two workdays in one!

I literally spent all day working on learning Flash.  14 hours.  I took the day off of work to spend some quality time with Flash Professional 8.

It was fun and potentially very useful, which is why I was able to stick with it.

There was a time when I thought I might want to be a programmer.  I had some less than stellar computer science classes along the way, and decided to focus on the humanities and social sciences instead.  Now I play in HTML and extremely surface level code. That background, combined with my background in philosophy (logic), made it much easier to teach myself some basic Flash than I thought possible.

Here’s what I learned about Flash:

1. Flash is easy!
2. Interactive Flash is hard (if you’re not a programmer)!
3. Getting Flash and Captivate to communicate is impossible!

Learning a new computer language or skill is very game-like in itself.  There’s a lot of guessing and experimenting with variables to find out just why the image won’t do what you think you’re telling it to do.  I don’t let myself have that type of time much anymore because I have so much on my schedule.  Taking a day off to see what I could learn really helped me re-realize the value in playing and experimenting.  It’s something I think I need to make more time for.  For example, taking the time to learn how to do some things in Flash will really save me time when it comes to putting the games together.  Captivate is just so tedious and time-consuming, where Flash seems to be much faster.

I also realized the value of e-books.  I found out that ZSR has an online book completely devoted to Flash game programming (Macromedia Flash MX 2004 : Game Programming by Murray and Everett-Church).  This was far more useful than most tutorials for the basics of Flash (but quickly got too complicated for what I need to do).  After the Murray/Everett-Church book helped me get acquainted with Flash, the built-in help guides were the most useful resource I could find.  Once John got home from work I could ask about JavaScript and coding in general, which helped me with the bigger picture of what I was doing.

So, the tangibles for today are a number of experiments.  My first “working” Flash
game was running a “book” into a “master’s thesis,” and the “book” falls off the page.  By the end, I was able to make two versions of a rearranging game, where in the end the program “knows” if the topics or types of text are in the right order.   I also made a beginning sequence (extremely rough) for the rearranging game.  Now I just have to figure out how to put them all together.  I thought I might in Captivate, but after two hours of trying, I figure that’s not going to happen easily.

I also heard from Susan today about Boolean Slots, so I made several updates there.

New materials are on Library 2!

more boolean and Flash!

I met with Kevin today, briefly, to get some feedback on  Boolean Slots.  He had a lot of good ideas:

1. Make the “start” button disappear after it’s clicked on each machine.
2. Remove some of the “reminder” slides.
3. Show dollar signs on score cards.
4. He made new score cards, so I could redo those slides. (This required more work in Photoshop to create versions of the coins with just one object.)
5. Change the dollar coin slides to be centered.
6. Add as much interactivity as possible.
a. Instead of telling folks about and/or/not in the beginning, use a matching game.
b. Instead of reminding folks of their score at the end, use matching games.

We’d also like to add interactivity throughout the game, so I need to think about that some. I’d also  like to add a reflective slide at the end.

So, I was able to make corrections 1-6 this evening. I’ll see what I can do about the other two tomorrow (I’m taking a day of PTO to get a lot done on this project).

Again, the major problem is the sheer number of slides.  Things that should take all of 30 seconds to fix can spin out of control to take an hour.  I’m still not entirely pleased with the quizzing slides, so I need to work on those tomorrow.

Kevin and I also talked about the other games.  The only way to really make them like we envisioned is to use Flash.  Kevin doesn’t have time to do so yet, and I have a lot of hours of practicum to work on, so he uninstalled it from his computer and I am going to see what I can learn and implement tomorrow and for the rest of the practicum.

Installing Flash was the biggest headache and the worst part is that I don’t know what was causing the problem.  I had to restart my computer at least five times and for some reason the final one took.  Several websites on Flash recommended taking the 8 tutorials that come with the program, so I’ll probably do that in preparation for the other games.  Hopefully we’ll see some progress tomorrow!

last of boolean slots for the weekend

This weekend I spent an hour making corrections to the Boolean Slots game based on my notes from earlier in the day and I ran a few of the previews to make sure I corrected the major issues I had found.  It’s in pretty good draft 2 format.  I output it as a flash file and will let Susan and Kevin know it’s ready for review.

I’d still like to add reviews to help people realize the important information as well as add a few leading questions (perhaps in these reviews).  I also need to get with Kevin to talk about the scorecards.

previewing boolean slots

I spent an hour and fifteen minutes this morning going through all the different iterations of the Boolean Slots game in “preview” mode.  I found a dependency error and took a lot of notes on minor changes that need to be made to improve the overall quality of the game.  I also figured out (finally!) how to get the “makes sense” button to work early in the game.  It turns out that instead of making the button point to “continue” it has to specifically point to the next slide in the game.  Perhaps “continue” allows the time to continue running on the slide?

I’m set up to get down to business this evening, after our 4^th Thanksgiving.  I have a long list of improvements to make!

big-time boolean slots

Today I was able to do a lot with Boolean Slots!  Specifically:

1. I worked in Photoshop to coordinate the images that we’re using in place of text.  I wanted to make them the same size, remove shadows, and remove the background.  It was a good learning experience.  I spent quite a while trying to get the JPG files to work, only to learn that JPG files apparently don’t allow you to remove white space.  GIF files do.  So, that was useful, as well as learning how to delete backgrounds in Photoshop.  I used these skills to make “smaller” and “larger” versions of the book, deacon, cupola, basketball, football, and lacrosse stick.  This maintains the same look throughout the game.

