This week I met with Dave Bradley again and nailed down some of the specifics of the project. I also started the process of obtaining copyright permission from the people who filmed the videos I will be integrating into my project. Mr. Bradley told me that their policy is to give permission to use their videos as long as it is for educational purposes. To get ahead a bit for the project, I spent quite some time capturing the videos to my hard drive using a media converter.

Also this week I met with Dr. Choi to discuss the project. He helped crystallize my thinking a bit, so that the final product will be more motivating for the students. He suggested using a game to enhance motivation and participation. I thought it might be effective to use the videos in the game to help the students learn to synthesize and make meaning out of the videos and other information provided in the tutorial.

The most exciting thing I did this week was use Garage Band to compose a theme song for this project.

This week has seen a considerable amount of progress. I probably spent too much time editing the videos for the project. So much time that I didn't spend enough time working on my other classes, but such is the price of working on something meaningful to me.

In order to learn how to optimally use the videos in Flash, I bought a book about working with video in Flash MX 2004. I also bought a tutorial book for working with Flash MX 2004 since it has changed quite a bit from Flash MX.

Finally, I did some more storyboarding this week and came up with the specs (size of the Flash movie, size of the movies in flash, size of the timeline, etc.) and started a very rough template.

This week I worked like crazy on creating templates for the project. I was able to complete the main menu, and get the basic background in the timeline. I also started doing research on interactive assessment activities. I found quizzes, crossword puzzles and drag and drop ideas.

Further, I created and optimized all of the graphics that will be used in this project. I also began writing the script for the descriptions of the people and events that will be covered in the project.

I was not able to get a lot done on the project this week because I was doing all of the busywork for this class. I am not a proponent of the ADDY Model and so I found the content analysis, learner analysis and other tasks tedious. I know those things in my head and think that rapid prototyping is a much more effective and efficient means of creating projects such as this one. ADDY is an attempt by academicians to create a model to guide the design process. However, this is not the most effective way for me to create instructional software. Enough of my preaching.

I was able to get controls on the video and create a template for how the text will be displayed in the tutorial part of the program. I also met with Dr. Bradley and showed him where we're at and got his feedback. He think everything looks absolutely wonderful. He is very pleased with how this is going to come out.

Progress Made This Week

This week I spent most of my time working for my 6210 team. They gave me articles and photos to scan for their project. I spent about four and a half hours doing that.

Also, I spent the rest of the time doing my readings for class and writing my chapter summaries.

This has been a good week for progress on the actual project. I worked most of the week on the programming behind the text box and videos. I created the media console in Flash that allows the viewer to play, pause, rewind and scrub through the video. The scroll bar was the most difficult part of the console, but I think it will be beneficial for users to be able to quickly review the video. That is, if they already viewed it, they can return to the video and scrub through it to the part they wanted to be refreshed on.

I also started looking at ways I can provide a game for the students after the informational portion of the module. Some ideas I have are a crossword puzzle, a drag and drop that links principles to video clips, a keyword game, and a multiple choice test where the participant is shown a video clip and asked what concept it teaches them. Hopefully, they will be able to liken concepts to their own lives.

This week I created a rough draft of the biographies of nearly half of the key figures in the program.

I am really behind on my readings and need to get on top of this. I will have this weekend to do that. Further, I need to create a flowchart in OminGraffle for the project. I have it storyboarded in very rough draft, but it needs to be more formal for posting on the web. Finally, I need to complete the first draft of the biographies of the key figures in the Book of Mormon.

Further, I have a meeting with Dr. Choi today to show him the prototypes of the program:

Intro
Video Screen
Timeline

This week I accomplished quite a bit. I participated in two film shoots for my 6210 team which took up about six hours. I learned from watching them set the equipment up, from the way they did things and from interacting with their client.

Further, I went through about half of my materials to try and find questions that I will include in the game. The questions I came up with seem to deal with three levels. The first level is factual knowledge and knowing who did what and when. The next level deals with identifying what concepts or principles are exhibited in some of the Book of Mormon stories. Finally, the questions will center around the participants being able to internalize and make personal meaning out of the concepts taught.

Finally, I continued to do video work, cutting unnecessary scenes and maximizing output size. I alsoe started importing movies into the template.

