Chris McAllister Limited
5 How We Make Electronic Portfolios on CD-ROM
This is the fifth and last of a series of short articles on Making
NVQs easier. In Chapter 4 we described the CD-ROMs which we are encouraging
NVQ and SVQ candidates to use (in many cases) in place of the heavy and bulky
traditional portfolios stored in wide ring binders stuffed with paper documents.
If you are one of our candidates we will make the CD-ROM for you, but you
may want to know what you need in case you want to try making your own.
Ingredients
One PC, which if reasonably new, will have the following installed: CD-Burner,
Microsoft WORD, Excel, Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat Reader.
(The following software items are optional, useful if installed, but not
strictly necessary:
Microsoft Publisher, PowerPoint.)
Alternatively, you can use a Macintosh which if reasonably
new, will have software installed as above, or similar.
You then need to obtain the following:Adobe Acrobat Professional (Version 7 or higher) which allows you to convert documents in WORD Excel, etc. into Portable Document Format (PDFs). You may find other software which will do this job for a cheaper outlay, such as OEM (Type OEM into your Search Engine) or visit www.serif.com. The Serif application which should do the same job for you as Adobe Acrobat is PagePlus 11.Another low-cast alternative is Avanquest’s PDF-to-Word http://www.shop.avanquest.com/uk or Scansoft's PDF Converter 4 Professional http://www.scansoft.co.uk/storeThis is also branded as "Nuance".
N.B. Converting PDF files to Word is a useful achievement if you are equipped to do it, whether or not you are producing electronic portfolios. All kinds of handbooks, manuals, NVQ standards, etc. are published nowadays as PDF files. It is often a useful accomplishment to be able to convert these into WORD and then format them in any way you wish, thus enabling you to make personalised workbooks for your clients or candidates.It is essential to be able to do this in order to make progress with your electronic portfolio. Having converted the PDF files into WORD, split them first into separate Units. You then Copy and Paste the text of the WORD file into a blank HTML document as described in the “Here is What You Do” Section below.
Furthermore, in this latest update of our website, we are publishing our most popular Units in all three formats: PDF, DOC and HTML. Go to Units.html
Adobe Photoshop or similar. You need this in order to edit JPEGs from your camera, scanner or other sources, and in particular you may find the Save for Web feature useful. You may find other software which will do these jobs for a cheaper outlay, such as OEM (Type OEM into your Search Engine) or visit www.serif.com. The Serif application which should do the same job for you as Photoshop is PhotoPlus 10.
Macromedia Dreamweaver. You need this in order to write the HTML code, edit hyperlinks, etc. You CAN learn to write (and speak) fluent HTML but your friends may desert you! Dreamweaver (and its imitators) are easy to use. You may find other software which will do this job for a cheaper outlay, such as OEM (Type OEM into your Search Engine) or visit www.serif.com. The Serif application which should do the same job for you as Dreamweaver is WebPlus 10.
QuickTime.
This is a piece of Macintosh software which is used to edit sound files, movies,
etc. QuickTime comes on many PCs nowadays. If you need to obtain a copy for
your PC, this can be downloaded FREE from a number of websites. Type QUICKTIME
into your search engine and go for the latest (or most suitable) version,
or visit www.serif.com. The Serif application
which should do the same job for you as QuickTime is MoviePlus 5..
Here is what you do. The disk you are constructing will be a mini-website and can reside on your PC until you burn the files onto a disk. Keep all the files you intend eventually to burn onto a disk in the same folder. You then design your folder from the centre outwards. The first file you should think about is the Index file (Index.html). This should have links to key documents near the top.
Design the layout in WORD, along lines similar to the following:
Name of Candidate (e.g. Joe Bloggs)
Subject of Portfolio
(e.g. NVQ Level 5 in…..)
Candidate’s CV This will have a hyperlink such as: CV.pdf
Candidate photos: Link to a page such as photos.html
List
of Units |
HTML
file |
Sound
file |
Unit
1 |
Unit1.html
|
Sound1.wav |
Unit
2 |
Unit2.html
|
Sound2.wav |
Unit
3 |
Unit3.html |
Sound3.wav |
And so on, until you have made a link to the main files for each Unit.
From the WORD design, open plain pages in Dreamweaver (or similar), type in
similar text, insert the full table, and add the Hyperlinks. Your Index.html
file is nearly finished, but you can use various typefaces, colours, font
sizes, etc. to brighten up this page. Useful hints include using a large typeface
for the headers (Candidate name etc.), and using a pastel shade for the page
background. Once you have learned to master Dreamweaver, these tricks will
become second-nature. Save the page as Index.html in the same folder
you will use for all the other files.
The HTML files (e.g. Until1.html) are also made from a basic Dreamweaver page,
perhaps with a different pastel shaded background from that you used for the
Index. Use Copy>Paste to import the text of your chosen Unit* into the
HTML page and save it as Unit1.html in the folder. You can open these Unit
HTML files in turn and hyperlinks can be added to the documents to corroborate
or illustrate the Professional Discussions. You can link a variety of files
to each line of a Unit HTML file; html, doc. PDF, ppt, etc.
In the case of the sound files, the full Professional Discussion pertinent to that Unit is hyperlinked to Sound1.wav or whatever. After that I go through the recording and add a time reference such as 05:43 (in red), which shows that that particular item is discussed at that point in the recording. If there are silences, irrelevances, naughty anecdotes, etc. in any of the recordings, this is the time to delete these, using QuickTime to resave the shortened recording as a WAV file. Unless you have reason to do otherwise, downgrade these WAV files to 16 bit, 8 kHz format (telephone quality).
*Importing the text of your chosen Unit into the HTML page. Word versions of Units we use frequently can be found on our website. Go to units.html. The text of these Units is in the public domain.
Check the entire folder from Index.html outwards using the View in Browser command. This will tell you if any links are broken and need to be fixed.
You should now be ready to “burn” the folder onto a blank CD-ROM.
Design an attractive label and print it in colour onto a suitable CD label,
such as Avery J8676A. Avery products can be investigated at http://www.averyrefresh.co.uk
The cover of your finished CD-ROM, printed using commercial stationery. Make sure that the 'hole in the middle" does not spoil the finished effect.
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