gec
01-03-2006, 12:12 AM
Just a thought... Suppose I want to create a curve - perhaps a Sine curve, an S-shaped curve, a normal distribution (bell-shaped curve) or whatever.
What's the best way to do it? I can think of:
* Try to draw it with my mouse (I prepare most of my resources at home with no access to an IWB). I find this impossible to do. My lines invariably look like a 2-year-old child drew them.
* If I have access to a whiteboard, I can do a reasonably good job given enough attempts - but not as good as I would like - I'm a bit of a perfectionist (with terrible handwriting), and it's never totally perfect.
* Use a pen tablet such as a Wacom pad. We have a very cheap one at school and it's worse than useless. I guess that the more you pay the better they are, but I can't pass the 2-year-old child test above with ours - I find it hard enough to double-click an icon with it.
* Use an ACTIVslate. I'm guessing that it's much better than the WACOM pad above, but I've not used one. Does it pass the 2-year-old test? What sort of cost is it? Can it be used to prepare resources at home or must it be used with the wireless-ready board?
* Use a path-drawing program such as Illustrator and copy and paste the line into ACTIVstudio.
Each of these solutions has pros and cons.
The key advantage of the first 4 of these is that you create an ACTIVstudio object. i.e. a line whose thickness and colour can be changed. However it's very difficult to get the perfect sine curve.
The key advantage of the last is that the object can be drawn pretty much perfectly. However when pasted into ACTIVstudio, (with the background set to transparent), you cannot change the line thickness. You can change the line colour but are likely to see some ghosting of the original colour at the edges (especially if the line was drawn anti-aliased). [Note: I've just discovered that when pasting a complex line from PowerPoint you are able to change the line colour perfectly, but still not the thickness]
What I am hinting at is the need for a path-drawing tool in ACTIVstudio, even if it's as simple as the one PowerPoint 2000 has, where you can draw a squiggle and then choose 'Edit Points' from the 'Draw' menu to improve it. If it already exists, can someone point me in the right direction please.
Sorry for the unnecessarily long post, but thanks for reading this far!
Graham
What's the best way to do it? I can think of:
* Try to draw it with my mouse (I prepare most of my resources at home with no access to an IWB). I find this impossible to do. My lines invariably look like a 2-year-old child drew them.
* If I have access to a whiteboard, I can do a reasonably good job given enough attempts - but not as good as I would like - I'm a bit of a perfectionist (with terrible handwriting), and it's never totally perfect.
* Use a pen tablet such as a Wacom pad. We have a very cheap one at school and it's worse than useless. I guess that the more you pay the better they are, but I can't pass the 2-year-old child test above with ours - I find it hard enough to double-click an icon with it.
* Use an ACTIVslate. I'm guessing that it's much better than the WACOM pad above, but I've not used one. Does it pass the 2-year-old test? What sort of cost is it? Can it be used to prepare resources at home or must it be used with the wireless-ready board?
* Use a path-drawing program such as Illustrator and copy and paste the line into ACTIVstudio.
Each of these solutions has pros and cons.
The key advantage of the first 4 of these is that you create an ACTIVstudio object. i.e. a line whose thickness and colour can be changed. However it's very difficult to get the perfect sine curve.
The key advantage of the last is that the object can be drawn pretty much perfectly. However when pasted into ACTIVstudio, (with the background set to transparent), you cannot change the line thickness. You can change the line colour but are likely to see some ghosting of the original colour at the edges (especially if the line was drawn anti-aliased). [Note: I've just discovered that when pasting a complex line from PowerPoint you are able to change the line colour perfectly, but still not the thickness]
What I am hinting at is the need for a path-drawing tool in ACTIVstudio, even if it's as simple as the one PowerPoint 2000 has, where you can draw a squiggle and then choose 'Edit Points' from the 'Draw' menu to improve it. If it already exists, can someone point me in the right direction please.
Sorry for the unnecessarily long post, but thanks for reading this far!
Graham