What I learned in making a Guru 2010 entry...

[Highlander Hugh]

So sometimes I'm clueless and miss things. A little over a week ago I stumbled upon the fact that the Guru 2010 contest was not only in swing, but over soon. I really wanted to enter and try and win a copy of the software, since my current copies are work owned and I like to experiment programs. So I figured, why not see if you can do it in a week. I downloaded the 30 day trial like Gabe suggested in the contest announcement and went to work.


My problems were the following:

1. Time limit, very little room for wasted time. Work only on my own time and that was limited to mostly alternating weeknights and Sunday.
2. A topic that was fun, but fresh.
3. A topic that wasn't from my workplace as most of our trainings are proprietary (I came up with my own Logo and title since its a personal project)
4. A way to include all of components of Studio 09 and outside programs as well.
5. Have fun doing it.

So here is the result:
Mars Needs Training

To help with the time limit, and because making audio that sounded like it was from a Martian would take a long time, I pasted my text into a Captivate project, converted it into speech and then imported the audio files.

The Martian was supposed to have more animation to him, but I found it more efficient to vary his pose slide to slide, as opposed to generating .swfs and importing, or animating via powerpoint. when he was animated on the slide, it seemed busy.

The scenarios were inspired by articles and screenrs by Gabe, Tom and Jeanette that talked about the blank slide feature of quizmaker. I really like the way they worked out, and think that anyone using Presenter should also master Quizmaker and explore how to use it for certain types of presentations because of how many options it gives you.

The engage interactions were fun to do, and while I initially planned on nesting some withing others, I found that again it was too "busy". I really like how customizable the engage interactions are, and hope to work on a few ideas of my own as I get more experience in the necessary fields.

The entry pushed me to find good royalty free sound sample sites, expand my knowledge of after effects (very basic, but it let me put together the initial movie), and I really think I learned a lot. I came across a few limitations I will be submitted feature requests for, but no bugs or game stopping impasses.

Hope you enjoy the end, and would love to hear feedback.

Hugh

[Jeanette]

Hugh, thank you so much for sharing your project & your experience with building it! It's so cool to know that you were able to quickly produce a creative, clever piece of content and have fun in the process. Totally agree with you about Quizmaker - there's so much potential for doing neat things with that tool.

Congrats on a cool & unique entry. Thanks again for sharing!

[gabe]

Ditto what Jeanette said, Hugh! We appreciate your taking the time to enter and to share your experience about the process.

Best of luck!

[heather]

I learned when you create a link to a web object in Quizmaker, you can open it in a custom-sized window. I had no idea, and it worked great for what I needed.

There are also a few things I did for the first time in my Guru 2010 course. I look forward to playing with these techniques more in my other courses.

• Custom motion path (using Scribble motion path to write on the screen)
• Cutting out the background of an image and putting a thick white border around it like a cutout shape
• Changing a shape to freeform and editing the points -- opportunities are endless now that I've practiced it.
• Designed a few entire animated scenes with clipart. I've gotten great feedback from the people taking the course that this added a lot to the simulation experience. It was fun to do and didn't take nearly as long as I thought it might.
• Saved all my PPT images into a separate file and inserted them as graphics to save on the publishing time. I did run into some quality issues with the graphics on publish, so I had to increase the recommended publish output from 75% to 90% to get an acceptable quality.
• I also learned I procrastinate too much and rushed to get my project done in the week before it was due. Sigh.

Also, I've entered a feature request for this, but I'll mention it here, too (in case the right folks are listening). I wish there was a template option where you can keep the left navigation but not see the buttons at the bottom. Kind of like how you can remove the seekbar -- I'd like the play/forward/back buttons to be able to be removed while still keeping the left navigation visible. Maybe there's an SDK guru out there who can help. I would have used that design in my Guru course if I could. I want it for work projects, too.

I really look forward to seeing the other entries and hearing what others learned during the process. I learn so much from looking at other examples.

Heather

[kthorn]

Hey Hugh, I really like how you used Captivate's text to speech feature. It really gave the Martian that techno digital sound. Neat course! It was fun!

[gabe]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Heather! Glad it was a good learning experience for you. And for the suggestion.

[algo]

Hello everyone,
this thread is nice!
Creating my course for the competition I certainly learned a lot.
I use to working alone, and for this reason I think I have developed some skills' in all areas, from graphics to ID, using different software together.
Normally, however, the projects on which work are more conventional and I must meet certain fees, which end up restricting creativity.

Like you, I worked in my spare time, nights, holidays, Sundays, etc..
I think sometimes my girlfriend was not so happy, but I hope it was worth it!

When I started the project, I thought I would like to use all the software I work with usually (Articulate and not), and integrate with each other. What was new to me was the integration of some software with an another, and some function of the software I regularly use such as Presenter.

In particular, I used mostly whole suite '09 Articulate, Flash, Photoshop, Captivate, Magix audio studio deluxe, Powerpoint. But I also used free software who are online, for example to change the images or to introduce particular elements.

Almost all the graphics I used are made of PPT, so I learned some designing functions that were new to me.

I also set myself a challenge to improve my knowledge and my use of engage and quizmaker, which I normally do not use in my everyday work : (
I also tried to make creative use of them (helping myself, why not, with suggestions that Tom, David, Jeanette, community etc. have given us this year), often far from what is the common use of these programs.

One of the biggest challenge was the language solution. I have chosen to maintain my mother language (Italian). But i knew the course audience was USA, or foreign to Italy.
One of the first ideas was to insert a "choose your language" button, and then switch between two presentations. Then, the poor time I had to realize the course forced me to make a decision between ITA and ENG and gave me the idea to try leave the course only in italian language and give interactions, colours, graphic elements, images and content the mission to let the course be understandable for foreign users, even if audio is in an another language.
I hope my goal has been reached!!