Hello Brad,
I can surely empathize with your friend. As a teacher, particularly when learning a new software isn't the main focus, I want quality results and time efficiency. What I suggest is that you model the same presentation using two or more methods with at least one method incorporating a book morph. I believe you'll find the counter-intuitive object pick-ups and halo actions a small hurdle. You may wish to disable pick-ups and halo action in certain objects' menus. Together, you and your friend, can tweak one or more of these presentations into templates for future presentations. Slowly but surely your friend will adapt to the Squeak environment and be able to further develop the templates to specific ends.
I have seen quite a few threads regarding book morph templates. You may choose to utilize some of these in your noble quest.
Peace, Eric
On 4/18/07, Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com wrote:
I have a friend who I'd like to show how Squeak can be an effective presentation tool. He's not a programmer, he's a teacher. The whole Squeak desktop to him is a bit scary, so I'd like to give him some pointers on how Squeak can do things that presentation software can not (is powerpoint the only one left standing, now?)
There are all the tools in the Objects flap, the Paint flap, connectors, book morphs which can all be placed into Squeak Projects. That's great. Is the Thread Navigator the best way to navigate projects? (I saw an older presentation of Alan's and he had a screen full of projects that he could pick from. I didn't see that in the latest image)
I see several people use book morphs but they can be cumbersome too. I think the biggest complaint is the paradigm of when you select an morph you actually pick it up and that's counter to what other software does - plus the halos. Guess that's just something to be learned. Another complaint is you can't just drop a .mov, .wmv or .mp4 in a project. You can drop mpeg, (but sometimes I have audio distortion which doesn't show up at all outside in various players.) Maybe Sophie work can migrate to the main image for .mov/.avi? That'd be nice.
I guess an image could be constructed with a limited world menu restricted to "presentation" uses.
Any other pointers that you can think of? I'd sure like for him start using squeak.
-- brad fuller www.bradfuller.com +1 (408) 799-6124
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