The time taken to add one lecture

OK, so I’ve got this 2-hour lecture, ready to go onto the OHP, for Space Systems Technology. The notes, in practically book-chapter quality, are already on the WebCT course, so I shouldn’t feel compelled to put anything else online. But I do. Somehow, I want to make the customer offering complete (note how I come out with spontaneous marketing-speak now?), and also make a handy on-screen revision tool that might jog the memory more than memory itself.

Let’s see what’s involved in providing Powerpoint – they like to print out the Notes pages, and why not – and Impatica versions of an existing presentation. I’ve already anticipated a little by having a sequence of slides, illustrative of the progressive degradations that you get when compressing images, be longer than I would use for actual overheads. The sequence itself is like frames of a movie, and the learning point is all about comparison rather than analysis of any particular one.

First of all, I make sure I’ve got my Powerpoint file ready (it’s called “processing” and the course is called PHYS3C64), so let’s start the clock. Here are the steps:

1. Transfer processing.ppt (786 kb) to a network drive
2. Log on to server running Impatica 3.0.2
3. Find the source file, Add to batch list. Enable navigation controls and HTML output. (There’s loads more : zip, SCORM, ipk)
4. For this one, I don’t want to introduce two lots of compression artefacts, so I go to the Media tab and (here’s hoping this is right) set the JPEG compression to 100%. I assume that normally, it will compress the whole slide-image as one entity.
5. Oops I spotted an option “apply extra compression” in Output Files. Turn that off.
6. Hit Impaticize!
7. 38 slides take a minute or two.
8. OK, now I’ve got a processing-imp.jar. Turns out it’s 930 kb. Haul this back to my PC, along with the 1 k html wrapper it makes, and the copy of the player it spits out.
9. Bundle these puppies together in a dummy folder.
10. I already have the 3c64 setup as a Network Place – using the webdav info provided in MyWebCT. Copy the dummy folder across. For some reason I can’t copy files this way, only folders. However, I can move files once they are present on the server, so I put them where I want now.
11. Log on to WebCT.
12. The next bit takes ages, it seems. Putting two additional files at arbitrary places in an existing content module seems overly clunky (I know, I know, it’s because HTML forms don’t generate Events). WebCT doesn’t help me by not having a proper file browser dialog for selecting to-be-linked file, just this huge list in a tiny font.
13. Switch to View mode for a quick test. Press F11 to get more actual screen back. Click through the subject icon, this link here and Boing! my first slide.
14. Having minimal/no compression is good for me (I’m working on a fast-ish network) since all my text and graphics are clean. Now how about that series of compressed photos. The slides are now coming out at 800 x 600 rather than my native 1024 wide. Excellent – all OK.
15. My native powerpoint file is launched ok from WebCT (although it leaves an empty screen on the browser – weird).
16. Check that the titles are consistent in this module’s table of contents. It should say “Science Data Processing – for on screen viewing” and “Science Data Processing – Powerpoint for Printing”. Getting the phrases rhythmically the same is important, I feel. One thing I hate is when the browser launches a helper app without warning!
17. All done. Update Student View so they actually see the new stuff. Takes no time (but funny how it goes through all the hidden files too). All I have to do now is wait for the complaints.
18. About 40 minutes, including typing this lot. I’ve probably missed Top of the Pops now.