500 Researchers Working For You - Google Answers

I don't know why I haven't noticed this link off the Google page before.... http://answers.google.com/answers/

Google markets the service by saying - More than 500 carefully screened Researchers are ready to answer your question for as little as $2.50 -- usually within 24 hours. Your satisfaction is completely guaranteed.

You have the option to provide an original question and then identify the amount you are willing to pay for the answer - nothing new in this model.....The eye-opener was the ability to search through the "answered" questions. It's a "pay once and share the info with the world" model - I love it!

Go ahead.... put your key terms in the search box and select "answered questions" as your query parameters - you might be surprised to discover, someone else has paid for the answer to your question.

Great Little Screen Capture Tool

Lately we've been working away on a hand-out for our upcoming Flash course (see description below). I want to add many pictures of the screen to help walk people through the steps we are going to show them. Although for screen captures, I use "Snagit", a little brother to Camtasia (both are part of the techsmith family of tools), I wanted to see what kind of open source or freeware files were out there for this task.

We came across MWSnap 3.0 . A small but powerful freeware program.

Not only does this program provide easy access to the type of tools I like to use in SnagIt, it has many features I haven't even seen in Snagit!

Screen captures can be an important part of the Instructional Design and Development Flow... we will use them to aid in storyboard development, capture special software screens such as images from special software used in Engineering or Mathematics... Barely a day goes by when I am not using my screen capture software.

I encourage you to download MWSNAP, install it and capture away! Then let me know what you think... don't forget to try the "add cursor" option if you are making computer tutorials.

What stage size should a Flash Learning Object be?

When a multimedia developer is asked to create an animation or student interaction, the storyboard provided by the instructional designer should identify the final screen dimensions for the activity.

But this is no easy task since it means knowing the screen resolution of your audience.

Here on the OUSL-CE project, we are going to 'assume' that our typical student is using a smaller sized monitor which is set at 800x600 screen resolution. Although we know many students will have their monitors set at a greater depth (perhaps 1024 x 768 pixels), we really can't go wrong by focussing our development at a smaller size. We gain an overall smaller file size which will be perfect for the lower bandwidth areas while if the student has a high-speed connection, it means our interaction or animation will show up much, much faster!

But deciding on screen resolution is only half the task. We must now decide the stage dimensions that will fit within our Moodle application on a 800x600 screen. Here are the stage sizes proposed by two websites:
Adobe's Site suggests the following final dimensions:

Screen Resolution 640x480	--	Stage Dimensions 620x318
800x600	--	780x438
1024x768	--	1004x606
1280x1024	--	1260x862

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14252

While the "Friends of Ed" suggest the following in their book, Foundation Actionscript for Flash 8, p.93:

Screen Resolution	--	Stage Dimensions
800x600	--	590x300
1024x768	--	975x590
1280x1024	--	1230x845

http://www.friendsofed.com/samples/1590596188.pdf

But, our problem is that neither of the above sources are placing their flash animations within a Moodle site. I am assuming that we do not want to open a new window but we want our interaction to play within the Moodle environment.

What I must do to decide on a standard, effective flash stage size that will not require the user to scroll vertically or horizontally, is to pretend that I am the user and do a 'screen test'... I must change my screen resolution to the projected user's size (800x600), open up a page within our Moodle site and then decide the biggest stage size that fits within the window that is showing.

Can you guess what the optimal size will be? Try the experiment yourself and then add a comment below...with your answer.

A Great Page for learning about Flash

We are working on creating more advanced Toggle-Buttons in the OUSL-CE Instructional Design Centre. Darshika, one of our Web/Multimedia people found this great Flash Tutorial site to help with the learning:
http://flash-creations.com/notes/actionscript_togglebutton.php