2. After updating the images, I went in and replaced them where needed, and made sure the updated slides still showed elements appearing at the correct time.  This went much more quickly than yesterday, in large part because I had practice.

3. I looked at each text slide to see where I could reduce the number of words displayed.  This was based on my research on online pedagogy a few days ago.  When I made changes, I copied the slide and pasted it in the places where the same changes needed to be made.  This was certainly faster than making the same change over and over again, but it disrupted the dependencies.  After doing this I had to go through and reset most of the dependencies dealing with “choose a machine.”  To make sure everything is corrected, I’m going to do a “preview” tomorrow.  I can note problems then and correct them easily and quickly.

4. Also based on the online pedagogy research, I went through and added instant messaging information for the Z. Smith Reynolds library reference desk to every page of the game, and I added a slide at the end of the game that has reference contact information via email, IM, and phone, in case players have questions after it’s over.  

5. At this point the draft was starting to look about right, but timing was still off.  So, I went through and adjusted timing, and matched timing across similar slides.  

6.  Everything I’m doing for the Boolean Slots game seems like it’s taking me much longer than it should.  I think this is because the game has grown to over 100 slides.  When one thing has to be updated, it has to be updated across many slides, and it takes a long time to do that type of work.  Keyboard shortcuts help, but it still takes a long time.  I will do whatever I can to keep the next game to be much shorter!

7. I took a few moments to show the draft to my mother in law, a professor at WFU, and she recommended making the sections that have to be read last longer and add in more reviews.  This evening I’ve added more time to the “reading” slides.  Reviews will come tomorrow. 

Things left to do:

• Run preview to make sure changes didn’t disrupt dependencies.
• Add reviews to help people realize the important information.
• Make buttons work.
• Add leading questions.
• Scorecards: get squared version from Kevin and make info easier to digest.

working with images

I spent two hours last night, and an hour this morning, fixing up some image work in Boolean Slots.  Kevin had suggested, and I’ve read in a number of articles, that when it’s possible it’s best to use images instead of words.  It’s also best to remove as many words as possible and make each “page” scannable.  So, I reduced the sizes of the Boolean Slots images and replaced theme anywhere the word was mentioned.  For example, instead of saying “Basketball” I used this:.

However, I didn’t realize that making this change was impacting the timing of the slides until I ran a preview after altering all 100+ slides. 

This meant that I had to go through and make sure each image showed up at the right time on each slide.  Strangely, there wasn’t a pattern to the incorrect timing, either. 

I still have larger timing issues to work on, but for now, everything appears in the right order, there is much less text, and generally the “pages” are pretty scannable. 

Now I’d like to find a way to get rid of the white space around the images and sub that version in.  It’d look much more professional and crisper.

My big take-away lesson: make a few changes and *then* do a preview to see exactly what you’re changing!

Meeting with Kevin & Boolean Slots Updates

I met with Kevin on Tuesday to go over the updates I made the night before. He had a number of good suggestions including working on timing for the slides that are text heavy and working on the images. We think that using images for words, whenever possible, makes sense in light of recent research suggesting students tend towards visual learners today.

Tonight I streamlined the background image. This meant I had to use Photoshop to modify the background, I had to figure out how to move images to the “back” of the slide in Captivate, and I had to manipulate about a third of the slides.

It was productive, and I think a good exercise.

I’m going out of town for the next two days, so I’m going to spend this time focusing on the practicum goal of becoming familiar with online pedagogy. I have a number of articles that I’ll be taking with me, and I’ll post a report of my reading when I get back online.

working on the draft

I spent 5 hours tonight working on the suggestions that came out of our meeting earlier today. I found clipart images for football, basketball, and a lacrosse stick. I fixed up the slots to return better results for the “Wake Forest ACC Sports” that we discussed earlier today and added a bunch of explanatory slides along the way.

It’s really tedious work! Every element on every slide has to have the right timing or nothing works. I’ve gotten most of the elements to at least show up at the right time, but I still need to make sure they last on the screen long enough to be read. I’m also not totally sure the wording is good. I’m used to working in committee, and determining wording for myself seems a little too independent compared to most library work.

I think I was pretty successful at meeting most of our goals from earlier today. Tomorrow I’m going to meet with Kevin, so perhaps I can get more feedback and I can make more progress tomorrow night.

finishing the draft

Now that I’ve caught up at work, I’m catching up at school. Over the last week or so I’ve put the details that Susan and Kevin and I had talked about into the Boolean Slots game.  It’s by no means finished, but the details are there for critique.  We’re going to meet early next week to discuss.

The big thing I’ve learned through the last few weeks is that sometimes it’s good to take a break.  Before the wedding/trip I felt like I was hitting a wall with the project.  I couldn’t think of better ways to accomplish problems, the number of slides kept multiplying rather than shrinking, and generally I didn’t really want to work on the project.  After leaving and coming back with fresh eyes, everything was simpler.  I’ve elliminated a number of slides, the logic makes more sense, there’s even sound!

The lesson I’ve taken from this is that if a project isn’t going well, and I have a flexible deadline, plan a second project to do as a break.  Then, with fresh eyes I can go back to finish the first project.

work in captivate

I spent a while this evening working in captivate.  I’ve fleshed out the extremely rough draft, take 2, that we had been working with, which is nice.

I found that the “choose a machine” slides duplicate themselves, so I was able to remove a few that existed in the first version.

The main problem I encountered this time is that the machines-as-buttons aren’t aesthetically correct.  If you mouse-over a machine to choose it, it disappears and a blank grey block shows up instead.

I’m going to call it a night for the project, and hopefully tomorrow I can figure out what to do about the machines!