Lecture enhancements

[Terry Judd]

On 05/05/2005, at 9:49 AM, Michael J. Lew wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am a university lecturer and have for many years used large and 
> small applications (initially Hypercard and now Revolution) to enhance 
> my teaching, although, to be honest, my early attempts were more 
> tolerated than embraced by my students. Nowadays I have several large 
> applications that are used as standalone CALs (computer-aided learning 
> [modules]) and a lot of small, single screen widgets that I show as 
> part of my lectures., They are often just simple animations, but some 
> are simulations of experiments. The faculty Biomedical Multimedia Unit 
> has recently started to promote the production and use of similar 
> widgets by other teachers.
>
> There is some question as to whether the widgets need to be movies and 
> Flash animations so that they can be embedded into PowerPoint (mostly) 
> and Keynote slide presentations. I don't find it to be difficult to 
> simply switch between the slides and a already-launched Revolution 
> application.
>
> Do any of you have similar experience?

Michael - seems to me that if you can mount an argument in favour of 
one authoring tool over another for developing these widgets that is 
based on ease and time of development (i.e. cost) as well as 
functionality then the minor inconvenience of having to switch between 
applications shouldn't really come into the equation. Having said that, 
Flash will clearly win out where such widgets are animation rich but if 
you're talking simulations then I reckon you've got a real chance.

Cheers,

Terry...

>
> Regards,
> -- 
> Michael J. Lew
>
> Senior Lecturer
> Department of Pharmacology
> The University of Melbourne
> Parkville 3010
> Victoria
> Australia
>
Dr Terry Judd
Lecturer in Educational Technology (Design)
Biomedical Multimedia Unit
Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences
The University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 3052
AUSTRALIA