In the previous movie you saw that SPARKvue alone can be used to create SPARKlabs that
are functional, but perhaps a bit plain-looking.
In this movie I'd like to begin to show you a technique that allows you to create more
professional-looking SPARKlabs.
Before I actually begin that technique, though, let's take a look back at the SPARKlab that
we created in the first part using the Basic technique.
The reason I want revisit this is we need to begin distinguishing between page elements
that are static and those that are interactive.
Static elements are things that students just view, like images and explanatory text.
Interactive elements are data displays that show live data and places that students can
type into.
So let's look at the pages of our SPARKlab and try to distinguish between the static
and interactive elements.
Well, page 1 is just for viewing.
There is text to be read and an image to be looked at, so I'm going to indicate that all
the elements on this page are static with the color blue.
On the background page we have two text boxes, of course.
But these text boxes serve different roles.
On the top we merely have explanatory text -- students merely read it.
On the bottom there's a place for students to type a response.
So on this page there's static content on the top and interactive content on the bottom,
indicated in orange.
On the data collection page the static content is in the upper right, the instructions for
collecting data,
and everything else is an interactive data display.
On the conclusion page we again have a layout where there's static instructional text on
the top
and a place for students to type a text response on the bottom.
So, static and interactive.
Now that we can see the distinction between static content and interactive content, we
can take advantage of an opportunity to improve the appearance of our static content.
The reason we can make it look better is static content can ultimately be created outside
of SPARKvue.
So in this and the following movie, I'm going to show you a technique for enhanced SPARKlab
authoring.
I'll show you that we can use presentation software like PowerPoint or Keynote to create
the static content.
Wherever we know there will ultimately be interactive content, we'll leave a blank spot.
The presentation software can export these slides as image files that can be brought
into SPARKvue.
And it's in SPARKvue that we'll add the final interactive content to the SPARKlab to finalize
it.
So with this process in mind I'd like to spend the rest of this movie showing you how presentation
software can be used to design and create the static content of the SPARKlab.
To enable the use of presentation software to create this static content, we've created
templates for various software applications.
On Windows we have a template for PowerPoint 2007, and for the Macintosh templates for
Keynote '09 and PowerPoint 2008.
I'm on a Windows computer so I'm going to start the creation of the static content by
launching the template for PowerPoint 2007.
You can see this template file consists, for now at least, of just one slide, and this
is a slide that presents instructions that are specific to the application, in this case
PowerPoint 2007.
So I'm going to quickly run through these instructions.
The first one is to convert my template file into an actual presentation.
So I'll save it as a PowerPoint file.
I'm going to put this on the desktop and give it the name of the lab I'm creating.
You can see that this template includes some guidelines, both horizontal and vertical.
This makes it easier to ensure that my static content won't be intruding on spaces that
are reserved for interactive content.
We'll see more about that later, but if you don't see the gridlines, you can turn them
on by following step number 2.
Now it's pretty easy in PowerPoint to change the color theme.
So I know that if I change the colors it's going to look a little better for this particular
lab.
Alright, now to actually create the static content.
I'm going to put the insertion cursor above this instructional slide, because I want to
create slide number one, which, you'll recall, is the title slide.
From the Home ribbon I'll choose the New Slide drop-down.
And here you can see the real power of the template.
This template includes popular layouts for SPARKlab configurations.
In this case I'm going to create a large image with a title, so I'm going to choose this
layout and begin to edit the content.
And I'll use this placeholder to add my image.
And because I'm not constrained like I was in SPARKvue, I can move these elements around.
So I might make it look little better,
and move and change the properties of the text.
And I'm happy with that as a first page of my SPARKlab.
Now because all this content is static, I didn't really have to worry about these guidelines.
Now the second page of our SPARKlab includes both static content and interactive content,
so I'm going to create only the static content in PowerPoint.
An appropriate layout for this one might be this, split in half top to bottom.
And this is the background page.
I'll type the background text and question here,
and the question to prompt students to make a prediction.
OK, that static content looks good.
Now ultimately I'm going to add interactive content, an interactive text box, in SPARKvue
on the bottom half of this page,
so I want to ensure it's just blank space in my presentation.
So I'll select this placeholder and delete it.
And slide 2 looks good.
On the data collection page in our SPARKlab, the only static content we need to create
in PowerPoint is in the upper right: the instructional text for collecting data.
So I'll insert a slide number 3 with an appropriate layout,maybe this one,
and begin to type the instructions for collecting data.
PowerPoint recognizes this as the start of a list and formats it for me.
OK, so I've written the five instructions for collecting data,
and I do have a problem here.
On the bottom I'm going to ultimately have interactive content -- the digits display
-- and I don't want my static text to overlap, that is, going past this horizontal guideline.
So let me do a few modifications to this text to make sure it fits inside these guides.
I might decrease the font size a bit,
and even reduce that indent.
And that looks good.
It's now going to fit inside the allotted space.
Now because ultimately PowerPoint's going to be exporting everything that is static
content as an image,
I have the opportunity to do things like mix images and text together.
So I think this instruction list might be enhanced by having images of the buttons that
students should press, just in case a student isn't familiar with the SPARK device.
So I'm going to quickly insert appropriate images
for starting, scaling, and stopping.
And this page looks good.
We have empty space for the interactive content coming up.
And finally on the conclusion page, we once again have static on the top, interactive
on the bottom.
And instead of creating this page again in PowerPoint, I'm simply going to duplicate
slide number 2,
and make some quick changes to it.
And with that I've created all the static content that I need in PowerPoint.
So first I'm going to save this file as a PowerPoint file with all the content I've
created.
Most importantly, I now need to create image files from these slides.
So I'm going to choose to save this PowerPoint presentation as a set of PNG or portable network
graphic images.
I'm going to save this to the desktop, and I'll name it so that I can remember that these
are the background images for my lab.
I do want to choose to export every slide as an image.
OK, so let me just do a quick check of those images.
I have a folder of those images on my desktop.
And I can see that I have the static content for each of those four slides, and of course
this slide that I can ignore with the instructions.
Now because I used the template, I can have confidence that these slides are properly
sized and of the proper format to be brought into SPARKvue.
And in the next movie I'll show you how we can bring these images into SPARKvue to finalize
our lab by adding the interactive content.