Some Captivate Basics—Demonstrations
& Simulations.
You have a few options when
creating movies
- Demonstration – No interactivity involved
here. You just demonstrate the
skill you want them to know.
- Assessment simulation—involves interactivity….
- Training Simulation—Involves interactivity….(includes
Hints)
While captivate does have
some powerful assessment features. We
will not be exploring these here. If
this is something you are interested in, I encourage you to explore these on
your own (here is one resource: http://macromedia.com/devnet/captivate/articles/quiz.html.)
I.
Creating a
demonstration
When all you want to do is
give students a quick lesson over something, the demonstration is the way to
go.
When
Captivate is launched, the start page appears.
Figure 1. The Captivate Start-up screen
Note: I highly recommend the
“Getting started movies.” This is
exactly what I did to learn the basics.
Here I am going to show you
how you can create a tutorial for the TI-83. For this example, create a
demonstration on how the TI-83 can solve a system of equations
graphically. You will need to download
the virtual TI found here: http://mtsu.edu/~smcdanie/CSS_Site/VisualAlgebra/VirtualTI.zip.
Step 1. Select “Record
new movie.”
You will get the menu below
Figure 2. Select the way you want to record.
Step 2. You have
several options. For our example select
“Custom Size.” Select the region you
wish to capture. It will be outlined in
red.
Figure 3. Getting ready to record the Virtual TI.
You will also see the
recording controls shown in Figure 4. If
you want to narrate while you are recording, be sure to check that box. You may always add narration afterwards.
Figure 4. The recording dialog box.
Step 3. Click on the “Options”
button and select “Demonstration,” and then “OK.” (We will explore the simulation option
in part II of this tutorial.)
Figure 5. The options in Recording.
If you are unsure of what the
check boxes mean, click on the help.
Step 4. With the red box around our TI-83+, press
“Record.” I am going to use the equations 
. Each time you press
a key on the Virtual TI, you will here a camera sound. This tells you that Captivate is capturing
the screen. Once you are done, press the
End key on your keyboard.
Note: Because captivate takes a
snapshot immediately after you press a key, you may need to manually capture
the screen after certain operations. For
instance, after you graph the two equations, it takes the calculator a couple
of seconds to actually graph the two lines.
This means that Captivate did not get the graphs, for it took a snapshot
almost immediately after you pressed GRAPH.
To ensure that you get the graphs, you will need to manually capture the
Virtual-TI. To do this press the Print
Screen button on your keyboard. You
may always add this afterwards; I just find it easier to remember while I am
recording it.
Step 5. You are now back in Captivate’s “StoryBoard” view with a series of slides. These slides are indeed the “movie” you have
created. This view is not unlike
PowerPoint’s slide view layout. You may
switch over to the Edit view by either double clicking on any of the slides or
by selecting the “Edit” tab (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Ready to Edit the movie
Step 6. Adding a Caption. Suppose we want to add some text that introduces the
problem to be solved on the first slide.
To do this go to Insert > Text Caption
Figure 7. Adding a Text Caption
You have several options for
the look of the text caption. Select the
style, font, justification, etc. that meets your needs.
Figure 8. The Caption Dialog box.
The caption is now placed on the on the object. Feel free to move it around and change the length and width of the caption box.
Step 7. The timeline. The timeline allows you to time when items (such as captions) appear and disappear and the length of the slide itself. I will normally have to preview the slide to see if any of the items needs adjusting. To adjust an object, place the cursor at the end of the slide object; it will turn into a resize pointer. You should be able to slide it back and forth to adjust the timing. You may double click any of the slide bar objects and a property box opens. Here you can adjust any of the appropriate properties (e.g. time, color of the highlight box).
Figure 9. The Timeline
Step 8. Preview options. I will normally preview the entire movie before I make any adjustments. The preview button allows you to preview one slide, or several slides. When you think you have completed your project, it is good practice to preview In Web Browser. You may find that you still need to tweak some of the slides.
