Runtah

Home: http://www.edu20.org/
Tour: http://www.edu20.org/company/tour
Features: http://www.edu20.org/company/features

FEATURES?
A selection of the juiciest ones (Features List):

• Comprehensive, easy to use learning management system.
• Teach traditional classes or public classes on the Internet.
• Integrated calendar shows class times and assignments.
• Close or open enrollment at any time.
• Attendance tracking.
• Several assignment types - online quiz, online freeform and offline.
• Quiz each topic in the curriculum and track your progress.
• Advance to the next level in each topic as you master it.
• Use secure forums and chat rooms to network and collaborate with members with similar educational interests.
• Subscribe for notification when new resources are added for a particular subject.
• Easy-to-use grade book with graphical reports.

RESOURCES?

• Surveys for quick online polls
• Webconferencing
• Integration with mobile phones
• SCORM 2004 3rd edition support
• Ability to brand your home page according to your organization/preferences
• Supercool features they dont want to reveal yet

MASTERMIND?
Founded in 2006 by Graham Glass. Graham is a serial entrepreneur and winner of the 1996 Entrepreneur of the Year award.

REFLECTION TIME?
Even if you do not want to sign-up (and explore), you can still enjoy the resource collection (available to public). Currently, there are close to 1800 members in the community (surely to grow), so you wont feel lonely here. I suppose it does not have the growth pattern of FaceBook, but then again it is not always about big numbers (Quality counts, too!). Interestingly, you get points for every resource you share, so that might also boost or trigger members to share more (Yeah, I have already got 5 points for linking the community to this blog!). Though, edu 2.0 seems a bit confusing to manage and learn (with all those juicy tools), especially for users that are not so IT-savvy (They might prefer a tool like LectureShare, which would be easier to learn). Also, I felt that you are perhaps required to click more than necessary sometimes to get what you want (Simple navigation rule: Less clicks, more joy!).

I would have thought that Google, Yahoo or MSN would get the ball rolling first, with a free hosted LMS. Yes, I did predict in my mumblings (December 2005) that Google would perhaps buy Moodle (or host it for free) and enable anyone in the world to conduct online courses for free. But then again, sometimes you need an Entrepreneur like Graham Glass to facilitate or lead the Free Hosted LMS (VLE, LCMS, or whatever!) revolution (Please do not forget LectureShare, too!).

In the final (surface) analysis, I believe that this is simply the beginning of a new era (much thanks to initiatives like edu 2.0), where in the future Google, Yahoo and MSN will join the bandwagon, battling out to show to the world that they care about providing everyone with online teaching and learning tools to educate the world (it would certainly boost their image and branding, too!). Of course, these three giants are already providing users with whole list of dynamic learning tools (such as this blogging tool!), but a comprehensive, integrated, and easy-to-use Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or LMS would not hurt either!

As for those Schools, Colleges or Universities (or Educators) that cant afford an LMS, hardware infrastructure, hosting services, and IT expertise, it will simply be liberating (Hmm, on the condition that their students (or staff) have easy access to a computer device and the Internet).

Finally, lets for one moment celebrate, promote and engage in great initiatives like edu 2.0, which can make a major contribution to the world of free online education.

If we look into the future (say 5 years!), what do you think the online learning environment for Higher Education would look like? Anyone got any ideas or thoughts to share? (e.g. Will Virtual worlds take over?) :)

Web 2.0 Tools in Education: A Quick Guide by Mohamed Amin Embi

The best quick guide (230 pages) for Web 2.0 Tools in Education that I have come across (Ever!). 230 pages sounds a lot, but when you are covering 20 learning tools with screenshots, it is pretty quick and lovingly light!

Useful? I certainly think so!

Work Files:
Load_Text_Start.fla
summer.txt (right-click > save as )

In this article, were going to learn how to load text from an external source into a Flash movie.

What is the benefit of loading text from an external source?
The nice thing about loading text externally is that when you need to update the text, then you simply need to edit the text file. You wont have to make changes to the .fla file anymore.

To load text from an external source, we will need the ff:

• a plain text file that contains the text we would like to load
• a URLRequest object to specify the path to the external text file
• a URLLoader object which will load the external text file into the Flash movie
• a TextField that will display the loaded text

2 exercise files accompany this tutorial:

1. Load_Text_Start.fla - this is the Flash movie where the external text will be loaded into
   
2. summer.txt - this is the plain text file that contains the text we will be loading into the Flash movie

The download links are found at the beginning of the article. Make sure that you save both files in the same folder. By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to load the external text into the Flash movie. And in succeeding articles, you will also learn how to format the text using a TextFormat object, and how to add text scrolling functionality.

So lets begin. Go ahead and open the Load_Text_Start.fla file. You will see that the document contains some artwork (a sun drawing) and 2 buttons (these buttons will be used to scroll the text up and down). Well be creating a TextField which will be placed within the empty white area on the stage. This TextField will display the text loaded from the external source.

Lets now begin writing the code. Lets first create the TextField, add it to the display list and set some of its properties. Select frame 1 of the Actions layer and go to the Actions Panel and type the ff:

// Create a TextField object
var myTextField:TextField = new TextField();

// Add the TextField object to the display list so that
// it will be visible on the stage
addChild(myTextField);

myTextField.border = true;
myTextField.multiline = true;
myTextField.wordWrap = true; 
myTextField.width = 215; 
myTextField.height = 225; 
myTextField.x = 300; 
myTextField. y = 50;

If you test your movie now, you should see the TextField just above the scroll buttons and to the right of the sun artwork.

