Two Talk LPS Learning, Language & IT Services

That cool drawing video

If you’ve ever seen a video where a hand appears to be drawing on a whiteboard and wondered, well how did they do that? Well, there’s an app for that!

This month, I downloaded a desktop app called VideoScribe to test out the capabilities. The tools are pretty easy to use. You simply select the images that you want to add to the timeline (from their library or select your own images), adjust the duration and transition settings and play.

These type videos can be used for demonstrations, eLearning, marketing or general communication. I would use it more for advertising, which is the project I created today. Here’s a video I made in about 15 minutes.

VideoScribe in action

Note that if you are using the trial version there is limited functionality and any exported video will contain a fixed background with the Sparkol logo.

There are other drawing apps out there with similar functionality. Try them out and send your comments about the best value in terms of functionality, subscription price, integrations. Let’s share ideas!

This month’s exploration into the drawing video had me saying that’s great technolo-gee, I did not know it was THAT easy. Try it for yourself!

Up-skilling for the Next Phase

When the pandemic has passed (or when vaccines become universally distributed) some might be wondering, Will I be ready for what comes next? What skills will be most valued? Will I even get a contract in my current field? Lots of unknowns.

Well, given that the new American president seems focused on putting in place experts in their respective fields, I am hopeful for the upcoming changes that will encourage equitable growth and development in technology. With that in mind, I have been skilling up to prepare for recovery.

I have spent many hours learning Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, C# and other technical courses. Training sources vary in their cost and relevance, but here are a few ideas that I have used in the past year:

Training Days offered by software vendors – I attended several Azure training days offered by Microsoft and its partners. I also attended an SAP free preview course.
Industry Conferences – some of the best training comes from industry professionals who are eager to share technological advances. The main benefit to conferences is having companies share how they apply the technology to their business. I attended a Developer’s conference and also attended Adobe Max this year for the first time.
Coursera – this leans more to academic topics but I have found some good IT courses offered in Spanish.
LinkedIn Learning (lynda.com) – choose a playlist for your topic of interest or risk becoming lost in all of the courses! There are quite a few IT and other courses taught by Spanish and Portuguese-speaking professionals.
PluralSight – I am new to this one but I have to give five-star rating for the course I took during their free preview weekend.

So, which sites are you using for training? Send me a note. Let’s share ideas!

Feel like someone’s watching you?

How would you like for your employer to monitor you while you working from home? Imagine sitting at your desk and your home office and your boss is tracking what you are doing. To a limited degree, your status on Microsoft Skype and Teams serve as monitoring; however surveillance applications can be quite a bit more invasive.

Why Monitor at all? Well, not everyone can be trusted to stay on task and do the work that he/she is being paid to do while in the office, much less in their private homes. Unless there is some hourly or daily deliverable, there’s really no way to tell that WFH is really happening.

Employers monitor “efficiency, attendance and productive time as well as detect slackers and late-comers.”
Janet Patterson, Medium.com

How exactly do employers monitor? Well, when I teach online university courses, my students must install a monitoring browser that uses their webcams and AI when they take exams. The applications check for head and eye movements that are attributed with cheating, and prevent the students from switching to other applications during the exams. Similarly, employer surveillance applications monitor keyboard and web activities and do the following:

Access a webcam
Taking screenshots
see more at forbes.com

Is there any lasting employer benefit of monitoring? Eventually, everyone will be back in the workplace. It’s already starting to happen. Rather than continue to play big brother, this is a chance for the company to start incorporating specific skills and traits into job requirements that will preclude the necessity of employee monitoring.

Yes, I still play with puppets

It has been a while since I have been smitten, enamorada, fascinée with a computer application. After my training and first few projects with Adobe Character Animator puppets (or characters), I am truly excited about the possibilities of this tool, from conducting online unbiased interviews, live virtual meetings, and recorded or live presentations.

So far I have learned the basics of setting up the Character Animator puppets, and editing them to change their features, skin color, hair texture and clothing. Although you do not have to be an artist to navigate this application, it’s definitely not one that you can jump right into (believe me I tried)—even if you are familiar with Adobe products. You have to get some training.

