This week we celebrated America’s Independence day. In the spirit of celebrating, I thought I’d make and share a free eLearning background. Hope you enjoy… Each image is 720×540 and ready to be imported right into Articulate, powerpoint, iSpring, Snap, or many other rapid eLearning tools.

Click here to download the files. (I’ve included 2 .jpgs and I threw in the .psd for you also.)

(Updated 3/2011: We’ve launched the next generation of our PowerPoint templates. The billboard style is now one of 40+ themes in our new PowerPoint Templates.)

Announcing a new PowerPoint course style that you can use in your next course: Billboard

This PowerPoint template gives you an instant look/feel for your next eLearning course. Don’t worry about how to design different layouts. Let us do that work. Just focus on the content that you’d like to input.

Features:

• Over 65 slide master layouts in this PowerPoint theme
• Easily change the background color (Just change the color in the slide master)
• Every thing is designed in PowerPoint (No Photoshop required

(Updated 3/2011: We’ve launched the next generation of our PowerPoint templates. Now there are 75+ layouts and 40+ themes in our new PowerPoint Templates.)

Do you use PowerPoint in your eLearning courses? Do you want a PowerPoint that has tons of pre-designed layouts that look great?

We just added TONS of new layouts to our PowerPoint Course Styles. Each style now includes 65+ unique layouts.

What are these Course Styles:
Ever look at the blank, white, square PowerPoint slide and not know where to start? Well, you don’t have to worry anymore. These course styles are slide master layouts that are ready for your course content. The layouts offer a template that helps you visually layout your course. (and the slides are graphically appealing)

Sample Layouts:

Examples from Courses:

“How-To-Use” Video:	Course Demo:

Great photos help create fun and engaging training. We have recently put together packs of eLearning stock photos to help you design better training.

Here are some layouts that we created to “get your creative juices flowing”. The examples are a combination of PowerPoint course styles, Cut-Out People, and eLearning stock photos.

8 Flash games, 1 PowerPoint eLearning course style theme , 1 Flash Interactions Pack included in this bundle AND 1 Articulate Presenter Course Skin!

These are PowerPoint and Flash based templates that are super easy to update. Each template is fully customizable in Flash and PowerPoint (we give you the source files). Easily integrate into your Articulate Presenter course.

BONUS: Reuse the templates over and over again in multiple courses or even other websites and presentations.
Purchase these templates at eLearningTemplates.com

It is really nice to have a library of “people poses”. There are many times when I need pictures of a person in multiple poses. We’ve used iStock to purchase some and we’ve also made our own.

Here are some tips to create your own:

The Spicy Learning Blog – Top five tips for running a successful photo shoot

Here are some People Poses that we’ve created.

Master slides in PowerPoint are very powerful and they are easier than ever to do with PPT 07. When using a rapid e-Learning authoring tools that runs off PowerPoint I always start with a template that uses master slides. (or I build one to use throughout the course.)

Why do I like master slides:  Templates – You can create a bunch of master slides and then save it as a template.That allows you to chose from many different layouts with just one click. (see last image below.) Page Design – Create a different layout for each type of learning interaction. Build master slides with 1,2,3…. boxes, scenarios, title page, pre-quiz, course evaluation, etc. (see the example images below.) Consistent Layout – The text boxes and images for each layout are always in the same spot. It makes the presentation/course look clean and professional when things don’t “jump” around. Easy to Share – If you work with multiple designers it is easy to share the file so that everyone is using the same layouts. It’s Fast – Once you build some master slides it can really increase your design speed. You don’t have to “fiddle” with the layout of each page. Just click New Slide and choose a layout. Reusable – You can quickly select the master slides and make changes. These changes will be reflected on every slide/page that used that master slide. Quickly change fonts, text positions, colors, etc. Here are PowerPoint course templates and styles for eLearning that we’ve created. I hope that they speed up development and make your courses look great! Happy eLearning!

If you’ve been coming to this site for awhile you probably know that we build a lot of custom flash games/quizzes/interactions for eLearning developers. I want to take a moment and focus on how the templates work with Articulate.

eLearning Games

Each of the games is created in Flash and has scoring and looks amazing. A learner answers various questions and gets feedback and a running score. Every game comes with the .fla file so that you can customize everything until your heart is content.

However, if you don’t know flash very well, that’s ok. All you have to do is insert your question text into the movie clips in the library. (a tutorial is included with every .fla and there are videos on our template tutorial site.

There are 8 games available right now:

Articulate Presenter Games (Jeopardy, Millionaire, Pyramid, Golf, Spy Game, Board Game, Soccer, Bootcamp)

eLearning Interactions

Ever wish that you have tons of interactive page layouts just ready and waiting? Now you can! We’ve created 4 different designs of interactive flash layouts. Pages with tabs and sections, scenarios, drag and drops, flash cards, quizzes, and more! Each set has over 30 interactive layouts.

All you need to do is add your text to the text movieclip in flash and publish. Here are some samples:

Using Templates and Games in Articulate Presenter

Here are the steps to use these flash templates in Articulate:

1. Add the text that you want to see in your game/interaction to the appropriate movieclip in Flash.

2. Publish the flash movie as .swf

3. In PowerPoint go to Articulate / Flash Movie

4. Select your .swf

5. From the Insert Flash Movie window choose these settings:

• Display in slide
• Advance to next slide “When user clicks next”
• Movie plays independently of slide

6. Click OK

That’s it.

Bonus – eLearning PowerPoint Backgrounds

There are also PPT backgrounds available that have over 80 different layouts. We also provide a PPT master template file that you can use to speed up the development process.