Truncation Feud

Today I finished learning what I needed about text, and put together a skeleton of the Truncation Feud game.  I spent a few hours trying to figure out how to get an image (big, red, “X”s) to show up if the player gets an answer wrong, but no matter what strategy I tried, I couldn’t get the image to display.  I eventually settled on small, red, “X”s to show up on the screen permanently throughout a player’s game.

The timing isn’t finalized–by any means–but it’s a skeleton.  At this point all three Learning Objects (Boolean Slots, Broadening & Narrowing, and Truncation Feud) are in draft phase.  I’m also at almost 90 hours.  My plan is to get up early tomorrow to do a dry run-through of each of the games.  Hopefully the corrections won’t take too much time.  I’m a little worried about getting feedback from students and library staff by the end of the practicum, but I know I can get it after the fact if I need to.

I’ll check in again after making updates.

working with text

I didn’t invest as much time in the practicum on Saturday as I had planned.  Part of this was that it was somewhat of an ordeal to even get the powercord back from my office.  I didn’t realize that WFU would be hosting a triathlon that morning!  It wasn’t a big deal, though, I was able to find parking out of the way of the athletes, and I took the quick walk to the library to reclaim the missing equipment.

I spent most of the time working in Flash to learn how to work with text (static, dynamic, and input).  It’s okay working with static text, or even user entered text that just sits on the screen.  Making the text interactive is another thing.  Luckily, I was able to find out how to take user-entered text and have it output depending on what the user said.

The discussion boards found on Friday were helpful.  It was also helpful to talk with John about programming principles.

The goal was to create an environment where the user could enter in an answer; if it’s wrong, they could get feedback, and if it’s right, the  correct block shows the text they entered.  Once I figured out the principles associated with text, it was easy to apply them to the game.

I didn’t invest as much time in the practicum on Saturday as I had planned.  Part of this was that it was somewhat of an ordeal to even get the powercord back from my office.  I didn’t realize that WFU would be hosting a triathlon that morning!  It wasn’t a big deal, though, I was able to find parking out of the way of the athletes, and I took the quick walk to the library to reclaim the missing equipment.

I spent most of the time working in Flash to learn how to work with text (static, dynamic, and input).  It’s okay working with static text, or even user entered text that just sits on the screen.  Making the text interactive is another thing.  Luckily, I was able to find out how to take user-entered text and have it output depending on what the user said.

The goal was to create an environment where the user could enter in an answer; if it’s wrong, they could get feedback, and if it’s right, the  correct block shows the text they entered.  Once I figured out the principles associated with text, it was easy to apply them to the game.

truncation feud

So, I have rough drafts of the first two games ready, but not much feedback.  I figured it’d be good to look at them with “fresh” eyes, so I took the night to set up the framework for the Truncation Feud game.  I haven’t actually finished that, but I have worked in Flash to include everything up to the first game (this is where I’ll need to know how to do some fancier programming).

It was a good review of some of the more basic features in Flash, and I’m getting much more comfortable with it.  I can definitely see the power in the software and the potential for some really cool applications.

The plan for tomorrow: try to figure out how to do the programming for dynamic text!

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!