Believe or not we have tried, and have succeeded for 95% of the labs. We are unable to find a suitable replacement for our microscope lab, a key practical component and learning subject for aspiring science students. Normal business operations At the beginning of this project normal office commitments and responsibilities took priority due to peak exam periods causing a shift in office responsibilities to make up for development time lost. I acknowledge that these products can be created in a number of different ways from how I have presented this information. My hope is to identify for you the information and considerations necessary to help you chose the path that is best suited for you regardless of the constraints and boundaries set upon me. In my research I found that any one approach did not provide the most desirable of outcomes. I worked to provide a final product that merged these different processes to achieve the ideal product. Work Around At the beginning of this project it was our focus to find a way to deliver our product to students who did not have FLASH capabilities; some easy ways to do this are as follows: Alternative PDF link which contains the same information with less bells and whistles – Instructions of how to do this will be provided Cutting all FLASH based interactivity from your project Converting FLASH into another format – Currently being researched. Research was conducted in finding a way to force a hyperlink to download a file rather than opening it directly in the web browser. The most apparent way found to do this was to package the information in a .zip file which causes any web browser to prompt a ‘Save as’ function. This unfortunately means that the information s no longer accessible to smart devices. Development of the Interactive PDF was continued purely to provide the product to the students for feedback though construction of the web site option was now in motion. Deployment of the Lab brought to our attention that students were submitting very large file sizes which brought about the decision of creative a separate answer sheet which was submitted apart for the lab. Students accessing the Lab through home, work or school computers prefer the Interactive Lab to the previous paper version as there are better examples, walkthroughs and tutorials embedded into the materials. After concluding the construction of a marginally successful interactive PDF due to unforseen constraints and restrictions it was prudent to discover another means of creating, hosting or delivering the same information (thus the creation of a website with form capabilities). With extensive research and testing it was decided that JavaScript may be the best tool in capturing Learning Network Queensland | Brisbane North Institute of TAFE 8
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