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Forum: The
Digital Coaching Aids design studio (please note that
discussion is reverse chronological, with the early posts being at
the bottom of the page)
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Using PowerPoint as a Self-Test
Tool - Norm
Henrickson - Wed, 3 Sep 2003,
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I have been setting up self-tests for tool
identification, yes/no or true/false questions etc. for a
while now. You simply insert a question or photo, and give
alternative answers that are simply linked to a sound file.
PPNT has a few sound files, but it is not difficult to record
your own. When the student clicks on the answer they think is
correct, the positive or negative sound file is
played.
Alternatively, the answer (right or wrong) can be
linked to another slide that gives them information about
their answer, with a return button to let them have another
try, or a forward button if they got the answer right.
Ear
phones are a good idea here as the class will all be working
autonomously.
One question; when I save a MS PPNT
presentation as a web page prior to uploading, my animations
become static. Why is it so, and can I save the file somehow
to include the animation effects? I use PPNT for line-by-line
animated technical drawing to project same onto the
whiteboard. This method has been received very well by my
trainees, but all the animation dissapears when I try to use
it for my distance learners.
Keep up the good work.
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Re: Using PowerPoint as a Self-Test
Tool - Marcus
Ragus - Fri, 5 Sep
2003, 14:50 |
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Hello Norm,
Thank you for sharing your
experiences with using MS PowerPoint. The way you are
using it provides a wonderful interactive environment
for the students and gives them that ability to self
assess their performance as they go. On the Oswego City
School District site there are some examples of ppt
shows that have similar formats see:
http://oswego.org/ocsd-web/teaching/resources/resources-x.cfm?Type=P
I
would love to see an example of what you have created,
would you be able to email me a copy at:
Marcus.Ragus@tafe.tas.edu.au
Regarding your
questions the 'Save as a web page' option has its
limitations and sometimes will not carry all animations
through the conversion. It might be worth your while
trying one of the following programs, all will allow you
to convert ppt shows to web enabled versions. They
however have some limitations, such as text or image
quality issues. They should however keep the
functionality of your animations.
Openoffice is
available as a free download at:
http://www.openoffice.org/
Impatica can be
downloaded as a trial
version:
http://www.impatica.com/higher-ed/
Macromedia
Breeze can be downloaded as a trial
version:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/breeze/
I
hope this will assist you with your product
development.
Please keep us posted as to your
progress.
Regards Marcus.
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Day - 5 The Final Comment -
Marcus
Ragus - Fri, 15 Aug
2003, 09:06 |
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This is the space where you can provide us with your
thoughts on the workshop and the concept of Digital Coaching
Aids.
You may wish to frame your comments around the
following questions
Workshop:
1/ How did you feel
about the workshop before and during the event?
2/ What
worked well?
3/ What did not work so well?
4/ What did
you learn?
5/ Did this way of conducting an online workshop
work well for you?
6/ How could the process be
improved?
DCA's:
7/ Do you think that DCA's have a
future in training?
8/ Would you like to see more on
DCA's?
9/ Will you be creating and using DCA's in your
training programs?
Regards Marcus.
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Re: Day - 5 The Final
Comment - Tristenne Van Heythuysen - Tue, 19 Aug
2003, 10:54 |
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Marcus/Janine
Thank you for your
ideas/suggestions/tips on the use of powerpoint as a
DCA.
I learnt that the simpliest of applications
can be used to create DCA's - it doesn't have to be
difficult and you don't have to have html, programming
experience. It has encouraged me to KISS (keep it simple
silly).
I am 3/4 way through creating a DCA in
relation to the 4MAT system which will be distributed to
260 people as an interactive information presentation.
Prior to your workshop this information probably would
have been a flat, uninteresting
presentation.
Thanks again - this is something
that I will use more in the
future.
Cheers
Tristenne.
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Re: Day - 5 The Final
Comment - Patricia Kalle - Fri, 15 Aug
2003, 23:09 |
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Hi Marcus,
I fully intended to participate in
this workshop everyday and started enthusiastically
until the virus got me and my computer. Now it's up and
working again and it's the last day (23.00 at night) of
the workshop. I have downloaded all the presentations
and notes and have read most of them and am sure it will
come in very handy. I can't wait to experiment and I
have certainly learned a lot already by just reading. I
am sure that once our school gets its equipment up to
dte I will be able to use it. Until then I'll
experiment, practicse and I'll be ready when the time
comes to use it.
