Critical Review and Stuff

Critical Review is today.  We will see how that goes.  *update*  It went fine.
Because my project has changed a bit I have to write a new proposal, which makes a lot of sense.  So that will give me something to do on break. 

I have not posted in a while, but that does not mean that I have not been working on the project.  I completed my actionscript/xml project which relates to my final project. 
So far I have a map, and when you click on a spot on the map you see the animal that lives in that bit of the Zoo.  So that is a big step and a good jumping off point. 
I have a pretty basic storyboard.  it is only 4 frames and not really very detailed.  It has given me an opportunity to organize my thoughts and get a better idea of how things will be layed out. 
I have also drawn up a few characters in illustrator.  I have a meerkat, an elephant, and a giraffe.  I did not spend too much time on them, but they actually look pretty good for the time being. 
I also have a Gantt chart made.  Actually I made it three weeks ago and it looks like I am still on schedule.  

Hey, blogger is finally letting me upload images!
in order:
That is my interactive zoo map down there.
below are a couple examples from my very basic storyboard.  The first with the elephant is an example of where you would go after clicking for "more information" on an animal.  You can get some fun facts/information/photos and maybe little movies
the next picture is a fun "Create a habitat" application where you chose bits to make up a habitat for an animal to live in.  I am hoping that the user would be able to print this or send it off as an e-card... I'll have to look into how that is done. 

XML

Two posts in one day?  Whoa man.
I am starting work on my XML project for that Actionscript class.  Sean helped give me some direction.  I am going to try to tie it in with my major project.

I will be making a map of the zoo.  When you click on points on the map you will see some information on the animal that resides at that particular spot.

Zoo Meeting

I went to back to the Dublin Zoo today to meet with Una Smyth, education officer at the Dublin Zoo.

We talked about the educational programs they run there with younger and older students.  I was impressed how extensively they work with 2nd and 3rd level students.

She let me know that they are in the process of redesigning their website.  They have a gal who is working on it, so i could probably get in touch with her if necessary.

Una also seemed very interested in the idea of incorporating my project into their website in the future if it turns out well.  This is something that had crossed my mind, but i thought it to presumptuous to bring up.  So hopefully it will turn out somewhere between good and great and I can get it thrown up as a bonus feature on the new Dublin Zoo website.

I asked if there was an image bank that I could make use of if I needed and indeed there is and I could.

I asked a few questions about this and that and found out the following.
Among the favorite features of young visitors are the big animals and the reptile house.  School groups very much enjoy when they get to see the Keepers feeding the animals and talking to them.
She would like to see something interactive and fun that promotes their message of conservation.

I also got a big ol' folder of worksheets, program guides, posters and news letters.  Wow!

Return to the zoo

I have been in contact with Dublin Zoo's education officer Una Smyth and will be meeting with her after school on Monday.  I want to talk to her about the zoo's educational programmes and goals.  I might be able to get some ideas for my site and develop an idea of ways to connect to the audiance.

I also have a new idea for the visual style of the website, I am going to do some little practice runs with it this weekend and see if it is feasable.  If I still like the idea i'll fill you in on the details.

Some Changes + Dublin Zoo!

So there were a number of things I was stuck on with my project.  Just, a few too many things that I could image, but have no idea how I would actually accomplish.  It was not very focused.  So I had some thinkin about it this weekend and went to the Dublin Zoo for some inspiration.
It was a grand ol' trip and the weather even stayed nice!
So here is the new plan (and I still need to iron out many things).  I will build a website as if I was doing a job for a zoo.  The site is to promote their new meerkat exibit.  These meerkats are new to the zoo and so they want to visit the different animals through the use of their underground tunnels.  Visitors to the website will follow the meerkats along on the adventure.  They will also play some games and maybe plan their own trip to the zoo.
Nothing has really changed too much from my original proposal, but in my head things are organized in a different way.
I still plan on keeping the social element to the website if possible but things will not completely be based upon this.
Additionally, my original research into animation was a mild slap to the face.  My original aspirations of pretty much having a full motion cartoon are scrapped, and rightly so.  I found there are major limitations not only what I can do, but what Flash animation is really capable of.  Most animation really is just a series of shortcuts to give the impression or illusion of movement and action.  I am not going to kid myself that I will be making a little cartoon.  I still intend on having nice animated moments, and I have a few little ideas, but they will have to be a Mike and Flash friendly kind of animation.
In terms of using Flash and actionscript I have to be careful.  I am decent in using Flash timelines, but actionscript is an ongoing challenge for me.  When I plan things out I think I will use what we have learned in class as a jumping off point.  That way I will be basing things in reality rather than coming up with ideas then finding out there is no way I can make it happen.