This week much work was done working on the development stages of my project. I converted much of my dv video to .flv format because it seems to work better with Flash and compresses well. I then began putting the video into the video template that was created earlier. Additionally, I started adding the buttons to the timeline. The problem is that the timeline is so small that the text has to be pt 8. It is pretty hard to read, so I'm trying to make it so the text gets bigger as the learner rolls over it. However, this hasn't been working to my satisfaction, so I'll keep playing with it. I want it to maintain some semblance of continuity, but be different enough to provide visual cues and make the text readable.

I also helped my 6210 go through some of their video to pick out which material could be used in the video and which module it would go in.

Finally, I continued working on the script for all of the major people in the Book of Mormon. I also kept working on reviewing the video and gleaning relevant questions from the content.

Due to mid-term exams this week I wasn't able to get as much accomplished as I would have liked. I did, however, finish up my timeline and am quite pleased with the way it turned out. All of the buttons are completed and now I just have to finish all the pages it links to and put in the action scripting to link them together.

I was not able to finish creating video pages for each individual. I have about half of them done, but I still need to do the other half. As I review the videos for each of those pages I will also be looking for test questions for the game. Further, I did not finish the script for the individual pages.

This week I finished creating all of the pages for each person on the timeline. I finished up all of the video pages as well. Further, I created the section that provides an overview of th Book of Mormon bookmark. I also created several questions for the game.

I continued working on the script for the information panes on each person's page. I should finish the script tomorrow and I have a meeting with my client to make sure the information is correct.

This week I took advantage of Thanksgiving Break and worked like a madman. The majority of the time was spent on the script. The script was by far the most difficult aspect of this project because of the research and time involved in getting the information right. Since this is a historical, religious module, it is very important to get things factually correct. It was quite challenging to sort out who is who, when they lived and what they did. For example there are at least three Nephis in the Book of Mormon, and through my studies I found out that I combined two Nephis into one. I had to separate out the video and create another page for the other Nephi. It has also been challenging to have to write in a factual manner. I am not used to historical writing, so I have had my parents, my brother, my wife and my client go over the script. I also had to make it short enough to keep a teenager's interest without ommiting important information.

I woke up early one morning this past week with an idea. I decided to create a Jeopardy game because my other idea just didn't seem that engaging. So, I have begun work on the Book of Mormon game and it is Jeopardy.

I met with Dave Bradley this week and he liked the script. He suggested a few helpful changes and helped clarify one question I had. I then used the week to type in the entire script into each Flash page. That is ten word-processed pages of text. I then proofread each page, copied the text into Dreamweaver and then into Word and did spelling and grammar check in there. There were relatively few errors.

Work on the jeopardy game progressed well. Everything is setup for the game, all I have to do is come up with questions and answers to fill in. Right now the correct answer to every question is "name". I'll just change the coding when I come up with the questions and answers.

I am pretty much done with everything but filling in the questions and answers to Jeopardy. I have been working on exporting the Flash file as a projector (mac) or .exe file (pc) and I also created autorun files. That all seems to be working. The idea is that the person will put the CD in and it will automatically start.

I thought that all I would have to do is copy and paste each of the four sections into one Flash file. However, there are thirty thousand separate pieces to this program and many of them had the same name. I had to go through and change the name for every piece so it wouldn't overwrite the other pieces with the same name. Then, after I copied everything over, the scripting didn't work because it was looking in the wrong locations. Also, the videos were not playing correctly. I then created a new file and copied each of the four parts into scenes and that fixed the video problems. However, I still had to fix the scripting for almost every piece. Needless to say I have had several all nighters this week. I finally fixed most of the scripting and the audio wasn't working correctly. I have learned that Flash is terrible for handling audio and I spent several days trying to fix the audio.

Also, I created all of the questions and answers for the Jeopardy game and put them in. I did have problems making sure that people could put in "jared" or "Jared" or the "the Brother of Jared" and all would be considered correct questions. I have created fill in the blank questions before and used the "or" operator. However, it wasn't working. After going to Borders and reading extensively on operators I tried || and it worked.

After things were sort of up and running I went through and checked everything. Unfortunately, it takes forever to publish this file because it is HUGE. Everytime I want to test it takes about 5 minutes to publish. That is quite frustrating. It is especially frustrating when I only fixed one thing, I publish it, and it doesn't work.

The Studio is tomorrow, and I think I'll be okay and have a stable product, but I still need to do an evaluation for the program and finish up the content on my project website.