Become a Beta-tester for eTEACH Version 2.4
We are asking members of our user
community (you) to help with beta testing of our newest version before we
make it the "official" release. Your help and feedback will be much
appreciated. We want to encourage discussion of this release on our
mailing list. If you are not already a member, you can join the list at
http://lists.cs.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/eteach-users.
You are also encouraged to contact me directly at:
Mike Litzkow <mlitzkow@facstaff.wisc.edu> (608) 262-6122.
What's New?
- Extensive stylistic choices will make it easy to
create more professional looking presentations. We have created a style
chooser with some unique features we think you'll like. First, the chooser
understands PowerPoint files and can automatically pick out colors to match
the colors used in your PowerPoint deck. With this method, you can use a
professionally designed PowerPoint template, and match those colors in eTEACH,
thus ending up with a very professional look.
This works with the click of a button, so you don't have to be an expert on
colors and styles. If you want more control, but still need some help with
color choices, we have created a color chooser which "understands" the
mathematical relationships between all the colors and will suggest groups of
colors that go together well. You can even combine these methods and have
eTEACH choose most of your colors from your PowerPoint template, but still
customize a few items according to your own taste.
-
On the eTEACH project, we're committed to making our
software accessible to students with a wide range of disabilities. Making
web-based educational materials accessible is mandated by the Rehabilitation
Act, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and Section 508. Besides that, it's
simply the right thing to do! Closed-captioning has long been a feature of
eTEACH, but with this version we're taking the much more radical step of
attempting to make web-based lectures accessible to students who are totally
blind. We have done this without any compromise for our sighted students (what
they see is unaffected by the features we've implemented for blind students).
-
For nearly a year, we've been apologizing to
potential eTEACH authors becuase eTEACH did not support PowerPoint 2003. This
version adds support for PPT 2003 as well as retaining support for PPT 2000,
PPT 2002, and PPT XP.
-
Another problem that's been plaguing a lot
of you is the need to have ASFCHOP installed on your machine to run
our authoring tool. In the past Microsoft made this tool available through a
variety of sources including the Windows Media Resource Kit, but with the
release of Windows Media 9, Microsoft removed all of the older
tools from their website. Since Microsoft never gave anyone else the right to
redistribute this software, problems have resulted for eTEACH which depended on ASFCHOP
for its functioning. I am happy to report that this version of eTEACH uses the
Windows Media Encoder instead of ASFCHOP, and that we do have the right to
redistribute that software, and that it's part of our full installation
package. Along the same lines, we have included the .NET framework
installation in our full installation package. If your system already has
these tools, that part of the installation will be skipped, but if you need
them, we'll take care of it for you.
eTEACH Authoring Tool Downloads
We have attempted to eliminate
many of the problems inherent in our earlier installation packages by
creating a "full" installer which will install the .NET Framework, the
Windows Media Encoder, and other required software for you. It is always
safe to use the full installer, and we recommend it for most users.
We have also created an "express" installer which contains
only the eTEACH code, without any of the other software which eTEACH needs
to operate. If you are SURE you have previouisly done the full
install on your machine, you can safely use the "express" package to save
download time. This is to aid users with slow Internet connections who may
need an update.
Special Scripts for Blind Students
This version of eTEACH provides
features which greatly aid blind students in accessing eTEACH lectures. To make
controlling eTEACH as convenient as possible for blind users, we have
created a special set of scripts for JAWS. (Jaws For Windows is screen
reading software used by many blind computer users.
Contact Freedom Scientific
for more information.) If you are supporting blind students, you should make
this installer available to them so that they can install the scripts
on their own computers. You may do this either by copying the
files to your own website, or linking to ours. We are especially interested in getting
feedback from blind students, instructors who create material for them, and system administrators who support them.