A week ready for handover

Another milestone today, with the second week more or less ready for handover to the editor.  I'm a little nervous of letting it go quite yet, because the way we've set it up may prove slightly constraining as we move through the rest of the course.

On the other hand, we've spent as long on week two as most of the rest of the text so far, and it's paying off as we're getting quicker and quicker, with a strong model to work against.  Week 3 is not far behind and I'm up late with week 4 tonight after Rick's first pass today.

We've not got the media and pictures ready, and we're indicating place holders for now, but we have managing some bells and whistles like glossary terms as we go along, so I think karma is about balanced.

Coming up soon - our course description goes live and you can sign up to study the course :)

Working with professionals

In last week's shoot we drew in a whole bunch of friends and contacts as cast and crew.  Some were there for experience, others were doing us a favour and I hope that everyone enjoyed a break in their daily routine. Our central character was played by Therese Collins, an actor friend of Rick's who has worked with him on all sorts of projects.  It was very interesting watching how she approached the shoot - not just in terms of her role (in which she was fantastic), but her effect on everyone else.

Another of our heroes was Jude, who fitted two appearances around her working day as a researcher at the OU.  She was more than willing to help, but I suspect felt a little ambushed to be pushed in front of the camera straight away in the infamous bus stop scene.  She was great in that, and came back later for the 'friends in a bar scene', which we filmed in the old Venables cafe.

It's cranberry juice, honest. But Therese lifted the energy levels until they were laughing their heads off like two old friends.

Filming activity to try out

I've spent part of the weekend tweaking the first week we're going to hand over.  Well kind of.

We pass what we've done on to the course administrators who style it and dress it up in a set of XML tags called structured authoring.  This is then passed on to the editor who makes his changes and then renders it out to the course website.  There're a few other details, but it's late and you'd do better just to come and study the course if you're really interested.

As a taster, here's the first filming exercise to have a look at: Activity 2.1

It's minus some of the bells and whistles the students on the course will have, like a glossary and the opportunity to find and share relevant resources with other people.  But if anyone fancies having a go, we'd love to know how long it takes you and what you make of it.