Icons to get you ready for turkey, snow & ho-ho-ho

Because you all know just how much I love a good icon set, I’m sending along a new list of icons to get you ready for the holidays.  I received all of these either through an email subscription or an RSS feed that I read.  So, thanks to Tutorial 9 and SitePoint for making this elf happy.  As always, read the licensing and read me files to determine just how you can use these guys.

Fall & Thanksgiving

With this icon pack from Tutorial 9, you get 5 icons in PNG format: leaves, pilgrims, a pumpkin, a tree, and a turkey.  Who doesn’t love a goofy turkey that can be repurposed as a Virginia Tech hokie?

Download from: http://www.tutorial9.net/resources/free-icon-pack-november-seasonal-ic ons/

Christmas Pack 1

This adorable little pack of icons from Chico21 on DeviantArt comes with 8 icons for you to use.  They are in PNG format (my favorite!), and you get a Christmas tree, reindeer, stocking with candy cane, chicken and hen (always a  holiday necessity), Santa mouse, Mama and baby bears, and a present.

Download from http://chicho21net.deviantart.com/art/Christmas-Dock-Icons-72393843

Christmas Pack 2

Twenty icons this time from the “Real Christmas 2005″ pack.  These are from Enchanted Labs and come in 3 flavors — no, not cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla — Mac, Windows, and PNG.  If you would like to use these in your system icons, then feel free to use the Mac or Windows options.  But as I always suggest, download the PNGs for the most flexibility in your development projects.

Download from http://enhancedlabs.com/index.php/labnotes/comments/the_real_christmas _05_reloaded/

Bookmarks for October 26th through November 2nd

These are my Jumptags for October 26th through November 2nd:

• Spooktacular Pumpkin Vector Pack (100 Free Vectors) – Here's an unexpected Halloween Treat for the Tutorial9 Community! This is a HUGE set of 100 Free Spooky Pumpkin Vectors on Halloween Eve!
• Free Vintage & Serpent Go Media Vectors | Tutorial9 – Our Pals over at Go Media are releasing a massive new set of Premium Vector Art. Why's this matter to you? You get a taste of it For Free.
• Project Project Planning & Management for ISD and HPT Efforts – Project Planning & Management presentation at ISPI Spring Conference 2009 by Guy W Wallace, CPT

Bookmarks for October 21st through October 26th

These are my Jumptags for October 21st through October 26th:

• satmodel.gif (GIF Image, 550×673 pixels) – Image hierarchy of ISD using ADDIE.
• Free Vectors – 7 High-Quality City Skyline Vectors | Think Design – A pack of 7 high-quality City Skyline Vectors, created by ThinkDesignBlog.com
• A List Apart: Articles: The Myth of Usability Testing – A List Apart offers a sobering view of usability testing.

Bookmarks for October 21st

These are my Jumptags for October 21st

• Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie – Use Xtranormal to create movies quickly. Drag and drop actors onto scenes. Add text and the software syncs the actors mouths with the text. Windows only.
• Storybird – Collaborative storytelling – Storybirds are short, visual stories that you make with family and friends to share and (soon) print.
• Uncovering Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets – BusinessWeek – For his new book, communications coach Carmine Gallo watched hours of Jobs' keynotes. Here he identifies the five elements of every presentation by the Apple CEO.
• ImageChef – Word Mosaic – In the flavor of Wordle, write a comment or poem in the shape of hearts or other symbols.

Bookmarks for October 13th through October 15th

These are my Jumptags for October 13th through October 15th:

