Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Critique Number 3

I met with Tyler Lewis and we reviewed each others projects.  I was greatly impressed by the instructional value of Tyler's site.  I was unfamiliar with the graphic design principles he was teaching prior to my experience with his site.  The examples and definitions he used were meaningful and understandable.  When I moved to the game to assess my understanding of these principles, I was able to correctly identify the elements of the design in question.

I was also impressed by the quality of the graphics and the animation.  The principles taught were apparent in the design of the site.  I felt engaged and confident.  I think Tyler has done a remarkable job with his site.

I was grateful for his review of my materials.  he has helped me identify some organizational changes that would improve the accessibility to materials.  I also appreciated his comments on my animations.

The pdf views of the two documents are below:

Tyler Lewis Critique of Darin's Project

Darin's Critique of Tyler Lewis Project

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Step 9 - Adding Controls to the Circuit Animations

In this step I continued to develop the circuit animations by adding buttons to control the playback and to allow transitions from one circuit to another within the different animations.  I will now proceed to see if I can embed the animations in the HTML rather than having them jump to a new browser window.  But the controls were needed for this step.

In review, the animations display the activity in three different kinds of circuits:

  1. A simple circuit
  2. A series circuit
  3. A parallel circuit
The series and parallel circuits illustrate the concept of path and load.  The series circuit has one path through the different load elements.  The parallel circuit uses a separate path for each load element.

The links are here:
Simple Circuit Animation
Series Circuit Animation
Parallel Circuit Animation

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Step 8 - Flash Animations of Circuits

This step involved the creation of flash animations showing three types of circuits:

  1. A simple circuit
  2. A series circuit
  3. A parallel circuit
The series and parallel circuits illustrate the concept of path and load.  The series circuit has one path through the different load elements.  The parallel circuit uses a separate path for each load element.

I have some additional work to improve the interactivity of the these animations.  I want to at least add buttons to control the stop and replay of each animation and to provide a link to start another animation from within each animation, particularly at the end of the movie.

The links are here:
Simple Circuit Animation
Series Circuit Animation
Parallel Circuit Animation

Monday, March 15, 2010

Instructor Critique - Javascript Primers and Learning Materials at HTML Goodies

I have chosen to critique the Javascript Primers and other learning materials at HTML Goodies.com.

I first became familiar with the site during the 1990s when I first began working with HTML tagging.  It offered a great deal of help with the key tags and codes used to create web pages with HTML.  Because of that familiarity, I explored the site in its current iteration to see if it could help me learn Javascript the way it had helped previously with HTML.  I was pleased to see that the site did offer the tutorials that could help with this attempt to better understand the scripting I needed for my web site.

The site actually offers three different layers of instruction.  The oldest are the primers written by Joe Burns.  They originated in the 1990s and integrate some HTML commands that have been deprecated within the scripts.  Dr. Burns writes in a concise style and anticipates many of the questions one might have.  The primers really are written for those just beginning their quest to learn and understand JavaScript.  I like the examples used and the way the different primers are organized.  Each primer is organized as:

  1. The Concept - which explains the specific purpose of the primer and what it will teach
  2. The Script - Displays the javascript text that will be entered by the learner as an example
  3. The Script's Effect - Demonstrates what the script will do when it executes
  4. Deconstructing the Script - Explains the organization of the script, what the various words and actions within the script mean, how the script may be used, and why it is constructed in the way it is.
  5. What You've Learned - Reviews the basic learning objectives for the primer and how we demonstrated those objectives.
  6. Your Assignment - An assignment designed by Dr. Burns where the learner demonstrates understaing of the learning objectives
The structure creates an effective learning environment and the instructions and explanations are helpful.  I also found some of the comment sections at the end of the primers to be helpful.  These primers were effective in helping me learn some javascript basics.

The site also includes a series of javascript basics (written by Mark Kahn) and a series of javascript diaries (written by Lee Underwood).  Both of these tutorials are more recent than the primers and incorporate changes in HTML.  They offer opportunities to practice and reviews of learning objectives, but are not as well organized as the primers.

There are some things about these tutorials that I found lacking or wish they were changed in some way.  The w3schools tutorial includes a function that allows you to play with the code and see the results while in the tutorial.  a function like that would be helpful in the different lessons, particularly where the assignments are given.


Another major weakness is being able to identify where specific functions and processes are covered within the various units.  If there was an index or search function that would allow you to re-visit lessons based on the need to review a certain function or element of javascript that would assist in reviewing when you encounter a need but cannot remember the specifics.

Overall I think the tutorials helped me understand the javascript and helped as I used javascript for my electricity website assessments.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Step 7 - Create Assessments for each lesson.

This step was to complete an online assessment for each lesson in the unit.  While I have become familiar with most of the JavaScript coding that would be required for the creation of these interactive assessments, I decided to use some code available on the web to save the time in writing the assessments for the electricity web site.  I thank the author James Crooke who made the code available at http://www.cj-design.com.  The code works very well and is easy to modify.

Each test uses two files:

  1. An HTML document named with the pattern "Test_less1.html" (See the code in pdf form here)
  2. A JavaScript document which is referenced in the HTML document named with the pattern "less1_functions.js" (See the .js code in pdf form here.)
The HTML files calls the "renderQuiz()" function in the .js file which then uses style and javascript to render the exam and provide feedback.

The assessments completed in these steps are for lessons one through six.  The final review practice test is scheduled for step 10.  If time permits, the format for the responses and feedback provided will differ from this format.  If not, the comprehensive practice test will be similar in format but have many more questions to assist with the review.

The links below are to each of the unit quizzes:

Lesson 1 Test

Lesson 2 Test

Lesson 3 Test

Lesson 4 Test

Lesson 5 Test

Lesson 6 Test

The tests can be taken over again as needed for review.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Step 6 - jQuery exercise

For this step I used the jQuery exercise we completed in class.  It is helping to understand the structure and application of this exercise related to the work I will be doing next week in adding quizzes to the electricity web site.  The link to the jQuery exercise is here.

Once the page is loaded.  Enter a first and last name in the form and it should be returned when the form is submitted.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Critique Due 3/1/2010

I completed two critiques of Instructional Designs and Peter was kin enough to let me count one of those for this critique as well.  Thanks to Dave and Alyssa for helping me kill two birds with one (well actually two) stones.  I am providing the links again below.

My review of David's design is here.

My review of Alyssa's design is here.