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Subject:Advice--books for teaching Word, FM, & RH From:Kaye Adkins <kadkinsphd -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 6 Jul 2012 15:22:38 -0500
Next spring, I will be teaching our undergraduate documentation class,
affectionately known here as "the FrameMaker class." This summer Adobe TC
Suite 3 is supposed to be installed in our lab (finally! It's been sitting
on a shelf for months, and we've been using TC Suite 1). So I'm looking for
new books for my students to use as resources to learn and practice with
the programs.
In the past, I have used Classroom in a Books and the IconLogic books (much
prefer IconLogic--but they don't have a FM book). Since I couldn't get
either one for FM 8, I changed my approach. I used O'Keefe, Loring, et.
al., Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8. I gave the
students .txt files and asked them to do various things with
them--formatting headers & footers, adding graphics, creating/editing
paragraph & character tags, compiling chapters into a book, etc. They had
to use the book as a resource to figure these things out. I liked this
approach better than a workbook--the students seemed more engaged and
really felt like they were using the program, instead of working through
steps.
So--What are your favorite aftermarket manuals/how to books for:
FrameMaker 10 (and it seems like I should be introducing them to structured
FM. Yes?)
MS Word 2010 (to be installed this summer, since it wasn't compatible with
RH 7--I'm planning on asking students to learn advanced Word tools before
we tackle FM--Word styles, templates, master docs, etc.)
RoboHelp 9 (I'll be teaching that in 2014, but might as well ask now, while
I'm asking for the others.)
One final request--I also teach a graduate course that introduces students
to tech comm. Most of those students do not have a background in tech comm,
so I used the IconLogic book for Tech Comm Suite 1.0--Integrating TC Suite,
I think--as a quick intro to the main tools. Is there anything out there
that serves as a overview of Suite 3.0?
Thanks,
Kaye Adkins
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