Using Technology to Make Learning Easier

Technology has pervaded the classroom. Presentations are done on PowerPoint, lectures are given through podcasts, and notes are often seen being typed out by students on their laptops. IPads and other tablets have become extremely popular for taking notes and may offer more than most realize in terms of apps and general usability for the classroom.

When you take your UNLV Continuing Education class, you will find a tablet offers a wide variety of tools to help in the classroom. However, the touchscreen of a tablet may deter some from using it as a means for note taking. While the screen is very sensitive and accurate, there are alternatives for those who prefer using a standard keyboard. Keyboard attachments are available that convert a tablet into a normal feeling laptop, with all the functionality of the touchscreen still remaining. 

Whether or not a tablet is up your alley, Continuing Education also offers a course on the basics of Microsoft Office and individual courses on Word, Excel, and Photoshop. Our computer labs are equipped with Windows PCs and Apple computers. Learning these programs will help you go a long way in organizing your personal and educational life. While the courses are taught on desktop computers, what you learn is transferable to both laptops and tablets alike.

With the growth of technology permeating everything in our daily lives, our work, and our education, it is a good idea to get up to speed on how to use it. Visit our Computers & Technology website to see all of Continuing Education's offerings in this area. 

Social Media Basics

There are many features within Facebook and Twitter that can be confusing. The options become even more cumbersome from a company point of view. One of the main starting points with any company page is to “LIKE” them on Facebook and “FOLLOW” them on Twitter. This allows users to keep up to date with a company's events and information. These two platforms, however, act very different.

For example, within Facebook, complicated algorithms dictate which posts will be seen by the public. Not all updates are pushed out to all the fans of a company page. Due to this, a company needs to utilize other tools to reach their audience. This comes from loyal followers as well as engaging content. 

So how can loyal followers help a company page thrive? There are three ways, Like, Comment and Share. When a company pushes out a post there are three options at the bottom of each post that allow for user interaction. By clicking the Like option, you are both notifying the company as well as Facebook that you found the content interesting. This ups the level of visibility of the post to the public by positively influencing the aforementioned algorithm. If you Comment on the post, it has a similar effect as a Like, but it holds more weight with Facebook as well as offers the company more information beyond a simple Like. The final, and most productive way, is to Share. This allows a company’s post to go beyond the people who are fans of the page. This allows everyone of the user’s friends to see the information as well. The goal is for the information to be engaging enough so that the friend will then Like the company’s main page. The more shares a post receives, the wider the influence a post will have.

Twitter also has three options, but they act very different from Facebook. A user can Favorite, Retweet and Reply. The first one, Favorite, is useful to the user and the company. A user can Favorite a tweet, which saves it as such in a separate tab in your profile. This serves as a bookmarking tool. By clicking Favorite, this also sends feedback to the company letting them know they like this type of post.  The other options are even more useful for a company. The goal is to get your tweet Retweeted by followers. Like Facebook’s Share, this allows the information to go beyond the people that only follow the company and extends to the users circle of friends. Reply is very similar in its range of influence, but it also allows for the user to offer more information to the company regarding the tweet.

When it comes to organic marketing, these techniques are vital in getting our information out. The first line of offense is the employees who work for the company as well as your own friends and loyal fans. By utilizing some of the above mentioned techniques, you can extend your reach to a much wider net that will only grow larger.

For more information on social media, check out our upcoming classes - http://goo.gl/0fJbM2.

UNLV Grant Academy Launches this Fall

UNLV Grant Academy courses will be offered at Historic Fifth Street School in Downtown Las Vegas.

Syllabi for the new Grant Academy classes are finally complete and approved, which means we can officially get excited about the program. It’s been awhile since I worked in the nonprofit and grant writing fields, but I have to say that reading the course descriptions had me wishing my grant education had been this well structured. 

For me, my first application basically plagiarized my predecessor’s work; the application was pretty much cut and pasted from a sample my boss handed me. It was not big money, maybe just $500, so he figured it was a good learning opportunity for me. Taking this type of shortcut didn’t work long, though, as I moved on to bigger grants and more sophisticated review committees.  

