'How to' Guide
Here are a few hints and tips on how you can get more out of building an activity in Dragon Pathways. Choose from the list below:
- Investigating Rules
- Whiteboard Interface
- Changing Voices for the I speak text Rule & I speak Tool
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Copying Objects with Rules to the Toy Box
- Colouring Shapes
- Taking a Chance
- The Erase Tool
- Changing the Size and Colour of Text
- Recording your own Sounds Effects
- Naming Objects
- Editing Text
1. Investigating Rules
Dragon Pathways has a large range of ready-made example files. You can work with these examples just as they or you can edit them for your own needs. If you are not sure how an object on a screen is working you can listen to the rule tooltips; or print the rules ready to add your own notes for editing.
Listening to Rules
Open the activity you wish to investigate and right click on an Object to see its rules.
Open the Tool Box and click on the ‘I speak’ tool.
Hold the mouse pointer over the stones in the rule. The I speak tool will read the tooltip as it appears.
Printing Rules
Open the activity you wish to investigate and right click on all the Objects you wish to see the rules for.
From the File menu choose the Print icon, or press the Keyboard shortcut Ctrl P to open the Print dialog.
Click on the Print Rules button, then on OK, to print your page with the rules showing.
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2. Whiteboard Interface
Use the Dragon Pathways Teacher Configuration program to configure the Dragon Pathways screen so that it is more suitable for whiteboards. This will display the File menu lower down the screen, to the left and all dialogs and choices boxes lower down the screen to make the features within Dragon Pathways easier to access via the whiteboard screen.
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3. Changing Voices for the I speak text Rule & I speak Tool
Dragon Pathways uses the Microsoft standard speech engines; these can be configured in the Teacher configure program.
The ‘I speak’ tool will read all tooltips in the chosen voice.
The ‘I speak text’ Action Stone will use this chosen voice when an activity is run.
4. Keyboard Shortcuts
Ctrl O |
Open activity |
Ctrl S |
Save activity |
Ctrl N |
Start a new activity |
Ctrl P |
Print activity |
Alt F4 |
Exit software |
|
F1 |
Open/Close Tool box |
F2 |
Open/Close Stones box |
F3 |
Open/Close Toy box |
F4 |
Open/Close Paint box |
F5 |
Start/End Activity |
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5. Copying Objects with Rules to the Toy Box
You may wish to use Objects, which you have created in other activity screens, on more than one page in a multi-page activity. To do this, you can use the Magic Wand from the Tool Box to copy any Object into the Toy Box.
The copied object will be saved with all the Rules you have given to it.
6. Colouring Shapes
Dragon Pathways has many shapes suitable for a tiling pattern.
All Shape objects can be coloured to create some quite interesting effects.
Note, the Counter and Timer from the Toy Box can also be re-coloured and resized.
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7. Taking a Chance
The Rules ‘I throw a dice’ and ‘I toss a coin’ can be used to add a little random chance to your activity screen. Remember though, that the outcomes (When the dice lands on ‘n’ and When the coin lands on ‘n’) need to appear in the same object as the condition stone, for them to take effect.
8. The Erase Tool
The Erase tool works on many items on screen:
- It will erase text
- It can erase single stones in an Objects’ Rules *
- It can delete a whole line of Rules in an Object
- It can delete an Object. Remember though, if an Object has its rules open, you will not be able to delete it with the Erase tool
* Another way of deleting a rule from an object is to click on the unwanted rule and drag it back to the stones box.
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9. Changing the size and colour of text
Use the Paint Box pencils to change the size and colour of text.
You have four sizes to choose from.
If you want to have a different font for your activity screens you will need to change the Font setting in the Teacher Configuration program.
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10. Recording your own Sounds Effects
If you have a microphone you can record sounds directly into Dragon Pathways.
Plug in your microphone – you machine should detect it and install drivers for it if necessary.
Load Dragon Pathways and open your example file.
Drag the ‘I play a sound’ action stone to your chosen object.
Click on the ‘I play a sound’ icon, the ‘Choose a sound dialog box will appear.
Click on the small microphone icon, bottom left of this dialog.
The Sound Recorder dialog box will appear.
Type a suitable filename into the text box, then click on the Red record button.
Click on the blue stop button when you have finished.
To check your recording, click on the green triangle.
When you are happy with you new sound effect, click on the thumbs up icon and a wav sound file will be saved into the My Sounds folder.
You can now use this new sound effect in any of your example screens.
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11. Naming Objects
When you start to make more complex activity screens, you will find it an advantage to give your Objects suitable names. To do this, click on the abc tool in the Tool Box and click on any Object to change its name.
12. Editing Text
If you want to edit any text on screen, click on the abc tool in the Tool Box and click on the text. A dialog box will appear where you can change the text colour and edit the text that is displayed. Use hard returns to split your text up if the sentence is very long – otherwise you may get a long strip of text across the screen.
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