Here is a webpage that will give you (I think I am the only person who actually reads this anyway) an idea of what I am thinking.  Mine will just be far more awesome (at least it better be).
http://www.miamimetrozoo.com/map2.htm


uhg, I was goona post images but blogger has rejected them all.  Might be time to consider switching to something else if it is goona be a jerk like that.

not convinced...

Spent couple hours last couple of nights trying to animate a character with bone tool.

problems I've run into
-registration points changing from time to time without my consent
-difficult to line limbs up
-buggy, sometimes the armature will just disappear or start spinning in circles and I have to go back.  This seems to be more likely to happen if bones are overlapping each other when you tray to adjust them.
-Yesterday onion skinning did not work, today it does.  Sure, why not, right?
-as is in a movie clip, it is hard to go back and fix something in the middle of that timeline.  But it doesnt even seem that you can change things in the motion editor.  Oh, but you can clear a pose, good to know.

still
-it is kind of a fun way of doing things.  You do not have move each piece on its own and hope they move nicely together.
-after you animate it looks like you can go back and change the timeline to "animate frame by frame" which could help if there are any little things to fix.

in conclusion, I am feeling slightly disheartened.  Slightly.
I have read up on the bone tool a little and it seems it is generally regarded as incomplete and not terrific for things that are more complex.  I did find a more in depth guide from the book "the missing manuel flash CS4(thanks google books).  Maybe it has some important tips, or maybe it is a waste of time.

here is the video (assuming it works on blogger)

as you can see his limbs are everywhere.  Oh, and his upper and lower torso fit fine together until the last ten minutes, then a gap formed.  Go figure.  Nevermind.  Video ain't working.

Playing with bone tool

It is about time I got around to playing with the Bone Tool in flash. Just did a lesson from our book making an an and with arms and legs (4 limbs? that makes no sense.) I made him jump across the screen. Looks decent. I'll draw up my own character later this week and try it out with that. I may even post it here! what a treat!

Aye Aye!

Just finishing up my proposal which is getting turned in tomorrow.  All is well.

I saw a crazy looking animal on a tv program this morning.

It is called the aye aye.  It is ugly cute has big ears, bad hair, and one extra long finger he uses to tap on trees to rile up the bugs inside.  He then uses ratlike teeth to bite off a chunk of bark and takes his long finger again to reach deep into the tree and hook whatever grub or insect might be running away from him.

smartfox server 2X

Smartfox just released their new version of their server.  I'll download this in the next few days and see if I want to work with this new one or stick to the older Smartfox Pro.

http://www.smartfoxserver.com/2X/index.php

While it could be good to work with this new version, I don't know if there might be less documentation and help with it.  On the other hand, I was only just learning how the old stuff worked, so I may as well learn the newest version from scratch.  Hopefully they have some good tutorials and documentation with it and maybe there will be a lot of people on the forums figuring out the new stuff.

