Web and Program access At the beginning stages of this project it was believed to be as simple as create, export and deliver. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. Initially I had created the entire lab in CS6 InDesign thinking it would export perfectly and I would be able to upload it to my FTP and link to the file through our online classrooms. Upon exporting to an interactive PDF I found that a lot of my interactivity was lost! After breathing into a paper bag for several hours to gain my nerves I discovered that the flash components were not exporting properly into adobe. This was not a problem; flash can easily be imported into a PDF using Adobe Acrobat X. The only arduous part was creating that my layers of the previously completed InDesign project. I have given instructions of how this was done later in the paper. After layering the lab through Adobe Acrobat X I found that all components worked as they should and moved to deploying the lab in our online classroom for proper testing. By displaying and accessing the product through our online classrooms we found that web browser compatibility for reading interactive PDF’s varies drastically. This resulted in students using adobe reader thus loosing accessibility through smart devices. Students using Macs sometimes used a product called PDF Reviewer, this is a free program installed onto their systems when they are manufactured. It came to our attention that students using PDF Reviewer had a good experience on their end. However once the file was submitted, the teacher found it increasingly difficult to grade as the Mac PDF Reviewer is not fully compatible with Adobe Reader. Teachers would have to click or double click on the submitted text fields in order to view the previously hidden information, which can understandably become quit tedious for the teacher when grading a multitude of labs. This is not an entirely solvable situation with interactive PDF’s, the furthest we could go was to zip the interactive PDF so that a ‘Save as’ file prompt would appear when the student clicked on the labs hyperlink. By having the student download the lab we hoped to at least rid ourselves and the students of the highly inconsistent compatibility of interactive PDF’s read through different web browsers. The only real set back to zipping the file is that we have now lost our compatibility with smaller media devices such as android phones, tablets and iPhones, iPods etc... Flash Our labs are constructed around pre-existing flash components. We are currently researching methods of converting these Flash components into more compatible. A suggestion was made to package the lab into a phone app, this would allow the flash components to run on mac devices. Upon trying this we found that the pre-existing FLASH would simply flatten and loos all interactivity. In order to package the flash we would need the original coding for the flash component which we are working on obtaining. For the moment though all we have is a hyperlink to the free resource. Why don’t you just find another flash component with the base coding to use? Learning Network Queensland | Brisbane North Institute of TAFE 7