A little reflection....

Hallo my fellow students 5/8/2009 11:59 pm

The past two weeks have been most challenging to me. I have really battled with the technology and have had many frustrating evenings trying to figure out how the e-learning tools work. I have used VTS as was shown by Debbie early in the year. I must say, although it is an easy tool to use for those experienced with the software, for me it was and still is a challenge. It took me close on four evenings, 4 hours each, just to make sense of it. I have kind of gotten the nack of it, but am still struggling with some quality issues, especially where pictures are concerned. The smaller the picture the poorer the quality; labels become imposable to read which renders the application useless.

A few tips if I may:
Do your presentation in power point beforehand
Include all the data, pictures, sound and video clips you will need in the above presentation
You will have to populate the object pool in VTS with everything you will insert, per page
Chunks of data will have to be broken down in manageable bits, so get to know the space you have available per page in VTS
The word processing in VTS is very limited. Do all your text adjustments before you import into VTS.
There is one font only. You cannot change the text size.
Do not overcrowd the space. The pages become full very soon. Distill your content to the absolute facts.


In the object pool you would import all your data. Once you have composed your pages, you can adjust the size of images in the object pool. It will then automatically adjust to the new settings in the composer section. In preview you can view your presentation and make the necessary changes. Remember if the text chunk is too big, you will have to delete that chunk, select a smaller piece of data in power point and import and label the smaller sections. You cannot manipulate chunks of data in VTS.

As you can see, this is page 1. The section tabs appear at the top, and the page scroll buttons at the bottom. The “G” is a glossary for terminology, which help save space in the text.. Here you can insert a nice funky piece of music to set the mood. The program allows you only one sound clip per page.

You can insert test questions. Only true or false answers can be selected. You will therefore have to be very innovative with your questions if you would like to encourage deep learning.
If a wrong answer was given, the student is refered back to the text. Unfortunately no feedback can be given to the student as to why an answer is wrong

I have run out of space and time. I will tell you more at a later stage if time allows.
Signing off
Estelle