October 25

Downloaded Smartfox server.  Read up on things, looked at examples.  There is an awful lot there to go through.  I will be using the SmartFox server Pro, as it seems to be the version of choice when using action script 3.
A problem is, that they give you a good amount of examples and tutorials but most of them are for AS2, which does not help me very much.  Fortunately, I found a couple of helpful examples somebody posted on a forum somewhere where they turned an AS2 avatar chat tutorial into AS3.
A lot what I saw in the examples is a bit beyond my actionscripting skills right now, but I will see what I can do.  Sometime in the next few days I will try to take some pieces out from the tutorial examples and see if I can make an extremely basic program that just allows two "avatars" to move around the screen at the same time.  If I can do that without hurting myself I will feel a bit more confident about moving on in this direction.
I'll have to hold off on starting to write my proposal until I have a better idea of how the whole social aspect might work and how it will affect the disign and layout of the website.

October 22

Met with tutors.
Although I had kind of thrown the idea of making the website a social thing, I now have an idea of how I might be able to do it using smartfox server.  So I am currently doing some research on that to get an idea of how it works/what it can do/what I am capable of doing using it.
I have sketched out some ideas for my proposal which I will start typing up next week.  Yeehaw.

Hopefully i will get around to putting some images up on this blog.  But I have not yet for two reasons:
1.  I am in the middle of a month long move and I dont know where the printer is.
2.  Most of everything I have so far is messy scribbles that do not make sense to anyone but me and would only hurt your eyes.

More ideas

Ok, I had a think about it a couple of nights ago.
I wanted something that is flexible and still give me direction.  I wrote down a big word map of possible educational themes and where this website should take places (in a house, town, world.)

I found that I was happiest with having the website revolve around a zoo.  You know how most cool zoos give you an illustrated map of the place to help you find all the different places.  I imagine the navigation home would be one of those maps and you can choose where in the zoo you want to go.  Depending on where you go you get to play games to help you with a different subject.  For now I am keeping things open.  So you can go to the Monkey house for math and then the penguin house for geography or whatever.  This will allow me to be flexible in the future, give me direction for right now, and allow me to be creative as I go.

I imagine that there might be little videos you can watch when you go place to place.  Possibly, you could sign in, choose your own character from a few options, and when you complete or do well on a game you could earn a badge/certificate and maybe unlock a video and some info related to either the subject or the animal/part of the zoo you visited.  So, you do phonics with a tiger.  You do a good job on level 1 and you can watch a movie about Tigers in India.  You might have a profile area where you can watch the movies you collected.

Just throwing some ideas out there.  But I think I am getting on the right track now.

October 8

Next steps...


Now that I have turned in my proposal I have to think about the next steps I have to take.  Now let me see...

I need to...
Well, figure out exactly what I am doing.  What the gaol and purpose of the website will be.  That is a big one.  It is also where I am currently stuck.  I kind of need to figure that out before I can move on to anything else.  

I'll get back to you on that, hopefully by the end of the weekend.

first proposal (with links!)

Proposal Title:

Interactive Educational website with quality learning material based on school curriculum and possibly focusing on a specific skill (gardening, computer skills).  

It will be appealing to the target audience by featuring an easy to use interface, a friendly color pallet, and appealing characters.  The target audience will likely be young folk somewhere between ages 3 to 7 and a broader age range within special education.  I would also make it a goal that the website not be overly kiddie as to scare off older students. 

Outline reasons for selecting this proposal.  What inspires you about this topic?  How did you come to decide that this is an area worthy of research and development?

I have a bachelors degree in primary education and worked as a special needs assistant for 3 years.  After coming to Ireland I decided to switch to switch to computers.  I have always had interest in combining my two skill sets.  

I hope to take a look at what is out there and improve upon it, possibly finding gaps such as forgotten age groups or new ways educational websites can be presented.  That might mean to add limited (and safe) social functionality or a unique interface such as a navigable world or storybook.  I also am interested in something that would give me the opportunity to practice animation (specifically character animation) and making simple games. 

From my experience I know that when it comes to websites geared towards the younger crowd, the options tend to be 1.  well done interactive websites with no, or shallow educational content, or 2.  educational websites based on learning standards and curriculum, but they look and feel cheap and occasionally do not function very well.  I found that there is an absence of slick educational websites for the 8 to 15 year old crowd.  There might also be room to create a website that focuses on more specific skills/activities such as learning to garden, play an instrument, sports, computer skills, environment, health, cooking, animal care, languages.  It might be a good idea to focus on such a topic and it would be easy to incorporate other educational elements. 

