Lite Applets -- Customizable Actors
Shades of Shades
The photograph above and the three icons below it are an example and a metaphor. It is an example of a simple bit of technology and how it might be used to add some interactivity to a Web page. If you move your mouse over the icon on the left you can see how this same scene looks to someone wearing sunglasses. Try it. The sunglasses happen to be polarized. The light from the window in the background that is reflected by the surface of the water is polarized and is blocked by the polarized sunglasses. The other two icons show two simple experiments -- holding the sunglasses at different angles.
This example is also a metaphor -- when different people look at the same scene, they often see very different things. The Lite Applet Project is less about technology than about how we use technology to help our students learn mathematics and science and to develop into observant, reflective, confident and capable citizens and professionals who are able to use the skills, knowledge, and perspectives of multiple disciplines to solve important and complex problems. This short article describes the very simple technology used in the example above and, more importantly, it describes how this technology can be used.
This article includes several examples that are ready-to-use. More importantly, however, these examples are customizable. With just minimal computer knowledge you can adapt these modules and make them yours, so that they are more relevant to your students. As a quick example, we will make some simple modifications to this page. If you want to skip to the next part of this article click here. If you want to skip to an explanation of how to achieve the effects shown above click here.
A Simple Example of Customizability
- Begin by downloading to your computer the html file for this Web page by choosing View-->Source in Internet Explorer and then File-->Save as or by choosing View-->Page Source in Netscape and then File-->Save Page as. Save the page some place where you can find it.
- Next open a new Browser window by choosing File-->New Window in Internet Explorer or File-->New-->Navigator Window in Netscape.
- In your new window choose File-->Open File and choose the file that you just downloaded. It should look like this page except that the pictures are missing. You are going to substitute your own pictures. If you wanted to use the pictures from this page you would need to download them. Close your new window and continue working in the original window.
- Substituting your own pictures is a simple way to make curriculum materials more appealing to your students. For example, instead of using the three icons on the original page you might use three small pictures showing yourself or one of your students wearing sunglasses. Your three icons (small pictures) might show the sunglass wearer holding his or her head normally and at two different angles. The three icons should be named Photograph1Icon.gif, Photograph2Icon.gif, and Photograph3Icon.gif from left to right. They should all be the same size. The ones on this page are 96 pixels wide and 64 pixels high but the actual dimensions don't matter as long as all three have the same dimensions. Create three small pictures to be used as icons and save them with the names above in the same directory (folder) as the html file you downloaded earlier.
- You can create your own images to substitute for the four images showing the water in front of the window. They should be named BasePhotograph.gif, Photograph1.gif, Photograph2.gif, and Photograph3.gif and should be saved in the same directory (folder) as the html file you downloaded earlier. All four photographs should be the same size. In the interests of time you may want to use the same photographs that are used on the original page. Make sure that you are working in the original browser window -- the one that is displaying this page from the Web rather than the one that displayed this page from your own computer. Click each of the links below to get the four photographs and save them in the same directory (folder) as the html file you downloaded earlier. The photographs will open in a new window and you can save each one by choosing File-->Save as in Internet Explorer or File-->Save Page as in Netscape.
- After you have created your own photographs or downloaded the ones used on this page, open a new browser window as described above and open the copy of this page that you downloaded to your computer. The page should now work like the original one except that it will use the images that you created.
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