NCSU Computer Training Unit

NC State University's Computer Training Unit welcomes you to the September edition of the Gigabits Bulletin.

Remember you may download the latest catalog from the Web at http://www.ncsu.edu/ctu or call us at 919.515.8163 and we will gladly send you a copy. It includes new lower rates for lab rentals, a Webmaster Certificate Program-Design Track during the day and new in-class bundles for Adobe products. We continue to look for ways to support you with technology training.

Program Spotlight:
WEBMASTER CERTIFICATE PROGRAM – FOUNDATION & DESIGN MEDIA TRACK

September 24 - November 20, 2009
Thursdays and Fridays, 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. New Day Track!
November 2, 2009 - February 24, 2010
Mondays and Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00 p.m.

The Webmaster Certificate Program is a series of continuing education courses in website design, development, and programming. Classes are offered in a traditional classroom environment. This program brings together an outstanding faculty, flexible and diverse course offerings, powerful computing resources, and affordable tuition. The 3 steps to complete this certificate are foundation courses, specialization courses and the capstone project.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You can find all of our programs on our website:
http://ncsu.edu/ctu/
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Contents

Desktop Publishing/Graphic Presentations (go)
Training Issue of the Month: Designing Websites That Appeal To the Senses (go)
Internet/Web Page Design/Multimedia (go)
Training Issue of the Month (continued) (go)
Word Processing (go)
Spreadsheets/Accounting (go)
Training Issue of the Month (continued) (go)
Database/Project Management/Report Writing (go)
Training Issue of the Month (continued) (go)
Computer Programming (go)
Training Issue of the Month (continued) (go)
Certifications/Networking/Security (go)

Desktop Publishing/Graphic Presentations

For more information or to register for any of these classes, go to
http://www.mckimmon.ncsu.edu/ctu/subselect.cfm?cat=Desktop+Publishing%2FGraphic+Presentations&submit=Submit

POWERPOINT 2003 LEVEL 1
September 22, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this course you will learn the basic skills necessary to begin effectively creating presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint.

AUTOCAD LEVEL 1
October 1-2, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This class, designed for new AutoCAD users, will cover concepts, commands, creating, editing and printing drawings using AutoCAD 2009.

PHOTOSHOP LEVEL 1
October 5-6, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this course you will learn to use several tools for selecting parts of images, and will move, duplicate, and resize images. You will learn to use layers, and to apply layer effects and filters to create special effects, including lighting and texture effects. Additionally, you will use painting tools and blending modes to create shading effects, and will perform adjustments to contrast and color balance. You will save images in formats for print and Web use.

POWERPOINT 2007 LEVEL 1
October 9, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this course you will learn the basic skills necessary to begin effectively creating presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint.

ILLUSTRATOR LEVEL 1
October 14-15, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Explore the basic skills that will allow you to take advantage of Illustrator's powerful tools. Learn how to manipulate the various palettes and navigate through the Adobe Illustrator environment, as you create and modify paths using special drawing tools, and draw and edit geometric objects. You will apply fill and stroke attributes, colors, gradients, and transparency to objects and paths. You will also use layers to manage complex illustrations, enter and format type in an illustration, and create eye-catching type effects. You'll also prepare Illustrator files for print and the Web.

To register or for more information, click here

Training Issue of the Month: Designing Websites That Appeal To the Senses

This month's article is by Yatin.

We read the newspaper, we watch television, and we listen to the radio, but we experience the Web; this is what makes 'The Website' one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today's marketing executives. Unfortunately conventional wisdom has stifled the 'experience factor' on most website presentations.

Traditional circulation based advertising biases and pitch-mandated direct mail practices from metric-minded agencies have limited businesses' ability to take advantage of the Web's capacity to provide a more active, creative, and penetrating sensory experience aimed at furthering marketing objectives.

As consumers of information we all filter what our mind considers irrelevant. When we go to a website we quickly recognize where banner and text advertisements have been placed and proceed to ignore them for the rest of our visit. Even television ads are becoming increasingly less effective, even as their cost increases. Yet people will watch and even look forward to creative, entertaining advertisements that capture our imagination and inform our ability to make better decisions about what we buy and who we buy from.

Scroll down to learn what works.