Briefly describe how you envisage the completed project will operate.  A broad conceptual overview is all that is required at this stage.

I need to get more specific in my goal to get very particular at all with this question.  But I envision that it would be graphic, full of life, and focused.  I have to keep in mind that I cannot create a huge site, like many I have seen, by myself.  

I imagine a user would come into the site and easily be brought right into the world where they can go off and watch videos, play games, or adventure around.  I would like navigation to be easy but possibly maintain a sense of adventure about getting around the site. 

List the textbooks, articles or websites used in preliminary research.  Please include Title, Author, Publisher/ISBN.

Sorry no books right now.  Mostly I have looked on the web to see what is currently out there. 

I did contact 3 teachers I used to work with, 2 of whom are also parents of young children.  I asked them what websites the kids are using these days and what content they like to see.  As popular websites they mentioned ones that are associated with TV channels, pbskids.org , psbsprout, nickjr, disney.  There were also a couple mentions of sites which are more like a resource of educational materials along with games, softschools.com, news-2-you.com.

I also did some googling and looking about to see what is out there.  Websites tend to fall into two categories.

websites based on tv shows, books, etc... (typically prettier, higher quality games, videos.  educational quality varies widely.  From my experience students will just go to the game with the character they like the most and is the most fun, while ignoring other things.  Big surprise.  These sites often have a similar set of games/activities for each show.  Tend to be geared towards younger crowd.  Not many educational and fun sites for older kids.)

CBeebies, PBSkids, PBSsprout, NickJr., Busytown, Clubpenguin

Resource websites(these are usually low budget websites with many many links to games, resources, activities.  Some are divided into useful categories such as age group and subject. It can be very hard to navigate these sites to find good matereal.  Dead links are common.  Games are often simple and of lower quality.  Some games do not work well.  You can often find challenging games for older students.)

bestedsites, kidsknowit, news-2-you, softschools

also US National and, my old friend, Illinois Learning standards 

http://www.educationworld.com/standards/

http://www.isbe.state.il.us/ILS/

Not specified, but looking good

Idea for educational website has the green light so far.  Have to write up proposal for next week. Till then I need to do some research on what is out there right now in terms of edu-tainment websites.  I'll post some related links up later.

So... I need to get a clearer Idea of
-learning goals/purpose of website (math, phonics, history, manythings)
-Style/look (characters, colors, setting, mood, interface)
-Skills I require/what I will need to build this site (html, css, illustrator, flash, actionscript (yarg!) javascript (probably/yarg!)
-Will this be a social site?
-target audiance
-What is realistic in terms of what I want to have finished at the end.
-other things?

Very broad yes, but got to start putting these things together somewhere.
I'll throw up some links later this week and maybe i'll get some of those above questions answered.

Week One: entry

I have one idea so far.  It is an idea that I got at the end of last school year.  I few years back I drew some simple cartoon mice.  I liked the look of them and wanted to do something with them but never got very far with it.  Now that I have the knowledge and tools, it would be a good opportunity to dust them off. 

I was thinking of making some sort of educational/entertainment website.  It could take place in a house or zoo.  I should probably figure out what I would like to accomplish with the website.  Household safety?  Math?  Learn about animals?  how to use a computer.  I'll do some research and see what is out there.  From my teaching experience I recall that it is easy to find educational games and websites online, but they tend to be pretty cheap.  On the other hand, it is even easier to find entertainment websites for kids.  They can be a bit more slick, but their educational merits are often questionable.  

I can see this site having a fun navigational interface, some simple games, and I would love to try doing some animated shorts.  

This weekend I will try to flesh out the idea further.  I will also hopefully post up some concept drawings.  

I should also think of some unrelated ideas as well.  

till next time... ta ta

Yo, man

Starting this here blog about my Major Project for this school year. 
I will be updateing frequently as my project develops. 


more to come!