Thanks again,
Patricia
Kalle
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Day 5 - Show and tell - Marcus
Ragus - Fri, 15 Aug
2003, 08:56 |
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This is your opportunity to show us what you have done,
whether it is the product of this week's workshop or the
chance to show other DCA's that you have developed. It's a
great environment to display your talents and receive some
feedback from fellow designers. No matter how simple your
products please take the plunge, I'm sure we will all gain
something.
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Re: Day 5 - Show and
tell - Suzanne
Norris - Fri, 15 Aug
2003, 14:43 |
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I don't actually have anything to show as I
didn't manage to get around to actually doing anything.
However, I did read your notes and found them very
useful - I'll try them out over the weekend. Thank
you!!!
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Re: Day 4 - Simple animation
effects - Andrea
Neale - Thu, 14 Aug
2003, 13:36 |
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Hi Marcus,
I really enjoyed working through
your Powerpoint demos. I have used Powerpoint for my
presentations in class but have not used the buttons
which I think do add to the overall simplification of
navigating around through the presentation particularly
if people are working with the presentation on their own
as in e-learning.
Thanks again for the
tips!
Andrea
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Re: Day 4 - Simple animation
effects - Marcus Ragus - Fri, 15
Aug 2003, 09:43 |
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Hello Andrea,
I agree,
the buttons are really handy and advantageous in
the design of a self paced DCA. It's interesting
to note that the design I have presented for the
buttons is a fairly standard one, but you can
customise these in many ways. You can add sound so
that when you scroll over them they can tell you
what to do next or even animate them. It's up to
your imagination.
I think they are also
very useful in standard PPT presentations allowing
the presenter to navigate their presentation with
ease rather than using keyboard shortcuts or going
back to edit view.
We have also dabbled in
creating simple navigation trails or 'Breadcrumbs'
in some DCA's. If these are developed with the DCA
page numbers in mind and have hyperlinks, the user
will always know where they are and can use them
to navigate around the DCA eg, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Thanks Andrea.
Regards
Marcus
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Getting a PowerPoint DCA
on-line - John
Collins - Wed, 13 Aug
2003, 12:51 |
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We have a developed a very comprehensive DCA using PP
which is available on our intranet as a PP
presentation.
We would like to have this "on-line"
without the user having to open up PP and go through the usual
steps - ie that the 'slide show' starts automatically while
the full interactive components are maintained.
Can
anyone suggest how to achieve this next step?
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Re: Getting a PowerPoint DCA
on-line - Marcus Ragus - Wed, 13 Aug
2003, 13:16
http://www.impatica.com/higher-ed/ |
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Hello John,
Your DCA sounds very interesting,
Are you able to provide us with an example?
Your
issue with web enablement of PowerPoint shows is
something we have been working on this year with our DCA
development group at TAFE Tasmania and our ALIVE
LearnScope team.
One feature available within
PowerPoint is the 'Save as web page'under file in the
main menu. This feature writes its own version of html
code and provides you with a web enabled product.
However it has its limitations, one being that you are
stuck with the format it chooses to use. Although you
could manipulate that if you know your html
code.
If you are using online
learning/communications programs like WeBCT version 4
and others,these often transfer PPT shows into online
formats quite well.
Some programs we have looked
at that also convert PPT presentations to web enabled
formats include Imapatica available at
http://www.impatica.com/higher-ed/
or Macromedia
Breeze
at:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/breeze/
To
produce a show only version of a PowerPoint presentation
you can save the PPT presentation as a show in the 'Save
as' box. It will then open up in show rather than edit
view.
Let us know how you go.
Regards
Marcus.
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Re: Day 3 - Custom shows and
Hyperlinks - Tristenne Van Heythuysen - Wed, 13 Aug
2003, 17:23 |
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One immediate benefit I can see is that a custom
show will display related information grouped together,
for example, a motor show presentation, a motor
enthusiast may only be interested in Fords and not want
to view information on Toyota, Holden etc, therefore the
other information can be skipped. Am I on the right
track??
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Re: Day 3 - Custom shows and
Hyperlinks - Janine Bowes - Wed, 13
Aug 2003, 19:23 |
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Sounds good to me Tristenne!
Another slant on the same sort of thing might be
that you have a presentation about something and
want different tailored versions according to
different audiences and/or different available
times so one custom show might navigate through
path 1 of the total set and another might take a
different path but still use some of the same
slides as the first one. I haven't actually done
this but I presume it could work this
way.