Internet/Web Page Design/Multimedia

For more information or to register for any of these classes, go to
http://www.mckimmon.ncsu.edu/ctu/subselect.cfm?cat=Internet/Web+Page+Design/Multimedia&submit=Submit

Day Classes
SHAREPOINT LEVEL 1
September 15, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 combines the familiar office tools with the latest technology to communicate over the Web in a single environment to share information no matter where you are. This course will help you to create a team site to facilitate collaboration among team members. Contributors or end users will learn to collaborate in an environment to create, manage and publish their work.

XHTML LEVEL 1
September 24-25, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Gain hands-on training and explore the markup language, which is the basis for web page creation. XHTML knowledge is required for the creation of quality websites meeting a wide variety of usability and accessibility requirements. XHTML is the bridge between HTML and XML.

XHTML LEVEL 2
October 1, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this course you will have hands-on training and exploration of the markup language, which is the basis for web page creation. XHTML knowledge is required for the creation of quality websites meeting a wide variety of usability and accessibility requirements. This class will introduce advanced lists, forms, basic CSS, forms etc.

JAVASCRIPT LEVEL 1
October 2, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

JavaScript has become synonymous with web page design. Learn the basic building blocks to gain a better understanding of JavaScript. This class includes entry-level work with images, rollovers and windows. You will write basic scripts and begin to analyze scripts in order to build your knowledge of JavaScript.

FLASH LEVEL 1
October 6, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

A website may be more inviting with interactive graphics and animations. The tools present in Adobe Flash help to create and manipulate a wide variety of objects ranging from a simple graphic design to a complex animation sequences. The topics covered provide the basic skills you need to create simple objects and animations in Flash.

DREAMWEAVER LEVEL 1
October 8, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Become familiar with the Dreamweaver environment as you create a site definition and create a web page by working with and formatting text. You will work with images, links and uploading files to a local server.

CASCADING STYLE SHEETS LEVEL 1
October 9, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Discover the advantages and limitations of designing with style sheets as you learn methods to create different types of cascading style sheets, basic syntax rules and apply styles to manipulate various elements of your web page.

DESIGN/USABILITY/ACCESSIBILITY
October 16, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Too many websites fail to fulfill their promise because their designers are unaware of some of the most important factors that affect a site's success. Learn how to approach website design from the end user's perspective that leads to quality designs. This course will give you a way to understand and prioritize your web development efforts focusing on those factors that make the greatest difference to user success. This course will also speak to the need for accessible websites, referencing the Federal Law. This course will address how and why to make websites accessible.

Evening Classes
XHTML LEVEL 2
September 22 & 24, 2009
6:00-9:00 p.m.

Gain hands-on training and explore the markup language that is the basis for web page creation. XHTML knowledge is required for the creation of quality websites, meeting a wide variety of usability and accessibility requirements. This class will introduce advanced lists, forms, basic CSS, and forms.

JAVASCRIPT LEVEL 1
September 29 & October 1, 2009
6:00-9:00 p.m.

DREAMWEAVER LEVEL 1
October 6 & 8, 2009
6:00-9:00 p.m.

CASCADING STYLE SHEETS LEVEL 1
October 13 & 15, 2009
6:00-9:00 p.m.

To register or for more information, click here

Training Issue of the Month (continued)

Does Anybody Really Know What Works?
It is easy to rely on after-the-fact number crunching and projected head-numbing statistics to justify how marketing campaigns are constructed rather than on the less predictable but more relevant elements of psychology and human nature. But do numbers really tell the true story, or are they just protect-your-butt justification designed to ease everyone's mind when it comes time to commit to a budget?

Take the entertainment industry for example. Here is an industry that can tell you how many people watched a particular television show on a per minute basis. So, if these and the other cerebral-cortex-boggling figures are so telling, why do networks have such a hard time delivering programs that people will watch; or do they yank new potentially successful shows off-the-air based on their initial numbers before they ever have a chance to find an audience?

Television is such an expensive medium, its practitioners have come to rely on seemingly safe, tried, hackneyed old formulas, knowing that it is easier to sell sponsors what used to work, even when they know there is little chance of it working again. The fact is nobody really knows what combination of stories, writers, actors and producers is going to capture the publics' imagination.

So what does this have to do with Web-marketing? Everything. The Web is not an expensive production medium and that allows marketers to experiment with different techniques and creative. Unless your Web-business is a circulation-based advertising model, there is no reason to limit your creative marketing to worn-out concepts and number-based incentive formats that for the most part, no longer work.

Scroll down to learn about sensory and experience design concepts.

