Technical Guide for Weighty Decisions Case Study

Contents

Technical issues with the web version of the Weighty Decisions Case Study

Setting Bookmarks
Issues Matrix
Mac OS Finder

Notebook

Students

Timeline

Transcript

Videos

View the Weighty Decisions Case Study

 

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Technical issues with the web version

This program contains over 600 Mb of digital video, comprising over 4 hours of video of classroom interaction and teacher interviews. The movies were capture using Adobe Premiere and post-compressed in Movie Cleaner Pro using the Sorensen video codec and the IMA audio codec. The program is developed using Director, and was originally designed for CDROM. The Shockwave file for the online version is 1.3 Mb.

For the best performance, you'll need the latest QuickTime and Shockwave plugins (QT 4 and Shockwave 7) to get the closest thing to streaming. These movies are not actually streamed in the truest sense of the word. They are being served from a unix server which can at best do "progressive download", which means that there's an "invisible" temporary .mov file being saved in an invisible "Temporary Items" folder on the main Macintosh HD (on a pc, the files appear typically in the defaulty Temp directory (C:\Windows\Temp\, or something like that). You can actually reveal the existence of these files if you download one or more and then do a Find on .mov.

One significant issue this raises is that if you download some movies and then download the pdf files from Math Activity, the latest Acrobat Reader opens them right in the same Netscape browser window, which means you must reload all of the video when you "Go Back".

With a Mac OS X server, the movie gets cached temporarily for only a few seconds worth of video at whatever point the playback is at, so the user is not required to have enough hard disk space to save temporary files. If you reload the page for whatever reason, such as going Back after having viewed the Acrobat files of student work, the movies must completely download over again.

 

How do I...?

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Access the Mac OS Finder?

If you are using Mac OS 8.5 or greater, you can access the finder (or any other application that is running) by clicking on the command and tab keys simultaneously. You can switch directly to any running application shown by clicking repeatedly on the command tab to highlight the desired choice.

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Advance Video using the Timeline?

The video timeline was designed to help the user find particular sections of the video quickly.
1. Read the headings on the timeline.

Move the slider or click on the timeline to the desired location. The progress bar on the timeline will move as will the video.

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Copy text to the notebook?

You can copy text from any text field on the CD that has a copy icon located in the left margin.

1. Click on the icon in the left margin. (NOTE: You will not hear any sound to indicate that you have copied the text.)

2. Open the notebook (using the
icon located in the upper right of each screen).

3. Select
. NOTES:

1. You cannot select a portion of text to copy and paste.
However, once you have pasted the entire text field into the notebook, you can easily highlight and cut text.

2. The copy option is included for text in the following fields:

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Identify Students by name or by face?

The seating chart was designed to enable viewers to identify students by either their name (as mentioned by the teacher, the text, or another student), by their face, or by their location in the classroom.

if 1. Click on the "Seating Chart" tab.

if 2. Run the mouse over the student pictures.
The groups are arranged in the matrix to follow the 3-D seating diagram. The colors denoting each group in the diagram coincide with the colors on the timeline. 3.
Each group's list will appear in the window in the left margin.

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Navigate the Issues Matrix?

The issues matrix was designed to allow users to follow a theme or thread throughout the lesson.

1. Click on any in the matrix.
This will take you to the transript screen of the appropriate video.

2. Click once on the video "play" button to play the cued video.

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Play the videos?

The videos included are played using the standard QuickTime controls:

 
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Read the transcript page by page?

The video transcript can be visually searched by page.

1. Select the "Search Transcript" option in the video interface.

2. Click on the page arrows ( ) to advance or rewind the text and accompanying video one page at a time.

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Save the contents of my notebook?

The contents of the notebook can be saved as a text file to any disk and opened in any word processing program.
One advantage of this option is that groups of viewers can all enter notes and then have copies of the work to be shared or altered at a later date.

1. Enter some text into the notebook.

2. Click once on "Save notes to a file." NOTE: If you have not saved the current changes to your notebook to a file, you will be prompted to do so when you hit the "quit" option.

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Search the transcript (by single word)

This transcript searching option allows the viewer to advance quickly to the next occurrence of any given word or words.
1. Click on "Reset Search."
2. Enter the target word or words on which to search.
3. Click once on 'Find Next."
4. To conduct a search on a whole word only, hold down the shift key while clicking 'Find Next."
For example, if your target word is "lesson" and you continue to find "lessons" appearing, use the whole word only option.

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Search the transcript (generate a list of all occurrences)?

This searching option allows the user to enter a keyword (such as a student's name, or strategy such as 'average') and see a list of all occurrences of that word in the transcript and accompanying video.
1. Make sure you are on the transcript page of the desired video.
2. Click once on "Reset Search" just to make sure there are no words in the buffer.
3. Type the word or words you are interested in searching.

4. Depending on the video chosen and target word, the list generation may take up to 3 minutes. The cursor will turn into a wait icon indicating that the program is generating the list.
You can abort this process at any time by hitting the period key.

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See students' work?

You can see the students' work (i.e., each of the six groups' lists) via the seating chart or via the "Math Activity" tabs.
A complete listing of all groups' lists and ranked lists can be found in the instructor's guide.
1. Click once on the seating chart option.
2. Run the cursor over any group.
The list will appear in the left margin.
NOTE: this section contains each group's initial list only.
A complete list of all students' models for the aggregated list has been included in the instructor's materials.

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Set and access Bookmarks?

Bookmarks enable users to mark and annotate specified video segments.

1. Make sure that you are in the "Bookmarks" section of the video page.
2. Locate the timeline or progress bar cursor at the starting point of the desired video section.
3. Enter text into the text window (where transcript normally appears).
4. Choose an unused number for the bookmark.
Click once on the corresponding "Set Start" button.
A green bookmark with the correct number should appear in the video timeline.
5. NOTE: If you have not yet added any text, the program will beep and inform you of this problem in the text window.
To rectify the problem, do the following: a) erase the warning text and enter the desired text; b)shift-click on the "set start" button to erase it, and then click once to reset it.
6. Advance the video to the ending position (either by playing the video or moving it manually with the progress bar).
7. Click once on the "Set end" button.
8. Click on the numbered bookmark to check your work! NOTES:

1. To erase either the start or end of the bookmark, shift click on the associated button.
2. To erase all bookmarks, Click on "Reset All"
3. To open an existing bookmark file, click on the "Open" option, and follow the open dialog box options.
The name of the bookmark file will then be listed on the screen.
4. To save existing bookmarks, click on the "Save".
Follow the save dialog box options.

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Short cut to another video when watching one video?

When watching a video, you many want to quickly go to different day or reflection.
This can be done via the "Short cut" buttons at the top of the video window.

1. Run the cursor over any of the buttons as shown. A description of the target location appears to the right of the buttons.
2. Click on the desired video button.
NOTE: This feature allows the user to jump from one video to the next while staying in the same video format. Thus, if you setting bookmarks, you will continue to be in bookmark mode BUT your current bookmarks will appear in the new video.
Each set of bookmarks corresponds only to a given video.

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View video at 2x?

This option allows larger groups of students to view the video at one time.
The transcript is still yoked with the video, although some of the screens may require users to scroll some text. 1. Access the Video tab 2. Choose a video to view. 3. Select the View Video at 2x option. 4. Scroll the transcript as needed.