Adventures in Teaching and Learning

I have found there to be two main ways. I don’t have Mediator open at the moment, so this is from memory.

If you are exporting an OpenMind document, then you can attach the video to the OpenMind document first, then when you export into Mediator, you get a very nice video package transferred across, complete with play/stop buttons.

However, if you are starting from a blank page, then choose the video button from the top right hand corner, then click and drag the video to the size that you want. A list will appear which you can browse to choose the video that you want to insert. You might then want to resize the video to its original size. After that you need to choose the buttons for the bottom of your video. In the panel which has the buttons, there is one section which has choices of “player” buttons – I can’t remember what that is called at this point. Once you have chosen your player, you need to add an appropriate event to each button – eg click on the play button, and the event is that the video will play, and so forth.

I didn’t have any problems with the sizes of videos – however, before I packaged it onto a disk, I clicked on the button that made all the images, videos etc a smaller size … emm, I can’t remember what that’s called at the moment either! Hopefully someone else will add helpful comments, or I’ll try and remember to add the corrections later!

Anyway, good luck everyone with your Mediator projects! (I’m finding it slow going, but it is still going, so that’s good!)

This is in response to Jo’s comment earlier on. Sorry it’s taken so long, Jo!

How to quit …

It is much easier if you are using OpenMind to set up the page – each branch represents one page, so before you export your mindmap to Mediator, add a branch that says quit – it will make it much easier later on. If you don’t have Open Mind, then I presume you need to add a Quit page and a quit button on every page that leads to the Quit page.

On the quit page … Have a question that also explains what decision the user needs to make. So on my Mediator package, I ask: Do you really want to quit? Type Y or N.

Then I have a “input object”. Next to that is a submit button. The submit button has an event, and that’s where it gets a bit complicated! Choose the following standard events:
Move into -> set cursor (timer)
Move out -> Set cursor(arrow)
Mouse click -> If

Then we go to programming to choose the “If” …

IF (Condition) – type the following in the box:
UPPER(input.text)=”Y”
THEN
Timeline
ELSE
Go to page -> Homepage

In the Timeline:
Show (hidden text such as “Goodbye! Come again soon!”)
3 seconds later: Exit.

Right. I hope that helps!

I’m very tired, so this may be a bit hazy, but I wanted to blog today.

Took my Year 8 group into the computer room today (different group from the ones using spresent, and incidentally I’ve not seen any completed presentations yet …). Wanted to show them a couple of videos that they have produced, and which I made this morning into a Mediator presentation, but unfortunately what had worked earlier on a different computer did not work on the necessary computer in my particular room. Hmph. Anyway, I had set up four tasks for the pupils on the Year 8 Blog, and only one required them to actually watch the videos. So I asked them to log on and to try and complete the other tasks, in any order.

Unfortunately, because I was also trying to fix the video programme, I wasn’t able to explain as well as I would have liked. However, most pupils at one point or another visited the link to the internet safety website. Most pupils at one point were on the comments task as well.

However, at the end of the day, when I went to moderate all the comments, there were only six entered! (And one was empty …) So there’s still some work to be done there … most didn’t seem to have any prior knowledge of blogs, so I’ll need to bear that in mind when I’m planning my research project. I do think that there’s potential, though, so I’m going to stick with it. Next Friday is Sports’ Day, so the Friday after that, I hope to get them blogging again. Let’s hope they actually submit it this time though!

Janet was there to see what we were doing and to help out. It definitely helps having more than one person in the room, especially since the pupils ask for a lot of help to begin with. It’s great to have someone to bounce ideas off!

Wow! I had my Mediator training last night, and to be honest, I didn’t sign up for it the first time, but I’m glad I did, because it’s great! I was up until after midnight last night trying to produce some nifty pictures that when you hover over them other images and text appear. Was looking forward to showing my class this morning as the starter and plenary.

Unfortunately, the disk I made last night did not automatically run when I put it in the DVD drive! What did I do wrong? Judy, any pointers? And should it also work on a Mac? Because it didn’t work on my husband’s last night …

Looking forward to getting these glitches ironed out, because I can see lots of potential for Mediator!