• Weebly – Create a free website and a free blog – Weebly has now added an education section. Weebly is perfect for creating classroom websites, student e-portfolios, and websites for assigned projects.
• Free Adobe Dreamweaver Tutorial | CSS Tutorial for Creating Layouts in Dreamweaver | Layers Magazine – This tutorial covers the process of building a CSS-based layout from scratch using Dreamweaver. Great beginner tutorial.
• Free Adobe Dreamweaver Tutorial | CSS Tutorial – Basics of Working with Cascading Style Sheets | Layers Magazine – This tutorial covers the basics of creating CSS in Dreamweaver using the CSS Rule dialog. Great intro.
• Adobe Flash Tutorial | Creating an interactive story in Adobe Flash part 2 – A simple tutorial for moving around Flash CS3. Part 2.
• Adobe Flash Tutorial | Creating an interactive story in Adobe Flash – A simple tutorial in two parts for moving around Flash CS3.
• Flash CS4 |Timeline Animation | Motion Editor | Layers Magazine – With Flash CS4 now has auto-keyframing, a full-featured motion editor, and—most importantly—the ability to animate each property of an object separately from one another.
• Open Access Educational Technology journals – George Veletsianos – One of the resources developed for my students is a listing of open access journals (name, url, and RSS feed) that publish papers on the nexus between technology and education (educational technology, instructional design, e-learning, online distance…
• Best Time-Tracking Application: Klok – Time management – Lifehacker – Earlier last week we asked you to share your favorite time-tracking applications and then we rounded them up for your review.
• The speed of information – The speed of information between neurons.
• 33 Websites For Vector Images Download | Pro Blog Design – Here is a list of free vector images for download, if you're designer and look for vector images for your design project, you can simply download this…
• 3 Ways To Find The Best Website Color Scheme – Learn how to pick a website color scheme that keeps visitors engaged. Includes a list of questions to ask clients and a color psychology cheat sheet.
• Using John Keller’s ARCS model to motivate online learners « Onlignment – ARCS provides a good summary of the issues to be considered when designing a learning intervention. In particular it makes sense to me when putting together a live online learning event.
• Live Online Learning – a facilitators guide « Onlignment – To download your free copy of “Live Online Learning – a facilitator’s guide” just sign up for the free newsletter.
• Healthcare Napkins wins World’s Best Presentation Contest 2009 | SlideShare Blog – Thousands of presentations are uploaded to SlideShare everyday. But some catch your eye from the moment they get uploaded. Tha's the case with the winning
• 5 Steps to Slide Design for Non-Designers by Ellen Finkelstein | SlideShare Blog – I’ve come up with 5 steps that you can take to create a presentation that will work, even if you’re not a designer.

Bookmarks for September 9th through September 16th

These are my Jumptags for September 9th through September 16th:

• The SQ3R Method – An overview and summary of the SQ3R method for studying and reading comprehension.
• Reciprocal Teaching – An overview and summary of reciprocal teaching by Palinscar.
• Behaviorism Tutorial – A tutorial on behaviorism from Athabasca University.
• Periodic Table of Typefaces on the Behance Network – This particular table lists 100 of the most popular, influential and notorious typefaces today.
• Basics of APA Style 6th edition – An Adobe Flash presentation with slides and audio narration of the basics of APA style. References to page numbers in the 6th edition are given.

Icon sets. I have just 4 words for you: Fab-u-lous and free.

Okay that’s 5 words.  Technically, 3.  But, I love collecting icons, and most of the time they come in sets.  I probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 50 sets of icons that have anywhere from 4 to 60 icons a piece.  So a rough estimate is somewhere around 800 to 1,000 icons. Admittedly, many of these are the same icon in 3 or 4 different sizes, such as 28 x 28 pixels up to 256 x 256 pixels.  I have bookmarked almost all of them, so check them out.

So what do I do with all of them?  Well, I’ve started using them a lot in presentations.  As I’ve moved to more Presentations 2.0 and emphasizing visual literacy for memory, I’ve begun to use a lot more images — in particular, Flickr Creative Commons and icons to demonstrate ideas.  I even created presentation for Clif Mims using almost all icons.  And since I create quite a few web sites and web pages for courses and professional development that I conduct, I tend to use the icons on these pages as well.

Here is a couple of examples of wiki pages where I used icons from Vistaicons.com and Pasquale D’Silva.  I find that often with a quick site, the icon sets work well because they are all in the same theme, or flavor, and they bring a visual unity to the site with both message and colors.  Plus, if you feel like you don’t have the graphic design know-how to produce quality images, then these high-quality images are a far better cry than screen beans in Office.

City icons on course website

Cute bird icons on course site

Three Tips for Icons

Free is better
I always look for free icons and icon sets.  Free is the new 99 cents.  Sites where I often receive notices about icons are SitePoint, Function, and Smashing Magazine.  I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feeds/email alerts if for nothing other than the icon alerts.

