Dave Sabol

ESU Interactive Reflective Decision Maker Application

This is a continuation of the project below. After converting the source files from .ppt to .fla, I attempted to build-in behaviors and interactivity, but quickly discovered the limitations of the application I was using. Despite the time investment, I decided to start from scratch, this time using ToolBook – a robust eLearning development tool. The course features branching logic, abundant use of ToolBooks Actions Editor and some OpenScript (SumTotal’s proprietary scripting language). Additionally, all of the content is SCORM 1.2 compliant.

Robert’s Rules of Order

This was the first course in a series that I developed for PMI. Because of the ease of use and consistency, the graphical treatment now serves as the standard for all subsequent courses that have been/will be developed for the Leadership e-Learning program. The entire application was created using ToolBook – a robust eLearning development tool. The course features branching logic, abundant use of ToolBooks Actions Editor and some OpenScript. Additionally, all of the content is SCORM 1.2 compliant which works very well with the LMS we use to manage and deliver our content. The design was created not only with best practices for adult learning, accessibility and usability in mind but also to be consistent with PMI’s brand standards. All graphic elements were created using Adobe Fireworks.

Description: When the Orchestral Director of the Nazareth Area School District’s String Program asked me to create a website for her, I couldn’t refuse (I really couldn’t – she’s my wife). In all seriousness, Laura wanted to create a site that would allow her to easily post and update information for her students and parents and serve as a critical linkage for home-school communication.

I decided to use WordPress as the engine for the site because the interface is very easy to learn and I knew from past experience that it had the core functionality that would allow it to accomplish everything it needed to with a little creative coding. The site features a fully functional event / activity calendar, the blog which is used to post news and homework assignments and a lot of other features that every teacher needs to have a well-rounded website. The coding for this site was done in Coda and all of the graphics were created with Gimp.

Background

A few months prior to ASAE’s Annual Conference in 2008, Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation approached me with the idea to create a blog-of-blogs, also known as a universe site, to aggregate the association world’s most well known bloggers. The goal of the project was really three-fold: first to make it easier to find association related resources in one location, second was to drive traffic back to the blogger’s websites, and third it had to be almost entirely automated – as little user/administrator intervention as possible. It was understood from the beginning that the site needed to be extremely accessible, content rich and highly interactive.

After a few weeks of discussion we settled on the idea of using WordPress as the engine largely due to the fact that more than half of our featured bloggers had experience with it and should they need to actually log-in to make changes, post updates or respond to comments.

Platform: Wordpress 2.7
Responsibilities:Initial idea, information architecture, graphic design, coding.