Gareth Jones

I’ve just finished work on an interactive prospectus that was commissioned by BFIG.

It’s a Flash-based prospectus that allows students to learn about the many exciting opportunities available at the college through an interactive, media-rich interface. Some of its features include:

• detailed course information
• teacher and student interviews
• image galleries

My responsibilities included developing the application and reproducing the graphics supplied by BFIG in vector form. The content was supplied by the college itself.

Mononas is a South American portal for girls aged 9-16 which was commissioned by iPublicity.

My brief on this was pretty minimal and specific requirements were limited only to the use of certain colours, songs and the logo. The portal structure, breakdown, content, features and functionality is all my work while the graphics were all once again provided by Andy Quick, apart from the character graphics which were supplied by iPublicity.

The Mononas are a group of stylised South American girls who act as role models for kids, with healthy interests in education, healthy living, the environment, fashion and animals.

The Mononas portal is broken down into separate islands, each with its own purpose or theme:

• A home island allows users to customise their avatar and play dress-up games, while a built-in messaging system allows them to communicate with each other in a safe environment without sharing personal information like email addresses.
• A school island provides the means for users to earn points by answering questions on maths, languages, geography and general knowledge.
• A funfair island allows users to earn points by playing games that require quick reflexes and skill.
• A mall island provides learners with different stores in which they can spend these points to buy clothing, accessories and pets for their online avatars.
• A studio island allows them to play art- and music-themed games as well as create their own masterpieces to share online. They can also watch video content.
• A beach island provides games based on the environment.

There are several plans for further expansion in the near future, including tying the site to real-life Mononas dolls which are going on sale in certain parts of South America shortly.

Since April 2010 I have been working full-time on Learnalot, a high-end game-based learning maths portal. I have so far developed the website itself, 18 activities and 34 games, which is around 18-20 hours of learning content. My responsibilities include coding all of the activities and games, managing a team of six, designing the activities with the content specialists and liaising with the PR company.

The development work has consisted of Flash, PHP, MySQL, XML, HTML and CSS.

I have also set up and maintained the Learnalot blog which provides behind-the-scenes news from the company.

The resources are designed to develop thinking, reasoning and problem-solving skills by presenting the learner with real-life challenges that engage their thought processes in new ways, using topics that students can relate to in their day-to-day lives in the 21st Century in a style that they are used to from their video games.

Feedback on the portal so far includes the following:

Your resources are excellent – the best skills-based learning resources for maths I’ve seen.
- Melanie Blount, NGfL-Cymru

The look of the site has immediately caught the interest of pupils who I know love to spend time on X-Box/PlayStation at home. Harnessing an existing interest for a learning purpose is probably the Mecca of education. I would love to know if you might have plans for a KS2 version at some stage?
- Steph Ladbrooke, teacher

Great website for revision especially for me and I’m in year 11. Amazing website!
- Alex, student

Amazing for me – I like a good challenge. My favourite resource is Britain’s Got Power because it gets you thinking about science and the environment.
- Ben, student

It’s really good because the score boards show you how you’re doing against your friends and other people. It’s another way for preparing us for our SATs. Cops and Robbers is my favourite because I feel like a detective.
- James, student

Mercury is an Flash-based elearning courseware that allows for the creation of rich, bespoke elearning from XML instructions, including HTML text, images, video, audio, drag and drop, click and reveal, quizzes and assessments. It uses XML files for asset definitions and layout as well as content.

The application contains the logic required to read content and layout from XML and construct the resource in real-time, including the page structure within modules and module structure within the resource, as well as information required for the interactive assets like drag and drops, click and reveals, quizzes and assessments.

The platform is so versatile that two different content authors could develop elearning resources that are completely unique in both style and substance – and without even owning a copy of Flash.

It also features SCORM support with a local shared object (Flash cookie) backup should SCORM not be available on the delivery platform.

For more information and a demo of Mercury in action, visit www.madewithmercury.com.