PNG is where it’s at
I always look for PNG file format.  I’ve found that these have the most flexibility in use for digital presentations and online with web sites.  So the PNG files work with Word, Powerpoint, Dreamweaver, and in PBWorks, too.

Often when looking to download the icon sets they are especially designed for use with your operating systems.  So that you can change the icons for Firefox, Photoshop, and iTunes.  Therefore you will often see them in three flavors: Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Almost always the Linux pack is the PNG pack to download.  You can, of course, download the others for your operating system, but to get the most liberal use of the graphics, don’t overlook the Linux link.

U gotta Readme
Finally, when I download, I always, always, always, look at the Readme file and/or the release statement.  Inside these files are the licensing requirements for using the graphics.  In many cases, the licensing/copyright statement requires that you provide a link back to the distributing site.  In many cases, the statement does not allow you to redistribute the graphics in any manner other than linking to the download page.  In about 50% of the cases, the statement does not allow you to use the graphics for commercial applications.  However, in probably close to 50% of the downloads, the designer has also packaged the Illustrator or Photoshop original files, so that you can alter the images to your liking.  This is the case with the super cute Twitter birds.  Pasquale D’Silva licensed them out for use and derivations at will.

In fact, here’s an example of where I used the original Photoshop (.psd) file to change the icon to suit a blog post I was writing about retweeting and reposting.  (Actually, I used Fireworks, and it all worked fine, too.)

If that’s not enough to get you going on icons, then over the next few posts, I’m going to share some of my favorite icons and icons sets.  So stay tuned, clear out some space on your hard drive, and get ready to “Save image as…”  But if you can wait, then go ahead and download them now.

Are you collecting graphics, icons, or other media?  Share them (and the links) below.  I’m always looking for new media to share.

Bookmarks for September 8th

These are my Jumptags for September 8th

• The Five Design Elements Every Website Needs – Discover the five design elements that every well-built website needs. Includes tips and tricks for content and navigation design.
• How To Jump Start The Website Design Process – Discover a simple four-step process that can help any web designer squeeze inspiration out of a competitor's website design.
• Project2Manage – Free Project Management – Project2Manage is an Online project management system that allows you to stay up-to-date, on task and connected with your team. We’ve taken the hard work of staying organized and simplified it for you.
• 15 Essential Web Tools for Students – It's time to head back to school and there are a number of web-based and social tools to help you get through the school year. Here are 15 essential ones.
• Microsoft Launches Tools For Teachers – Microsoft's Education Labs launched a new project this afternoon and it's better on trees and the environment. The group just announced a new Math Worksheet Generator where teachers …
• Kineo – Tip 27: Tear down the visual wallpaper – It is time to tear down the e-learning wallpaper and take heed of some top tips on using graphics for instructional use.
• 30 Amazing Alphabet Recreations | Tutorial9 – The Alphabet dates back to the Egyptian era and forms the basis of our language, through the years people have experimented and created a wealth of interesting and unique alphabets. This is a collection of some of the best examples.
• 3 Successful Small Businesses on Social Media – To help you see how social media can work no matter how big or small your business, I’ve found some great case studies of small businesses that get it and are seeing results!

Bookmarks for September 4th

These are my Jumptags for September 4th

• GIF, PNG, JPG. Which One To Use? – If you're starting out in web design, you may be familiar with the different types of file formats used for images, but it can be confusing trying to figure out which file type you should use.
• The Ultimate Round-Up of Fireworks Tutorials and Resources – Fireworks was originally created as an image editing and web design application by Macromedia, for quick web mock-ups, and optimizing images for the Web. It
• Social Media Network Icons – Over 80 refined, amazing social networking icons for the top networks around. In PNG format.
• How to Use Twitter for Business: An Official Guide Finally Arrives – ReadWriteEnterprise – Twitter has launched Twitter 101, a special guide to the 140-character network aimed businesses.
• The Big Picture – The Big Picture is an online organizer that sets to make organizing more intuitive.
• 25-point Website Usability Checklist – Use this simple, 25-point checklist to assess critical website usability issues. Includes free download (1-page PDF).
• Download Helveticons – A great set of free folder icons based on Helvetica Bold.