Now that we have the TextField, well need a URLRequest object and a URLLoader object in order to load the external text file. The URLRequest allows us to specify the path to the external file that we would like to load. In this example, we want to load the summer.txt file, which we saved in the same folder as the Flash document. So since they are in the same directory, all we have to do is specify the filename summer.txt when we create the URLRequest object. The URLLoader, on the other hand, has the capability to load external text files into Flash movies. It is the URLRequest object that simply tells the URLLoader which file its supposed to load.

So to recap, the URLRequest specifies which file is to be loaded, while the URLLoader is the one that loads the specified file. Now, lets go ahead and create the URLRequest and URLLoader objects:

var myTextField:TextField = new TextField();

// This next line creates the URLRequest object named textURL.
// The file name of the external text file to be loaded is
// passed as a parameter to the URLRequest constructor.
var textURL:URLRequest = new URLRequest("summer.txt");

// This next line creates a URLLoader object named textLoader
var textLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();

addChild(myTextField);

myTextField.border = true;
myTextField.multiline = true;
myTextField.wordWrap = true;
myTextField.width = 215;
myTextField.height = 225;
myTextField.x = 300;
myTextField. y = 50;

After creating the URLRequest and URLLoader objects, we can now tell Flash to load the external text file. The load() method of the URLLoader class is what instructs the URLLoader to load an external text file. The URLRequest object is passed as a parameter to the load() method so that the URLLoader will know which file it is supposed to load (ex. textLoader.load(textURL); ). But in addition to writing the load statement, well also need an event handler. Why is that? This is because well only be able to display the text in the TextField once the external text file has finished being loaded (and not while the loading process is still happening). Once the URLLoader begins to load the text file, well have to wait for the text file to be loaded completely, and only then can we display the text in the TextField. The event that will tell us when the file has been loaded completely is Event.COMPLETE (this event will be dispatched if and when the external text file has been successfully loaded). This event will be dispatched by the URLLoader object, so the event listener will be added to our URLLoader which we named textLoader. So lets go back to the Actions Panel and create the event handler and the load statement.

myTextField.border = true;
myTextField.multiline = true;
myTextField.wordWrap = true;
myTextField.width = 215;
myTextField.height = 225;
myTextField.x = 300;
myTextField. y = 50;

// This next lines adds an event listener that waits
// for the textLoader to completely load
// the external text file (Event.COMPLETE). Once loaded,
// the function named displayText will be called.
textLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, displayText);

function displayText(e:Event):void 
{
     // This function will contain the code that will display the text in the 
     // TextField once the external text file has been loaded. But lets add
     // that code later. For now, lets just put in a trace statement.
     // This trace statement will just indicate that the file has loaded.
     trace("File loaded successfully.");
}

// This next line tells the TextLoader to load the
// external text file specified by the URLRequest object
// named textURL (which specifies the summer.txt file)
textLoader.load(textURL);

Now go ahead and test the movie. You should see the output window display the phrase File loaded successfully. So this means that the Event.COMPLETE event has been triggered and that the text file has been loaded successfully. If it doesnt, you might want to check that you typed in the correct file name - "summer.txt" - and that the text file is saved in the same directory as your Flash movie.

So now that the external text file has been loaded, where is the text? I dont see it.
What weve done so far is that weve simply just loaded the external text file. The text data is already in the Flash movie, we just havent displayed it yet. So the next thing we need to do is to get the text data and then display it in the TextField.

Ok. So where exactly do I find the text data?
Once loaded, the text contained inside the external text file can be found in the URLLoader object that was used to load the external text file. That text can be accessed by using the data property of the URLLoader class (ex. textLoader.data).

And once I get the text data, how do I assign it to the TextField?
Youll use the same way you assign text to any TextField - by using the text property of the TextField class (ex. myTextField.text = textLoader.data; ). And REMEMBER, youll have to do this only after the text file has been loaded completely. So you must place the text assignment statement inside the Event.COMPLETE listener function (which in this example is the displayText function).

So lets go back to the event listener function named displayText and lets remove the trace statement and replace it with the text assignment statement. But instead of typing textLoader.data inside the event listener function, well type in e.target.data . Since the even listener was added to the textLoader URLLoader object, then e.target will refer to textLoader as well. One advantage of using e.target is that well be able to use the same event listener function with other URLLoader objects as well (for example, we might want to have multiple URLLoader objects that load different external text files).

function displayText(e:Event):void 
{
     // This next line will assign the text from the external text file to the
     // TextField instance named myTextField
     myTextField.text = e.target.data;
}

Now if you test the movie, you should be able to see the text displayed inside the TextField.

Heres the code in full:

import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.net.URLLoader;

var myTextField:TextField = new TextField();
var textURL:URLRequest = new URLRequest("summer.txt");
var textLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();

addChild(myTextField);

myTextField.border = true;
myTextField.multiline = true;
myTextField.wordWrap = true;
myTextField.width = 215;
myTextField.height = 225;
myTextField.x = 300;
myTextField. y = 50;

textLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, displayText);

function displayText(e:Event):void 
{
     myTextField.text = e.target.data;
}

textLoader.load(textURL);

In the next part, well style the text using a TextFormat object.

NEXT: Formatting Externally Loaded Text In Flash ActionScript 3.0