Word Processing

For more information or to register for this class, go to
http://www.mckimmon.ncsu.edu/ctu/subselect.cfm?cat=Word+Processing&submit=Submit

WORD 2007 LEVEL 1
September 16, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Learn how to enter text, edit text, save and browse documents, and enhance the appearance of those documents by using various formatting options. You will also learn how to create tables, insert headers and footers, proof and print documents, and insert graphics.

WORD 2007 LEVEL 2
October 15, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this course you will work with styles, sections, and columns as you format tables, print labels and envelopes, and work with graphics. You will use document templates, manage document revisions, and work with Web features.

WORD 2003 LEVEL 1
October 6, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Learn how to create and edit documents, move and copy text, format characters and paragraphs, create and manage tables, control page layout, and use proofing tools. Experience the benefits of working with Word's integrated Web and e-mail features. This course is approved courseware for Microsoft Office Specialist certification. It also comes with CertBlaster exam prep software (download).

To register or for more information, click here

Spreadsheets/Accounting

For more information or to register for any of these classes, go to
http://www.mckimmon.ncsu.edu/ctu/subselect.cfm?cat=Spreadsheets%2FAccounting&submit=Submit

EXCEL 2003 LEVEL 1
September 15, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This course teaches the basic functions and features of Excel 2003. You will learn how to enter and edit data, labels, and formulas, work with functions, format cells, print worksheets, create charts, and save a workbook as a web page.

EXCEL 2007 LEVEL 1
October 2, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This course teaches the basic functions and features of Excel 2007. After receiving an introduction to spreadsheet terminology and Excel's window components, you will learn how to use the Help system and navigate worksheets and workbooks. You will learn how to enter and edit text, values, formulas, and pictures, and then how to save workbooks in various formats. You will also move and copy data, learn about absolute and relative references, and work with ranges, rows, and columns. This course will also cover simple functions, basic formatting techniques, and printing. Finally, you will create and modify charts, and learn how to manage large workbooks.

EXCEL 2007 LEVEL 2
October 14, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This course will build on the skills and concepts taught in Excel 2007 Level I. You will learn how to efficiently use multiple worksheets and workbooks and will start working with more advanced formatting options including styles, themes, backgrounds, and watermarks. You will learn how to create outlines and subtotals, how to create and apply cell names, and how to work with lists and tables. You will save workbooks as web pages, edit hyperlinks, and save a workbook as a PDF file. This course will also cover advanced charting techniques, worksheet auditing and protection, file sharing and merging, and workbook templates.

QUICKBOOKS 2009 LEVEL 1
October 14, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this course you will work with QuickBooks Pro 2009, software designed to help small- and medium-sized businesses keep their books easily and accurately. After an introduction to the software and some basic file management principles, you will create your own company file and learn the fundamental skills needed to effectively deal with customers, vendors, and banking transactions.

QUICKBOOKS 2009 LEVEL 2
October 15, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this course you will work with QuickBooks Pro 2009, software designed to help small- and medium-sized businesses keep their books easily and accurately. This course builds on the fundamental knowledge that is taught in QuickBooks Level I. You will learn how to deal with physical inventories, work with payroll and balance sheet accounts, create estimates, and customize the QuickBooks application to suit your business needs.

EXCEL 2003 LEVEL 2
October 16, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This course teaches intermediate-level features and functions of Excel 2003. You will learn how to work with large worksheets, use 3-D formulas, customize Excel's toolbars and menus, apply special cell formatting, sort and filter lists, create combination charts and trend lines, use Excel's auditing features, and work with templates.

To register or for more information, click here

Training Issue of the Month (continued)

Sensory and Experience Design Concepts
The essence of good advertising and its big brother marketing, is creative story telling; stories presented effectively, inform, persuade, and penetrate our consciousness based on their ability to tap into our sensory experiences. There has developed over the last few years two new approaches to design that acknowledge this powerful aspect of human nature: Sensory and Experience Design.

The implications of Sensory and Experience Design can be found in everything from product development to package design. When we talk about SenEx Design we are talking about how real people react to their experience with products and marketing presentations.

We experience the world through our senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Stand in a supermarket and watch people shop for fruit and vegetables; they pick them up, squeeze them, turn them over and over looking for flaws, smell them, and if the store keeper isn't looking they may even have a taste. When people buy a car, they look at the specifications listed in the brochure, but they still go to the showroom, kick the tires, run their hands along the shinny new paint, smell the leather interior, and take that sucker for a test drive to see how she handles. It's all about experiencing the product through our senses - it's that sensory experience that becomes embedded in our memory.

