applets useful?

I was planning on posting students work on the web using export to html feature but am finding out extract process stops midway after I clicked on the html file. The browser seems to be trying to show the applet but the whole thing freezes at a certain point with no indication as to why this is happening. So I guess I will just post the.a2w files for download, which will work but isn't exactly what I was going for. We have around ten separate teams working on projects and I wanted to post by team name. Any suggestions or is it better just to give up on the applet idea?



rossjerry

Originally Posted by rossjerry

I was planning on posting students work on the web using export to html feature but am finding out extract process stops midway after I clicked on the html file. The browser seems to be trying to show the applet but the whole thing freezes at a certain point with no indication as to why this is happening. So I guess I will just post the.a2w files for download, which will work but isn't exactly what I was going for. We have around ten separate teams working on projects and I wanted to post by team name. Any suggestions or is it better just to give up on the applet idea?



rossjerry

My experience says give up on the applet idea. It rarely works. I have posted some information on my beliefs as to why it doesn't work.

There are at least two other alternatives:

1. Have the students create a video using an external program (the Alice 2.0 feature to export to a movie also doesn't work). This will make it possible for the students to display their work on YouTube, etc.

2. Have the students create an HTML file using the export to printer feature and post the source code in that format.

Several people including myself have posted information about using external programs to create videos and you may find those postings useful. I have used the free Bulent's Screen Recorder (BSR) software that is available at http://www.thesilver.net/ but there are numerous other packages available as well. Once you get used to BSR, it isn't too difficult to use. Be aware, however, that sometimes the time scale will not be real accurate.

In my course, I produce a video of the correct solution for each laboratory assignment for the students to view while they are reading the specifications for the assignment. The students find that to be very helpful in understanding the assignments. You will find an example at http://www.dickbaldwin.com/alice/Ali....htm#Resources.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free programming tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm