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!

Truncation Feud

truncation

Originally uploaded by lmpressl.

Tonight I spent three and a half hours with the other two games. One is a narrowing game, and one is a take on the Family Feud to teach truncation principles.

I spent a fair amount of time in Photoshop, manipulating images to make backgrounds for the games. After that, I tried to get a skeleton for the game, or at least enough to have an idea for how the game could flow.

The truncation game is particularly challenging because I’d like to have multiple “right” answers that have different outcomes based on the text the player enters. Captivate does not seem to have that ability. I tried the “short answer” question slide feature, but that is not particularly well suited for the game (if we’re trying to keep the spirit of Family Feud), and even though I knew the right answers, I could never get the game to say I had entered them correctly. I’m going to sit on this over night and think about what to do a little bit more.

The narrowing game isn’t much better at this point. Originally Susan, Kevin, and I had discussed replicating the “ice breaker” we use in LIB100, letting users “slide” cards around on the board to show the topic from narrow to broad or vice versa. Again, Captivate doesn’t appear to let you have that much control. I think you actually have to use Flash to get that type of functionality. Instead, I’m trying to make due with the “matching” question slide, which again, isn’t exactly right.

So, I’m going to let those percolate over night, and hopefully figure out something by tomorrow after work!

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.