To date most companies have lagged in their efforts to implement these new SenEx marketing communication approaches on their websites due to their obsession with search engine optimization issues that focus on the volume of traffic rather than the quality of the marketing message. Business seems to be stuck in a circulation-based advertising and mass-market mindset that runs contrary to the Web's niche market 'Long Tail' nature and its ability to communicate by presenting information that appeals to a variety of senses.

Scroll down to learn about search engine optimization.

Database/Project Management/Report Writing

For more information or to register for any of these classes, go to
http://www.mckimmon.ncsu.edu/ctu/subselect.cfm?cat=Database/Project+Management/Report+Writing&submit=Submit

CRYSTAL REPORTS LEVEL 1
September 16-17, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Learn the basics of this report-writing software including sorts, selection criteria, group creation, formula building for summing and conditional formatting, drill-downs, and section formatting. You will work with samples that include multiple table links.

PROJECT LEVEL 1
September 17, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Welcome to Microsoft Project Level 1. This course is the first in a series of two courses designed for individuals who will use Microsoft Project as a tool to assist them in managing projects. The topics in this course cover the critical skills necessary to create and modify a project plan file that contains tasks, resources, and resource assignments.

ACCESS 2007 LEVEL 2
September 28, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Discover how to enhance database designs by using the principles of normalization and table relationships. You will also learn how to query multiple tables for data that is used in customized forms and reports.

ACCESS 2007 LEVEL 1
October 7, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Develop the basic skills necessary to begin using Access. You will design and create databases, with emphasis on the construction of tables. In addition, you will be introduced to queries, forms, and reports.

ACCESS 2007 LEVEL 2
October 12, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

PROJECT LEVEL 1
October 13, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

To register or for more information, click here

Training Issue of the Month (continued)

Search Engine Optimization Issues
No one will argue with the desire of website owners to attract large numbers of viewers to their sites. But this desire has spawned an entire industry of people claiming to be able to provide website owners with the holy grail of search engine optimization: making it to the top spot in an organic search on your favorite search engine.

Not everyone willing to pay for an S.E.O. expert to optimize his or her site can be number one in an organic search. And of course there is the issue of paid search placement that trumps organic searches.

As fast as search engine optimization experts develop ways to beat the search engines, the experts at the search engines change their algorithms, and my money is on the guys at Google.

When it comes to search engine optimization consider the following important issues and questions:

1. Do the search engine tactics employed on your site degrade, obscure, or in some way diminish the ability of your website visitors to quickly find the information they want?

2. Do these search engine tactics impede your ability to effectively deliver your marketing message in a way that attracts attention, triggers relevant sensory experience, and embeds your message in your visitors' memories?

3. Do tactics like outbound reciprocal links and inline body-text links send people away from your site when you want them to stick around and hear what you have to say?

4. Do you have excessive repetitive copy-text on your site aimed at being indexed by search engines rather than read by people for clear concise understanding?

5. Have you reduced your complex message or instructions to a series of bulleted points that confuse rather than clarify?

6. Do your search engine tactics concentrate on the volume of traffic rather than the quality?

7. Is the traffic you're attracting leaving your site as fast as it's arriving?

The lesson we should learn from SenEx Design concepts is that websites need to be designed for people not search engines. Delivering a clearly understandable marketing message is achieved by tapping into the psychological and emotional responses triggered by sensory experiences. That is how you need to communicate to an audience separated from you by the vast expanse of the Internet.

Scroll down for final insights.

Computer Programming

For more information or to register for either of these classes, go to
http://www.mckimmon.ncsu.edu/ctu/subselect.cfm?cat=Computer+Programming&submit=Submit

SQL LEVEL 1
September 21-23, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

After successful completion of this class, you will have developed a large number of SQL SELECT statements, including joins and sub-queries, and written INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements.

.NET PROGRAMMING WITH VB.Net AND C#
October 5-9, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This is a heavy hands-on course for programmers with little or no previous .NET exposure. You'll focus primarily on creating Windows and Web (ASP.NET) applications and using the .NET Framework. You will be introduced to the creation of Class Libraries, Web Services, and Console applications. Discussion will cover the writing of code in Visual Basic and C#, including conditional statements, looping, exception handling, declaring variables, manipulating numbers, dates and strings, and much more; VB and C# examples are given side by side, so that you can focus exclusively on one language or the other, or compare the two languages. You will receive an introduction to ADO.NET (the database components of .NET). This course is based on the .NET Framework 2.0 or 3.5 and Visual Studio 2005 or 2008.