Tutorials

The best tutorials that I have seen so far come from Okay Samurai. Check out his videos, which cover the basics, intermediate and all the way to the projects I could only hope to someday create.

It’s certainly a fun product and you just need a computer with a microphone, camera and of course Adobe Creative applications. Enjoy!

Adobe Character Animator is challenging but worth the effort.

(not) Working from Home

It has been challenging for many to find jobs during the pandemic. I am currently off-contract and though it was not totally unexpected, it is definitely not something that I want to continue. If this is your situation I want to offer you some encouragement that I received recently.

You are still good at what you do but you may have to tell more people about it to get noticed.
Build your skills, set your goals and stay focused.
Be cautious — some people are trying to take advantage of gig workers because they know we need work.
Try a new approach.

Take care of yourself until you get back to business!

“You are a real boy…as real as I’ve ever made one.”

If you are a Sci-Fi fan, then you might recognize that a line from Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), a futuristic movie about robot with very human characteristics. Since seeing that movie, I have been excited about the prospect of that technology becoming reality. Well, it has already happened and the technology is moving ever close to the ‘real boy.’

Whether you are a fan of Cortana, Siri, Alexa or some other virtual assistant, you have likely stopped typing in any search terms that you perform on your phone or tablet, and now allow the AI to do the work of:

converting your speech to text
finding the results based on the search terms, your location, past web behavior
converting the best search result text to speech and reading the text to you

Also, if you have visited any company’s website lately, you were undoubtedly greeted by a chatbot designed to quickly address your reason for visiting, and direct you to the information you needed.

Support for Online Learning

In April of this year, I was very hopeful that the human race would conquer Covid-19 and we would not suffer the loss of lives that we have experienced globally. I hoped that with the social distancing, quarantines, mask wearing and other precautions that we would be able to keep each other safe and prevent the suffering that so many have endured. I also hoped, most of all, that the pandemic would pass within a season and that we would put our lives back together.

Since that has not happened and many of us are still making efforts to shelter in place, schools are offering virtual and online options, if not onsite. As such, students of all ages and their parents are trying to get their educational plans in order.

Be the Difference You Want to See

In addition to being a lifelong learning book nerd, I am also a serial volunteer. Most of my volunteering has involved the Spanish language (teaching the language or working in Latinx community) and IT (teaching or providing support).

In May, of this year, I decided to take steps to do more than volunteer. I decided to make service part of my business plan.

Online Support of Black-Owned Businesses

This week I learned about a photographer who posted a list of Black-owned businesses to her company site. It has received a high level of attention from business owners and consumers.

Why this seemingly sudden national interest in supporting Black businesses? Because, as Americans, our first inclination to help someone suffering or in trouble is to assist financially.

Protesting on the Digital Front

Black Lives Matter. It is more than a hashtag and it should go without saying/writing. However, in the United States, it is grossly apparent that many people do not value Black lives, including police who are taking Black lives, and all those who can (but do not) use their power and courage to stop police brutality against Black people.

Tackling institutional racism is another matter. Racism persists in all institutions, even the nation’s churches. As individuals we have a choice to support racism, ignore racism, or combat racism.

The use of media and language in America can be harmful to Black people. Calling Black men “thugs” and referring to protesters as “terrorists” in the news distorts the view an audience, especially those who only receive news from a single source.

Media both reflects and shapes our culture and often the images and stories being told are detrimental to people of color. The fact that networks are canceling police speaks to their acknowledgment that entertainment is also contributing to racists beliefs and the problems they have caused in this country.

In the IT world, “black” is used to replace the synonyms malevolent, criminal, deleterious in its uses:

Blacklist (vs. Whitelist) User
Black Hat (vs. Whitehat) Hacker

In my places of work, I have challenged the practice by using words such as “greenlist” and “redlist.” Black professionals hear what others are not hearing. There are so few Black people in the world of IT. I wondered, in a “protest” letter to a global IT company, whether the exclusion that exists due to societal racism is also reinforced by the language and that white IT managers are blackballing (there’s that word again) Black professionals. But I really needn’t wonder.

An excerpt from my message which has been sent to two IT companies so far.