Journal Entry #5

          Clark Aldrich had some interesting takes in his presentation “Simulations and the Future of Learning.”  He thought that simulations are a trend in breaking away from viewing content in only a linear way.  I connected with his view on Choose Your Own Adventure books as an example.  Those were my favorite books as a kid because I liked backtracking to see how the different choices I made affected the ending.  He called his own reading of this genre as “pre-computer bliss” to him. 

          I learned a lot in last week’s assignment of the True/False, Numeric, and Text Variables.  However, it was a lot of clicks for me to get through the True/False and Numeric Variables.  When I add those components into my final project, I’ll have to go back and watch those sections in the tutorial again.  As for this week’s assignment, I look forward to learning the different types of quizzes that Articulate Storyline offers in this week's assignment.  I’ll add these to the end of my final project to quiz the user on the content.
         The topic for my final project is The Story Behind the Grave Robbers of Abraham Lincoln.  I completed the background information section for the last Desk Crit and am working on the story now.  I want to add a Choose Your Own Adventure style where the user has different choices throughout the story.  I think this would make it more interesting, just like Aldrich was talking about.

Journal Entry #4

        If you haven’t seen the topic of my final project, it’s The Story Behind Abraham Lincoln’s Grave Robbers.  I narrowed it down to this after feedback from the Desk Crits and Journal Feedback, as well as polling my students. I’ve explored with the features in Storyline like Audio and Layouts and Layers through our weekly assignments.  I learned a lot in how to add and use the various Animations Storyline offers.  The upcoming Variables and Interactions sections of Storyline should add more components to my final project.

As far as the progress with my final project, I’ve done some minor rough drafting as I’ve learned more and more in Storyline.  Where I’m stuck at is how I want to tell the story of the grave robbers who attempted to steal Lincoln’s body.  The cast of characters, including a gang of Chicago counterfeiters who plot to steal Lincoln’s body and a double agent that infiltrated the gang, all make some major blunders that make it seem more fiction than non-fiction.  I know I want to make it interactive and include choices throughout it, but I also want to keep it factual with what happened that night.  I’m thinking that I want to go back and forth between the point of view of the different characters, and not tell just a linear story from beginning to end.

The reading for this week, “Designing Interactions,” was interesting.  A main point Moggridge made was that designers have to understand who their users are.  He explains how they used the four categories “Learn, Look, Ask, and Try” to learn more about their users to help them design projects.  The “Try” section made me think how I use my Advanced Writing class as a sort of guinea pigs sometimes.  I teach them first thing in the morning and get their opinions on certain things and their interests as they filter in off the buses.  They often surprise me, and it reminds me that I don’t always know everything about my target audience!