Janine
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Re: Day 3 - Custom shows and
Hyperlinks - Marcus Ragus - Thu, 14
Aug 2003, 09:10 |
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Tristenne you are right on
track. As you and Janine have pointed out custom
shows really allow you to provide flexibility
with your presentations. You can choose which
information you wish to deliver to an audience.
Another advantage is that if you have
each custom show as a 'show and return' (the
tick area in the hyperlink box)
each custom
show will deliver you back to your contents or
presentation page. So therefore you don't end up
with this messy business of forgetting where you
are and having to open up in edit view to find
the slides/pages you are after in the middle of
a presentation.
It's also easier for
student users to navigate around the DCA, to
find what they want quickly.
Regards
Marcus
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Day 2 - Images - Marcus
Ragus - Tue, 12 Aug
2003, 08:36 |
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Following on from Day 2, activity 2, what are your
thoughts on the following statement. Images are an important
component of learning resources.
Feel free to assist others
and add comments to others' questions.
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Re: Day 2 - Images -
Sue McShane - Tue, 12 Aug
2003, 22:43 |
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Marcus,
Without sounding like a complete
idiot. I need to develop numerous presentations for
basic IT courses. How do you get copies of the
screens(dialog boxes) into your
presentations?
Sue
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Re: Day 2 - Images -
Marcus Ragus - Wed, 13
Aug 2003, 08:57 |
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Sue, it's a very handy
feature and so easy to do.
Essentially they
are screen grabs that have been cropped down in
PowerPoint using the cropping tool available in
the picture toolbar under view.
What you
will need to do is open the program you wish to
demonstrate as content for your DCA and then take
progressive screen grabs (press the 'Print Screen'
key on your keyboard, some keyboards require you
to press the 'Function' then 'Print Screen' key),
and then pasting into your DCA (Control-V or your
paste icon in the PowerPoint menu. The next step
is to crop the screen images in your PowerPoint
DCA.
Why not give it a practice run and
let us know here how you get along.
Regards
Marcus.
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Re: Day 2 - Images -
Sue McShane - Wed, 13
Aug 2003, 20:41 |
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Thankyou so much. It
worked!! And yes it is so easy.
Straight into
Powerpoint with not much work at
all.
Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou
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Re: Day 2 - Images -
Janine Bowes - Wed, 13
Aug 2003, 19:19 |
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Further to Marcus' reply
about grabbing screen shots, once you have
"copied" the screen onto the "clipboard" with
the "PrtScr" button, you can paste it into any
graphics manipulation program eg Paint Shop Pro,
Fireworks, Photoshop. The images used to
illustrate the workshop pages for each day of
this workshop were done in this way.
One
thing to be aware of is the issue of size (in
terms of pixel width and height, and KB). If you
are working in PowerPoint, it will import your
images and automatically fit them into the box
into which you are inserting them. However, if
your DCA is destined for the web, it pays to
actually resize to the size you want thus
reducing the KB weight of the image.
The
screenshots for the workshop were cropped,
resized to 150 pixels wide, a drop shadow added
and then saved as jpg images. They "weigh" very
little (about 10KB) each but even so,
appreciably slow down the load time of the page.
This can be a real issue when trying to achieve
multimedia effects online and this is where
applications such as Flash often come into their
own because of tehir excellent compression
algorithms. I am digressing so will stop
here!
Janine
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Day 1 - Background - Katie
Crews - Mon, 11 Aug
2003, 14:56 |
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I am interested in Digital Coaching Aids to enhance the
current training I deliver. I have not used them before to
this extent and would like to know how other people are using
them and how I can implement them into my training.
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Re: Day 1 -
Background - Marcus Ragus - Mon, 11 Aug
2003, 17:09
http://www.thenetride.com.au/default.htm |
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That's an interesting question Katie. Trying to
identify contacts who have created similar resources
using MS PowerPoint has also been my focus for some
time. One such reference that I have found is David
Potter who has a very useful
website,
http://www.thenetride.com.au/default.htm
He has some very useful PowerPoint tips available as
small downloads.
Members of the DCA development
group at TAFE Tasmania have created a number of these
DCA's and are now starting to use them as resources
within the training delivery, with some very good
feedback being provided from students and staff.
Presently the teachers are still using them as classroom
presentation tools but we are looking at providing them
as self-contained CD based resources and also online,
soon.
The emphasis of the DCA project has really
been to provide teaching staff with a useful addition to
print based learning resources. These resources can be
easily and quickly developed by the teacher without
having to commit to many months of software training in
multimedia development.
