Free Articulate Skin – Webducate Simple Blue
Following the popularity of the Free Reflection skin I thought I would share another simple skin for Articulate Presenter. I believe that minimising the complexity of the presentation interface is often very helpful because it reduces distractions and confusion for the learner. It also means that the buttons provided can be large and clear.
So the Free Webducate simple blue skin takes this approach with three large, clear buttons. Click on the screenshot below to view a demonstration of this skin.
To use this skin download the skin articulate package file below and double click on it to install. Once installed a new layer template option will appear in your Articulate presenter publish window.
Download the Webducate simple blue skin articulate package
NB – if you encounter problems installing this skin it is likely to be due to security restrictions relating to downloaded files from the Internet on your PC. In this case please contact me and I’ll email you the skin articulate package which will avoid this problem.
If you find this skin useful please note that Webducate offers a range of skin related services including custom skin development and skin development training.
Custom Moodle theming and reporting
Welcome to 2011, wishing you all an exciting and prosperous year!
Over the past year we have been involved in several projects that have involved developing custom themes for the Moodle Learning Management System usually aiming to match an existing website design. I thought I would share some of these in the image above which shows just how versatile Moodle is when being themed. This really is one of the strengths of Moodle as its open source nature means you can get right into the code to modify the interface to match designs and layouts in detail.
Another benefit of the open access to Moodle code and database is that customised reporting facilities can be developed to meet the exact needs of course tutors and administrators (below is an example custom moodle report on a user’s progress in a course).
Accessing appropriate data for tracking user progress in any Learning Management System is usually complicated and and off-putting. Moodle is no exception to this. However with a bit of PHP coding and an understanding of the data structures used by Moodle to log user interactions with the system, facilities displaying the appropriate information clearly and without extra clutter can be developed.
Developing custom Moodle themes and reporting facilities are spome of the many e-learning related services that we offer here at Webducate. Please get in touch for more information.
Drawtivity presentation at OpenEd 2010
Just left Barecelona following an intense and enjoyable few days at OpenEd 2010 where I presented the Drawtivity project. Thanks to those who attended my presentation. Here are my slides:
It was great to meet up with some old friends, learn more about the current thinking in the open education movement and finally meet Scott Leslie having been in touch and influenced by Scott several years ago now.
Use of Dragster in teaching veterinary anatomy
I would like to highlight a piece of research undertaken by Octavio Lopez Albors and colleagues at the Royal Veterinary College which involved collaborations with the Veterinary Faculty in Murcia (Spain) and the Minimally Invasive Surgery Centre in Caceres (Spain). This looked at using Webducate Dragster as a tool to improve the teaching of the important subject of anatomy to veterinary students where the activities were created and shared between these international partners. Below is the presentation made at the XXVIIIth Congress of the European Association of Veterinary Anatomists describing this project.
Drawtivity poster at ALT-C 2010
I’ve just sent my Drawtivity poster for this September’s ALT-C 2010 conference to the printers. I’m looking forward to the conference again this year and hope to get lots of interest in this exciting new system. If you are attending please do call by during the poster session! In the meantime here is a preview of the poster (fingers crossed there aren’t any typos!)
Geek Dad – Enough ABC apps already
Geek Dad on Wired asks app developers to move beyond applications to teach basic literacy arguing that these are all very similar, often not well thought through and do not make use of the unique characteristics of the iphone and ipad.
This is indeed a useful and valid point, but it seem to me to miss the fact that there are a huge number of free flash based educational “apps” already available on the web that users of these devices cannot currently access. So app developers have an opportunity here to recreate some of these as apps and make a bit of money in the short term from those users who will pay to access otherwise free resources on their prefered device. Those app developers that really get to grips with the unique educational opportunities offered by these devices will have in my opinion a more valid reason to build a business model around selling educational apps.
Personally I feel like waiting for the non-apple tablets to appear which are likely to run flash before I throw my hat into this particular ring and I would advise any purchaser of mobile devices who has learning and education in mind to do the same.
Drawtivity authoring system now available for beta testing
I am very pleased to announce that the Drawtivity authoring system is now available for beta testing. This means you can now create yourself an account and start creating and using your own Drawtivity activities. I am looking for feedback on any and all aspects of the authoring process so please do have a go and let me know how it goes and how it could be improved!
To start go to the Drawtivity system home page and create a free authoring account.
Below is a short (5 minute) overview of the authoring process to help you get started.
Embedding Dragster 3 drag and drop activities into Adobe Captivate 5
Dragster 3 offers a great way to add drag and drop activities to e-learning resources created with Adobe Captivate. The process of embedding a Dragster 3 activity in Captivate involves a number of steps described below:
- Publish your Dragster 3 activity using the Embed activity publish option and extract the zipped files (more details on the Embed activity publish option).
- Create a new blank Captivate project. In this case I am choosing to use a project size that will fit a Dragster 3 landscape activity (1024 x 576).
- Select the Captivate slide where you wish to add the Dragster activity. Use the Insert > Animation menu option.
- Browse to and select the published Dragster 3 activity SWF file.
- You may see a warning at this point about the version of actionscript. I have found that this warning can be ignored, so click Yes.
- The outline of the Dragster activity will now appear on the slide. You will need to change two Captivate properties for this inserted activity in the right hand properties panel. Make sure the activity is selected on the slide, then expand the Timing box in the properties panel. Edit the display for a specific time and allocate the appropriate number of seconds.
- Now expand the Transition box and select No transition. You have now finished inserting the Dragster activity.
- Save your Captivate project. Once you have completed the other aspects of your resource, you are now ready to publish the project.
- Select the menu option File > Publish to display the Publish dialog. You can leave most of the publish settings in their default values, apart from one preference. Click the Preferences… button to reveal the preferences dialog.
- On the preferences dialog on the Project > Publish settings page, Externalize resources list check the Animations option and click OK.
- Now publish the Captivate project. Once complete select No to Do you wish to view the output. There is one more step for you to complete before you can test your resource.
- Open your published Captivate project files folder and the published Dragster activity files folder. Copy the SWF file and folder from the published Dragster activity into the published Captivate project files folder. Select Yes to replace the dragster SWF file already in this folder.
- Now you can test your Captivate resource by opening the appropriate HTM file with your browser. An example Captivate resource created by following these steps is shown below (View this example Captivate).
Free Articulate Skin – Reflection
One of the exciting skinning ideas that came to me during the Second European Articulate User Conference was the concept of a simple skin for Presentation Zen type slide shows where each slide displays an evocative image overlayed with short a concise statement. Such as skin would need to avoid detracting from the presentation itself, so it should be small, simple and unobtrusive. I also thought it would be interesting to explore the potential for incorporating a reflection of each slide as part of the skin to add to the overall affect.
After some trial and error efforts I am now excited to present the Webducate Reflection skin and make this available FREE as an artpkg file for others to use.
View an example presentation using the Reflection skin.
Download the FREE Reflection skin artpkg.
NB - The slide reflection only displays if there is something on the powerpoint slide to reflect… so if you have a blank white slide with text you need to draw a white rectangle covering the whole slide to act as a background. This will then appear as a reflection for this slide.
More information on the Articulate skin related services provided by Webducate.
Example Drawtivity activity now available for feedback
We are making progress on the Talis Incubator funded Drawtivity project. Today we have published a first example working activity for feedback. Please visit the Drawtivity project blog to try the activity and leave feedback.
