Layers in Activestudio 2

[shahrizal.emran]

Hello Activeusers,

Need more fresh ideas on how to use the layers function in Activestudio 2. Would appreciate your ideas for me to share it during the training of teachers in Brunei.

[Sarah Carpenter]

Hi

I am not an ACTIVstudio user but have you tried doing a search using the term 'layers' within the forum messages? If you go the top of the forum page you should see a search option - if you choose the advanced search option you can choose to search within the ACTIVstudio forum if you prefer. You should get some good ideas from there.

Hope that helps.

Sarah +wave+

[LouB]

Hi,

You could use layers to hide words in a bag or under a shape that is locked in place. Then you could drag the words out of the bag to describe an image or scene.

I have attached 2 flipcharts that have used layers. The ordering one has numbers stacked underneath it and the aim of the lesson was to order numbers within 20. The Spot flipchart has a very basic example of layers. The mound of earth is on the top layer so that the bones can be hidden underneath, you can then move the mound of earth to see how many bones are there.

If these examples are of any use I can think of some more!

Lou

[Charlotte]

Check out this thread from a while back - loads of great ideas.
http://www.Prometheanworld.com/common/html/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=1013&highlight=spyglass

[Nigel Pearce]

Remember that any object you promote to the top layer can then be erased with the Eraser Tool to reveal whatever is on the layers (or the background) beneath.

This leads to all sorts of interesting possibilities. Many are discussed throughout this forum.

Attached is a page taken from a primary flipchart that uses this concept allowing the children to erase the outside of a building in order to reveal the inside. This was authored by obtaining 2 images of a house, both exactly the same size, both from the same angle and placed exactly on top of each other on the page. Then the image of the outside of the house is promoted to the top layer allowing the eraser to punch through it to reveal the inside.

Also worth remembering the following:

Whenever you annotate on the flipchart, the annotations are automatically placed on the top layer, allowing you to erase them. You can of course select annotations and demote them to a lower layer where they will then not be erased. Eraser resistant annotations !

Whenever you add other objects to the page from outside the application (eg drag/drop images from Explorer or creating new ones using Camera Tool) they are automatically added to the middle layer.

Whenever you add "Activstudio" resources (.AS2 files) to the page from the Resource Library, the layer on which they are placed depends upon what layer they were on when they were dragged into the Library. In other words if you promote an object to the top layer, then drag it into the Resource Library, whenever you reuse that object from the library it will be placed on the top layer automatically. NB. Most objects in the Shared Resources are designed to appear on the middle layer.

Back to the house example. You can select both houses, drag them into the Library ready for reuse. When dragged back on, each house image will automatically be placed on the correct layer for you.

Not sure if we have a set of 'ready to erase' image pair resources. I'm sure someone will know.

Ideas:
Body - Skeleton
Outside Car - Inside Car
Before the diet - After the diet

[Laura OHalloran]

Have just come to this thread from searching 'layers' as I'm keen to gather more ideas. However, I don't know if it's just me but I can't open what Nigel has attached. It's labelled as a .ap2 file. I've tried changing the extension to .flp but this doesn't work.

Has anyone else managed to open it correctly? ????

Laura

[Charlotte]

I saved it to my desktop then browsed to it via the Resource Library - My Flipchart Pages.
To make life easier I have resaved it as a .flp :)

[Laura OHalloran]

Thank you Charlotte [clap]

Laura

[Dug]

Isn't .ap2 the extension used for resource objects as opposed to flps which are the flipcharts themselves? (A bit confusing admittedly as we think of AP2 as a piece of software).

ap2s should dwell in the resource library environs (shared/my collections etc) so that they can be dumped onto pages and not 'opened' in their own right.
Dug+wave+

[paulellis]

.ap2 files are page files, put them in a resource library folder and then drag them into a flipchart (or use the ACTIVpage Picker under activextras).

Paul

[Dug]

Thanks Paul.:-/