What are some other
peoples thoughts or experiences with
PowerPoint?
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Re: Day 1 - Background -
Tristenne Van Heythuysen -
Tue, 12 Aug 2003, 10:24 |
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In a previous position
within the NT Government I was fortunate enough to
create a number of demonstrations which were
showcased at the Annual shows in the Northern
Territory.
The Power Point Presentations
included:
* a self running presentation with
attached audio;
* web type presentation which
allowed the viewer to select topics which they
were interested in with lots of graphics and
pointers assisting with direction, audio was also
attached to relevant topics.
I believe
Power Point gives the creator (even with limited
technical skill) the opportunity to create
something really interesting that has some
interactivity rather than just as a flat
presentation.
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Re: Day 1 - Background
- Marcus Ragus - Tue, 12
Aug 2003, 10:56 |
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It's great to hear that
you have been so creative in your use of
PowerPoint. What you have pointed out is so
true. PowerPoint can provide a fabulous platform
for the creative presenter. I think one of its
strong points is the fact that PowerPoint is
reasonably straight forward to use. This is one
of the reasons we are encouraging its use as a
platform to create simple digital resources. So
therefore it's not out of reach for most
teacher/trainers to produce their own.
It
would be really interesting to see some examples
of the presentations you have created and I'd be
keen to hear how you have used them. Have you
created any since Tristenne?
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Re: Day 1 - Background
- Tristenne Van Heythuysen
- Tue, 12 Aug 2003, 11:06 |
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Marcus,
Please see
posting to Janine in relation to viewing
examples of presentations. Since leaving that
position I have not had the opportunity to
create anything similar. However, I am going to
use this workshop forum for the creation of a
DCA to showcase what I learnt at a seminar on
the 4MAT system - I will showcase at the
conclusion of this workshop (Friday).
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Re: Day 1 - Background
- Marcus Ragus - Tue, 12
Aug 2003, 11:17 |
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Tristenne, I jumped in to
answer you without seeing Janines comment. I
look forward to seeing your DCA.
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Re: Day 1 - Background
- Janine Bowes - Tue, 12
Aug 2003, 10:48 |
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Hi Tristenne
These
sound fantastic! Can they be viewed on the web
anywhere?
Janine
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Re: Day 1 - Background
- Tristenne Van Heythuysen
- Tue, 12 Aug 2003, 10:59 |
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Janine,
Thank you,
they took a lot of work to create.
Unfortunately, they were created over 5 years
ago and are the property of the NT Government.
Viewing was on stand-alone pc's set up at the
relevant Show(s). However, I will endeavour to
locate and attach copies...will let you
know.
Cheers
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The designers view - Marcus
Ragus - Sun, 10 Aug
2003, 19:43 |
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When developing ideas for this site I was keen to
produce an example of a digital coaching aid that was simple
enough to be constructed by workshop participants even with
limited PowerPoint experience. I worked on the understanding
that most people may only be able to spend a short length of
time in the workshop each day, so simplicity was my catch
cry.
A simple blue background provides the canvass for
the contrasting yellow font and the colourful flower images.
The Arial font was chosen for its readability and the fact
that it's a very common web based font, which is useful in
this instance. No elaborate images or backgrounds were used as
these can add significantly to the size of the DCA and
therefore may cause issues with access for some people with
low bandwidth.
The result was a basic DCA that
provides a small example of what can be done to create simple
digital training resources. It is by no means the be all and
end all of DCA's, they have an exciting future that is only
limited by the creators imagination.
The additional
PowerPoint resources that participants use as they work
through the weeks activities are essentially DCA's in their
own right. They have all been presented so that participants
can also discover the pathways of their construction by
viewing them in edit view. It is amazing what you can learn by
spending time discovering how the inner workings for these
presentations were developed and for what purpose.
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Digital Coaching Aids Q&A
- Janine Bowes - Thu, 7 Aug 2003,
10:02 |
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Use this thread to ask any questions or post comments
that are not covered elsewhere.
Feel free to assist
others and add comments to others' questions.
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Re: Digital Coaching Aids
Q&A - Ann
Tattersall - Tue, 12 Aug
2003, 10:55 |
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I entered into a journey of discovery following
on from reviewing the documents and activities of day 1.
I found myself experimenting with powerpoint
presentations, discovering how much more they can offer
if they are to be used as Digital Coaching Aids, rather
than the usual lecture presentation. Thanks for creating
more knowledge opportunities
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