Figure 10. Preview Options
Step 9. Additional Tweaks. You will probably want to tweak a few
more things. I don’t like how the blue
highlight boxes are not directly over the calculator keys. You may select them by single click on them You should see
some resize handles appear. You may
double click it if you want to change the color (as I did). I also double clicked on the mouse slide bar
in the timeline and choose a different pointer; I selected the hand. Be sure to have “Apply changes to all
slides selected.”
Figure 11. Adjusting the highlight box
After previewing the movie in the browser, I felt it was too slow. I went to the timeline and adjusted each slide to 3s (see Figure 12). (You may also double click “slide n” on the timeline and make a more precise adjustment. If you select “apply changes to all slides,” it should change the times on all of them (see Figure 13). I tried this and it did it for all but two of them. I went in and adjusted those separately.)
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Figure 12. Time adjustments |
Figure 13. Time adjusments |
Step 10. Narration. Narration could have been added as the movie
was being made. However, you may find
that it is easier to concentrate on one slide at a time. Additionally, you may find that you don’t
need audio; text captions may server your audience better. We will add narration on a few slides.
Click on the slide that you
want to add audio. Press the audio
button at the top.
Figure 14. Adding Audio to your slides.
Before pressing record, press the “Options” button and change the quality to highest quality. FM quality just isn’t good enough for me. You never want to sacrifice on the audio. It is a good idea to “Calibrate” your audio before moving on. Also be sure to have a decent microphone/headset.
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Figure 15. Recoding audio |
Figure 16. Options in Recording |
Press
Record. After recording, press the play
button. If all is ok, press “OK.” You will see the audio appear in the
timeline.
Figure 17. Audio on the timeline
You may edit the audio by
double clicking the audio slide bar. Here
you can remove silences or inadvertent noises, add fades, etc. Although you may find it easier just to
re-record the audio, this is a nice feature of Captivate.
Note: Adding audio dramatically
increases your file size. If you plan on
publishing this to be viewed over the Internet, you want to limit the length of
audio. Consider adding Caption text as
an alternative.
Most of what we have done is
to make the movie as perfect as possible. If you are in a time crunch, you can just
record the voice narrations while you make your movie. It should be very functional for student use
and will take 1/3 of the time.
In this next part we will
make a simulation of the demonstration we have just done.
II.
Creating a
simulation
Now we come to the real power
of Captivate. At least at the time of
the writing of this tutorial, the ability to create interactive learning
objects is what separates Captivate from the rest (e.g. Viewlets,
Camtasia).
Step 1. There are many
ways to start the simulation. We could
begin a new project. However, here we
are going to append the previous demonstration with a simulation. Rather than have the simulation just take
off, we will insert a blank slide at the end of the demonstration.
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Figure 18. Add Blank Slide |
Insert a Text Caption
Figure 19 Then type in some appropriate text (Figure 20). |
Figure 20. Adding a
transition slide |
To insert the continue button, go to Insert> Button. Select “Go to next slide” and enter the Button text “Continue” as shown below.
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Figure 21. Adding a Button |
Figure 22. Button dialog box |
Step 2. The Simulation. Now we are ready to start the
simulation. To do this press “Record” and select
the “Record at the end of this movie” radio button. Select “Options” and choose Assessment
simulation (training simulation allows for Hints).
Click on “Edit settings” if you want to see what has been enabled. Feel free to select or deselect any of the options. After you click OK, you are ready to record. Press “Record” and run through the simulation capture just as you did the demonstration capture. You may add audio while you are doing this or afterwards or not at all. I recommend using more text boxes, since they should already have a sense for what is going on.
Figure 23. Set recording mode to Assessment Simulation.
It can get a bit tedious from here. I typically like to remind the student if they click on the wrong key which key to click on. However, to make it clear, you will need to do one of three things:
1. Change the text from “Click here” to “Click something more specific” (e.g. “Click ENTER”)
2. Change the square “Failure box” to one with some direction to it that points directly on the key.
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3. You may do both. This can be time consuming. · To do either, double click the “failure box.” Make your changes. · Add caption boxes if you feel you need to guide the user a bit. Once again, preview your movie before you publish it. Step 3. Publishing. When publishing your movie, you have several options.
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