To register or for more information, click here

Training Issue of the Month (continued)

SenEx Web Design Using Audio and Video Techniques
People are hungry for information. In today's fast-paced world the average person needs to constantly upgrade their knowledge of ever changing and more complex products and services. Things that were good for you yesterday today are harmful; products that don't exist today will exist tomorrow. So it doesn't matter if you are a homemaker, retiree, or a buyer for an international corporation, the need-to-know is constantly with us and it creates what Richard Saul Wurman have described as "Information Anxiety".

We just don't have the time to study everything we need-to-know or want-to-know that affects our business and personal lives. We need the information fast and in an easily digestible format. And we need that information presented in a way that will make it easy for us to retain it.

The power of Web-audio and video is their ability to illicit experiences by presenting information in a linear narrative that appeals to the senses of sound and sight. This ability attracts and focuses an audience's attention on the material you want highlighted; it presents that material in an easily digestible format; it clarifies the meaning and significance of critical details; and it penetrates viewers' consciousness so that the information is retained.

The following types of audio and video SenEx Web-presentations can be used to deliver a variety of material:

1. Web-commercials and Email Campaigns

2. Special Promotions and Product Offerings

3. Product Descriptions and Overviews

4. Testimonials and Reviews

5. How To Instructions and Tutorials

6. Frequently Asked Questions and Q&As

7. Expert Lectures, Analysis and Opinion

8. Background and History

9. Personality, Staff, and Business Profiles

Conclusion
We all have something we want to sell: a product, a service, a plan, an idea, or even ourselves. And anyone who has ever run a sales department will tell you the best way to sell is through human interaction and the best way to emulate that on a website is with Web-audio and video that uses Sensory and Experience Design techniques to deliver the message.

Certifications/Networking/Security

For more information or to register for any of these classes, go to
http://ncsu.edu/ctu/schedule.html

TECHNICAL 3-CERTIFICATION PACKAGE
Mondays and Wednesdays, September 14 - December 7, 2009
6:00-10:00 p.m.

This package covers the fundamentals of operating system, hardware, networking and security.

TECHNICAL 5-CERTIFICATION PACKAGE
Mondays and Wednesdays, September 14 - December 7, 2009
6:00-10:00 p.m.

This package covers the fundamentals of operating system, hardware, networking and security. It also focuses on Cisco technologies for routing and switching in a network environment.

A+ ESSENTIALS
Mondays and Wednesdays, September 14-30, 2009
6:00-10:00 p.m.

This course will prepare you for the one of the two exams that make up the IT Technician certification: CompTIA A+ Essentials. You will gain the skills and knowledge necessary to perform the following tasks on personal computer hardware and operating systems: installation, PC building, system upgrades, repair, and system configuration. Course manual comes with MeasureUp and CertBlaster exam prep software (download).

WRITING QUERIES USING SQL SERVER 2008
Mondays and Wednesdays, October 5-14, 2009

This course provides you with the technical skills required to write basic Transact-SQL queries for Microsoft SQL Server 2008.This course is a suggested prerequisite for the MCTS Implementing and Maintaining SQL Server 2008 program.

A+ SUPPORT TECHNICIAN
Mondays and Wednesdays, October 5-19, 2009
6:00-10:00 p.m.

This course will prepare you for the one of the two exams that make up the IT Technician certification: You will gain the skills and knowledge necessary to perform the following tasks on personal computer hardware and operating systems: installation, PC building, system upgrades, repair, and system configuration. Course manual comes with MeasureUp and CertBlaster exam prep software (download).

MCP WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL
Tuesdays and Thursdays, October 6-22, 2009
6:00-10:00 p.m.

This course will prepare you for the Installing, Administering, and Configuring Microsoft Windows XP Professional (EXAM 70-270).

NETWORK+
October 19-23, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This course is designed as a complete package to prepare you for Network+, CompTIA's new certification exam, and to provide a strong foundation in PC-based network software and hardware components. Network+ is intended as a path for entering into networking, and the logical stepping-stone to follow A+ Certification.

To register or for more information, click here

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You can find all of our programs on our website:
http://ncsu.edu/ctu/
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

or call 919.515.8163