Professional Training Books

The primary challenge of school reform is to effectively train our teachers by providing them informed adult development. It is important to remember that teachers are adults. Adults learning style is different than the children.

Providing professional development requires planning. It is not enough to provide information, but to allow the teachers to bring and share their ideas, experiences, and interpretations.

Also, it is important to keep in mind the different learning styles.

The primary challenge of school reform is to effectively train our teachers by providing them informed adult development. It is important to remember that teachers are adults. Adults learning style is different than the children.

Providing professional development requires planning. It is not enough to provide information, but to allow the teachers to bring and share their ideas, experiences, and interpretations.

Also, it is important to keep in mind the different learning styles.

This is not a book of ice breakers or social games, but true reflective activities to do with your staff or educational group. Very useful and practical.

When I purchased Acrobat 8 Pro I was offered a month tutorial online
training.
This CD is a complete version of the online training.
Brian Wood narrates and illustrates well. The flow of information
is very well organized.

If you make the investment in Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional you need
to make the investment in this excellent training and support CD.

If you are in "sales", (and we ALL are!), read this book and keep it handy for review. As a matter of fact, re-read if you can't easily execute the 9-Step Selling Process outlined therein. One of the most important points I got out of the book is the absolute importance of having a clearly-defined Commitment Objective BEFORE going on a sales call. Think about it---How many times have you just "dropped in" to visit a prospect without any agenda? You waste your time and theirs and look un-professional. Get your act together and sell/close more!

Joey Lott is a solid instructor, and in this series takes you briskly but effectively through writing ActionScript 3.0 code in Adobe Flex. It's important to note that Joey is not teaching the mechanics of building an RIA with ActionScript, but more how ActionScript 3.0 works in general. Flex is a great tool for writing pure code and if you're not convinced it's the IDE for you this might just be the trick.

Joey is easy to understand and teaches principles effectively. Its hard to find many good introductory teachers but Joey does a fantastic job of giving you the basics of Object Orientated Languages before spilling into AS 3.

I'd highly recommend this to beginners looking to get their feet wet in AS 3, and for Flash designers looking for why Flex 3 is such a tremendous asset for AS 3 intensive projects.

If you are familiar with Lynda.com and her training videos, you will be glad to know that she has teamed with Peachpit Press to release a compilation of some of those great videos as an "interactive book". Adobe Flash CS3 Professional: Video Training Book by Rich Shupe is one of the first releases of this new venture for Lynda.com and Peachpit. Included in this new way to learn are training videos which explain the basics of Flash CS3, accompanying exercise files and a reference guide. If you have read any of the Hands-on Training books from Lynda.com, you have a good idea of what to expect. However with this interactive book, the emphasis is more on the training videos than the written material. These videos are in QuickTimeR format and do not require any other software.

The reference guide isn't to be dismissed however. It acts as a written outline of the material covered in the videos. For each video lesson, the book lists the keyboard shortcuts covered and the exercise files used to follow along with the author. It also lists each major step in the lesson and gives the corresponding location for that step on the video's timeline.

Rich Shupe covers the basics of Flash CS3 in easy-to-understand lessons for the Flash novice and teaches most of what the beginner will need to work in Flash CS3 without ActionScript. His tutorials follow the same outline as most beginner-level Flash books. Beginning with how to start a new project and customize the workspace, he takes the reader step-by-step through to publishing Flash to the web.

After an introduction to the workspace, you learn to use the drawing tools including the Pencil, Line, Brush and Pen. You will also learn to draw Bezier curves and work with shapes. He moves on to setting colors for the stroke, fill and gradients and explains how to edit a basic gradient in the Color Panel and with the Gradient Transform Tool.

Finally, you are ready to get into Flash interactivity and animation. Shupe discusses the three types of symbols, the Library Panel and the part each plays in building a Flash movie. He gives a good demonstration of the difference between editing symbols and editing instances of symbols. This is a difficult concept for the beginner and I was glad to see that it was included.

If you are not using ActionScript in your Flash movie, the Flash Timeline is where the action is. Shupe tours the Timeline and then you are ready to tween text, graphics and gradients. One example included in this topic is a simple text motion tween. He also discusses how to use shape hints for better control of shape tweening. He then moves on to creating animation with filters.

This interactive book is not meant to teach ActionScript but Shupe covers a few basic concepts such as variables, methods, Script Assist and the Actions Panel. However, he relies on the built-in components such as the UIScrollBar and UILoader to add interactivity to Flash. Finally, he touches on adding sound and video to your Flash movie and publishing to the web.

This new type of book does not cover Flash basics as thoroughly as most books. However, it is a great way for the beginner to become familiar with Flash via a visual presentation before tackling the written word.

Rich Shupe is a professor at the New York's School of Visual Arts. He is a technical writer for DevX.com and Adobe and the author of several books.

I read the book and I am now on my way to school. I have no doubt in my mind that I will not pass the school because I have read the book. (It is SO much like the correspondance course study book that the Navy has.) The only difference is that it is in Layman's terms. So why don't you get it and read it!!!

This is a very practical book for a new literacy leader in a school building.

I bought this "book" (Actually came in loose leaf form in a 3 ring binder) to study before entering commercial diver training. Seems to be the actual text used by my school. Found it very, very helpful, except, reader, be VERY, VERY CAREFUL you MAKE SURE all chapters are there before chucking the packaging and invoice (as I did), as chapters 13-15 were missing from my book. Don't know if this is an ongoing problem with all the books, or if the book gnomes were just playing an evil joke on me that day. Oh well. Otherwise, was very happy and satisfied with content. As appropriate for classroom use ( for which it obviously was originally designed), as for self-study. Has useful end of ch. exercises (with answers). Covers the commercial diving gamut from diving physics to medicine to commercial specializations, such as welding, non-destructive testing, and salvage. Includes helpful anecdotal info on what work offshore (living conditions) is really like. Overall a great book!

Any teacher who would like to improve himself\herself for effective and efficient teaching should read this book. It helps teacher for his\her self improvement in teaching profession. Besides, it informs teachers how to explore the strenghts and weaknesses in a specific classroom setting. Of course, this enables teachers to raise the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom. Therefore, the book enligthens teachers to improve the quality of education in their professions. To sum up, all teachers should read this precious book