This is the point at which I begin to salivate at the Grant Academy curriculum and wish someone had better explained to me the value of doing all the difficult pre-work before working through a grant application. Before the Grant Academy students even begin to write proposals, they will take Building a Grant Ready Organization. In this class they will back up and look at the big picture: organizational capacity, program development, partnership building, and policy development -- all should be in place before an organization asks for funding. These behind-the-scenes tasks aren’t glamorous, but, boy, do they make a difference in giving a grant application focus and purpose. 

Most grant writing workshops I attended over the years did a solid job of taking participants through the proposal writing process. The Grant Academy will no doubt do an excellent job of this, especially since a total of eight weeks will be dedicated to discussing narratives, budgets, and RFPs. So while proposal writing is important, I would rather get you excited about the final Grant Academy course: Grants Management.

With so much focus on winning the grant, sometimes it can be alarming for an organization to realize it actually has to come through on proposed projects within the promised timeline. In the everyday business of nonprofit work, tracking expenditures and program outcomes can easily fall by the wayside. When the grant report comes due, there’s a scramble to consolidate the required information. Grants Management will give grant writers and managers tools to successfully implement projects, track outcomes, and build relationships with funding sources; these skills all improve your chances of receiving additional funding.

Registration for Grant Academy courses is now open. Course descriptions and details are posted online. You may take courses individually or save by registering for the full five-course series as a bundle. The first course for fall 2014, Identifying Funding Sources, starts Sept. 2.

Top Three Open-Source Content Management Systems

A content management system (CMS) can make building dynamic websites less painful.  

There are many expensive enterprise options for content management systems, but three open-source (Free!) options are capable of everything the enterprise versions can do: Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. 

All three are built using PHP for a programming language and MYSQL for a database.

Traditionally, Wordpress was an easy to use blogging platform, Drupal was a somewhat difficult enterprise level CMS, and Joomla was somewhere in between, a robust system with a simple interface. As the three projects mature, however, the lines are blurring.

Wordpress

Wordpress, the CMS with the largest market share, is still the easiest to set up and the administrative interface is very intuitive. This is great for building a site and passing it on to a client -- all of the site administration information is well documented. Wordpress was once limited to two content types, blog-like posts and basic pages, but custom post-types are now possible. Wordpress also offers a hosted service at wordpress.com

Notable sites:

• time.com
• techcrunch.com

Joomla

Joomla is estimated to be the second most used open source CMS. While not as easy to use as Worpdress, Joomla has a very intuitive use interface. A large community of developers backs the many extensions that are available. The biggest drawback to Joomla is the work it takes to make sites search engine optimization (SEO) friendly.

Notable sites:

• Linux.com
• Guggenheim.org  

Drupal

Drupal has a steeper learning curve than the others. Originally developed for developers by developers, it can be much harder to learn for less technical users. While the Drupal community has made strides to correct that, it is still more difficult to learn and use than Wordpress. Drupal is enterprise friendly and stable, making it an excellent choice for dynamic data-driven websites.

Drupal shines with more complex websites. It's a great solution for people who want to build feature-rich websites and it's a great solution for large enterprises. – Dries Buytaert, Drupal Creator

Notable sites:

• nbc.com/the-tonight-show/
• Whitehouse.gov
• Virgin.com

Want to learn more about leveraging Content Management Systems on your sites?

Check out the UNLV Continuing Education course,  Introduction to Content Management

The Thrill of the Grill

It’s summertime again. While it brings the heat, it also ignites my love of grilling. I grill just about everything I can get my hands on almost every day during the summer to keep my house cool. I had been thinking about taking a course in the Barbecuing Series offered by UNLV Continuing Education. The first class is Sauces, Rubs & Marinades, followed by Grilling, then Barbecuing—all taught by Chef Les Kincaid.

When I signed up for Sauces, Rubs & Marinades, I was really looking forward to the technical side of this class. How long do you marinade different types of proteins and why? What is the base of all rubs and how much do you use per pound? Do you really only put sauces on at the last few minutes? Which of these can be used on vegetables, or is there another base for those? Well I went to the class and had my questions answered.

The featured meats were pulled pork, chicken, and salmon. Chef Kincaid made a sauce for the pulled pork and marinades for the chicken and salmon. I learned a lot of in-depth details to distinguish between grilling and barbecuing, and that different meats are marinated by the density of the meat. Since fish is flaky, the marinade permeates faster than a pork roast. If you marinate too long, the meat becomes mushy. There is no standard base for rubs, as they vary from region to region, just like the sauces. Speaking of sauces, most barbecue sauces are tomato based. Since tomatoes burn quickly, the sauce should be put onto the protein half an hour before it is done.

