Applying for Adobe Distribution Licence

I have been investigating software licences for the Hydrographic Academy project as teaching materials will use a fair amount of offline software and applications. Some of the learning object run on Adobe Flash and students would need Acrobat (for PDF files) - I cant assume they will all have good internet connections! After some asking around and investigating on line, I came across the Licencing area on the Adobe website. I thought it was going to take several days to get a response, but most of it was in fact automated. I suspect the final stage required an OK from 'a person' but this was not clear, as I actually recieved licencing permission for distributions via DVD/USB drive within 10mins.

It looks like this process has to be repeated yearly, filling out the same form again.

Making Waves: how the HA logo was animated

Having created a logo to represent the Hydrographic Academy (HA), we thought it would be rather good to create one that is animated. This would not only provide the HA with a more professional and consistent identity but also enhance video based learning materials. After having a chat with Becki Vickerstaff sharing her ideas, we went for simply animating the waves behind the HA, thanks Becki. Granted it's a simple idea, but we both thought it would give some impact to the coursework materials.

I decided to create this with a combination of software. Using both Adobe Photoshop and Flash Professional. Flash Professional proved to be the more worthwhile application, as I found that some of the transfer from Photoshop was not seamless as I hoped, having to rebuild nearly all of the elements in Flash. However Photoshop was useful in getting the details.

So how did I do it? Firstly I wanted to introduce waves behind the scene. I had originally created them as curves on a strip, so they were already open for manipulation, it was just a matter of lengthening them. Flash allows users to construct frame by frame animations, with many different way of approaching the same solution. I thought the fun way of achieving this would be to create it as if I was pulling a blue paper cut out of a wave through a piece of card (I also thought it maybe fun to actually show this later in future logos, but lets see). I digress, I joined together several dips and troughs to create a set of four clean waves, I then used motion tweening to pull the image through from one side to the other and a little script to stop after it completed its maneuver. To keep the waves behind the 'HA' I simply used a mask for the font lettering applied to an object to let the wave show through. No point complicated these things.

I had experimented with a few formats, leaving the logo with rounded corners on a black background, but decided to go for all black. Titling on video productions these days tend to lean towards this approach. However, I of course kept the rounded edge version, this could be useful elsewhere.

Mohive training, for online train materials

Dr Richard Thain (Project leader), Becki Vickerstaff (fellow Learning Technologist) and myself spent the last two days training, under the careful tuition of Alan Payne (Fugro Subsea Services). These sessions were to familiarise ourselves with Fugro's own Mohive environment. The Mohive platform is used by Fugro to develop content for their geoscience, survey, and geotechnical services. This session, for me, marked the start of a much larger collaboration with, CENORE and Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) HM to develop distance learning content for a Hydrographic Surveying module here at the University of Plymouth.

Mohive is a SCORM compliant Flash based content development system that allows various forms of teaching and learning materials to be developed efficiently within an online interface, which is ideal for collaborative work. It also has the ability to allows users to create anything from simple quizzes all the way to adding interactivity to embedded video content. All this in a rather tidy interface.

During the training we were given a mini project in which we had to create a teaching and learning guide on how to sharpen a pencil; we even covered elements of health and safety! Exampled below is a quick (tongue and cheek) video I created as part of the training, which encompassed each of the stages to sharpening a pencil... I think with only two days of training, using a simple concept as sharpening a pencil really helped us to focus primarily on using the interface. All an all a very fun and extremely useful couple of days. A big thank you to Alan's efficient tuition. We will certainly all be looking forward to future collaborations on this initiative.