Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

If you ever need to explain how to use a computer program to your students, your colleagues, or to anyone else, it is worth having a look at today’s featured productivity resource. Satish Kumar has developed a very practical resource of exceptional quality.

Wink (downloadable program) This is a completely free program that can be invaluable for anyone who wants to help others learn to navigate new computer programs. Wink allows you to create animated step-by-step screen captures and then add text and/or voice narration to explain what is shown. Audio narration is one of several helpful new features that have been added to Version 2.0, released in 2006. When I say that tutorials are animated, I mean that you see the cursor moving, menus opening, screens changing, etc.

Wink may not have all the bells and whistles of some commercial alternatives, but it does have a good range of practical features that are easy to use. For example, it’s a cinch to add buttons to allow a user to navigate through a tutorial. You can create and use templates and import background images to standardize the look of your work and to work more efficiently. You also have a choice of input methods, depending on your requirements. Efficiency is further enhanced with keyboard commands.

Wink tutorials are created as flash files that can be viewed on any computer with a flash player. Wink flash files can be added to web pages, or they can be shared as stand-alone executable Windows files that do not need to be viewed online. As well, an html file is created automatically along with each flash file. Alternatively, Wink makes it easy to save and share a Wink tutorial in pdf format for printable manuals.

Wink’s user interface is intuitive and easy to learn, even for relative beginners. There is, of course, a learning curve, and practice does enhance competence and efficiency. The learning has been facilitated by two tutorials (created with Wink) to take a new user through the steps of putting together a Wink tutorial. There is also a concise and well organized manual that comes as a pdf file. Wink can be downloaded from http://www.debugmode.com/wink/.

Wink runs in Windows and Linux.

The first two screenshots below show Wink’s user interface. The next two are from a tutorial created with Wink. (Click on thumbnail to enlarge, then use browser’s back button to return to blog.)