out that these videos are primarily for Windows users, not for the slick Linux crowd that reads Slashdot, which is why they're relaxed and kind of fumbly (so they don't intimidate people who aren't comfortable with computers). This also explains the eMachine box. I needed something with Windows and it was on sale cheap. My "real" computers run Linux, just as you'd expect.
- Robin
.....absolutely hillarious!
Watch out for "reload bias", though. The temptation is to load OO.o, time it, turn off Java, close and reload. But the second time it's loaded it's already faster even without disabling Java. My first load was 15s and the second was 5s. Turning off Java then did *not* reduce the load time from 5s for me.
"wrong mistakes" Oh! I guess you must mean he did it right. Warning Canadian Tongue Trooper in action !
However, what actually got me thinking along this line was a glaring misfeature in OO, the Word Completion feature in the Autocorrect section (from the Tools menu). I may not be understanding it correctly, but it appears that it is offering you the words that you've already typed. I find it incredibly annoying and unpredictable (since it is apparently learning dynamically, which includes both acquiring new words and new constraints as other new words create ambiguities). It took me several minutes of searching to find out how to disable it, but I see no easy way to make it useful... Therefore it just contributes to the general sluggishness and bloated feel of the program.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
There's a lot to be said for using standalone, specialised programs for most tasks. However, there are times when an integrated office suite is invaluable. I do quite a few reports and assignments for various reasons where the ability to integrate (and later edit) spreadsheets and graphs into text documents, for example, is invaluable.
Robin, what did you use to make the videos?
Its pretty neat to also support audio!
Our company bought a license for camtasia which is very powerful, but I wouldn't mind something that's free for home use.
There's this nifty program called Wink that I use all the time to create GUI animations. It supports making manual shots, input-driven mode (key/mouse actions trigger screenshot) and time-driven mode (makes n shots per second). After recording the scene one can edit the cursor position, add descriptions and insert buttons for play control. In the final animation the cursor moves automatically between its position on two shots. Generates Flash animations or EXE files and can export to HTML, PDF and PS. There's a version for Windows and Linux. I can highly suggest this tool.
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
There's this nifty program called Wink that I use all the time to create GUI animations. It supports making manual shots, input-driven mode (key/mouse actions trigger screenshot) and time-driven mode (makes n shots per second). After recording the scene one can edit the cursor position, add descriptions and insert buttons for play control. In the final animation the cursor moves automatically between its position on two shots. Generates Flash animations or EXE files and can export to HTML, PDF and PS. There's a version for Windows and Linux. I can highly suggest this tool.
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
After trying every open source and/or Linux video screen capture tool -- and even offering a bounty to anyone willing to bring xvidcap to full usability last year, I ended up using Camtasia and Blueberry Flashback -- both proprietary, Windows-only programs -- when I ran up against my book deadline.
There's a GPL -- but Windows-only -- program on SF.net called CamStudio you might want to try. I've had sound synch problems with it that I could probably solve, but it also used way more system resources than Camtasia or Flashback when trying to record a full screen so with my limited time I put it aside for future experimentation.
Of course, what I'd *really* like is an all-Linux solution...
- Robin
PS - if you're doing serious work in this area, please email me - robin at roblimo dot com. Let's keep in touch.The more we learn from each other, the more we both know, right?