One of the most versatile kinds of food to be cooked on the grill is vegetables. I learned to always use a light coating of olive oil so the vegetables don’t stick to the rack; you can season them with just salt and pepper or a little bit of rub. 

As usual, Chef Kincaid was generous with the recipes he handed out, so I can’t wait to experiment. Please check out the other classes Chef Kincaid is offering through UNLV Continuing Education this summer and fall.

Writing for the Silver Screen

Beginning. Middle. End.

It’s that simple.

Now go write.

But it isn’t that simple. How do you get your hero from point A to point B? Where do you add romance, danger, intrigue, action to make the story interesting? What is a MacGuffin?

Whether you know it or not, screenplays are very formulaic. There is always the basic question-- what does our main character want, and why can’t he or she get it? When breaking down scripts you’ll find that just about every one of them starts the hero on his or her journey between pages fifteen and twenty. There will be a midpoint where the hero finds an escalation of commitment. A launch into the third act marks a point where our hero cannot turn back. And of course a resolution followed by a denouement. Again, simple, right? Not really.

As an example, take the classic film Jaws. What does Chief Brody want and why can’t he get it? Answer: he wants to protect the beach, but there is a shark threatening the safety of anyone who enters the water. We are launched into the commitment phase with the death of Alex Kitner, the little boy on the raft. In reaction, Brody raises the stakes and offers a reward for the capture of the shark. Sadly, the wrong shark is caught and killed. The next shark attack involves his son. The chief develops a new plan, and hires a boat to go out and hunt the shark. The shark attacks, kills the captain and disables the boat. Brody is all alone with little hope of success. There is literally no turning back. In desperation, he shoots a rifle at a scuba tank inside the shark's mouth. Voila! Resolution as the beast is killed and the beach is now safe. Denouement is Brody swimming back to shore in safe waters. Fortunately as you watch the film, you never think of these necessary plot points that move the story forward. That's the goal of great screenwriting: entertain the viewer in a world you create for them.

But even if you write the world’s greatest story, how do you get anyone to read it? Do you hide out in a bathroom stall in Hollywood hoping to slip it under when a big wig uses the restroom? Do you blindly mail hundreds of copies of your script to film producers? Or do you self produce your script and become the next Kevin Smith?

Award-winning writer John Hill offers a class that answers many of these questions and more. Specifically, he’ll cover format, dialogue, characters, and theme with special training on how to plot. Most importantly, he’ll cover both the independent film world as well as the Hollywood studio system. Click the link for more details - http://goo.gl/vKbWzn.

If screenwriting isn’t necessarily your thing, but you still want to tell your story, check out our other writing classes http://goo.gl/DLGy71.

Adobe Photoshop I: A Student Review

UNLV Continuing Education likes to share student reviews of its classes. This student discusses “the great experience of taking a class in Photoshop.”

“As a working student with a full-time schedule, it is challenging to continue with my own development and sharpening of my skills. The short schedule and weekly class meetings made it easy to fit into my busy work and personal schedule. Our instructor, Krystal Hosmer, offered the class years of real world experience in graphic design and specifically with this software. She is incredibly talented, creative and patient, and explains in detail the practical applications with this software.

My favorite part of the class was practicing in class and actually creating new projects immediately. The hands-on experience was much more helpful than trying to figure out the system on my own at home. Krystal kept the atmosphere light and FUN! She also taught us basic concepts in graphic design and how to apply what we learned for our individual needs and in why we wanted to learn this software. For me I wanted to learn how to use the software to help me on my job as a training manager as I use photos in my presentation and instructional design daily at work. Class size was small, which made the teacher-student ratio great where everyone could be involved in the discussions and she encouraged us to ask questions and experiment.

I look forward to taking another class in the future. I highly recommend this class to anyone who wants to further develop their knowledge of Photoshop, or someone like me who was a complete beginner and wanted to develop a new skill.”

Thanks for sharing! The next Adobe Photoshop CS6-Level I class starts June 11.