BoardMaker

Why BoardMaker?
Display boards at fairs and tradeshows are designed to attract attention and give viewers a sense of both the overall story and the relationship of specific detail to the whole. BoardMaker produces an electronic display board that gives the viewer a sense of the whole and the ability to zoom in any of the six panels and drill into the detail. BoardMaker provides the author with six different layouts: With BoardMaker's six panels supporting six different layouts, the author will have 36 combinations from which to choose. Panels with text components support scrollable text and the standard controls of font size, color, alignment, bold, underline, and italics. Panels with image components support animations, and image captioning.


Complete Instructions

For complete instructions please open the attached PDF file and print it out.

Note: You must have Adobe Reader installed for your browser.

Click here to open the BoardMaker Instructions.pdf file.


Step One:

The electronic display board that BoardMaker produces supports 6 panels. The relationship between the lodeStar pages and the panels is as follows:

lodeStar Panel

Page 1 Help File
Page 2 Panel 1 (as pictured below)
Page 3 Panel 2
Page 4 Panel 3
Page 5 Panel 4
Page 6 Panel 5
Page 7 Panel 6


On the first panel (page 2), create a title. Actually, the title can go on any panel. Many people may prefer that it be Panel 3 (centered). By default, the 'Title' layout option has been chosen for you. However, you may choose among six options. The six options include Title, Text, Image, Image and Text (2 columns), Text and Image (2 columns), and Text and Image (2 rows).

The Title option has a default font size and color. If you want more flexibility, chose Text. This will allow you to control the font size and alignment. If you wish to keep the default, let the layout option remain as 'Title' and simply type in the short title as we have done below. In our example, we typed in 'Expedition 12'.




Step Two:

Turn to the next page. As a default we've chosen the 'Col 1: Text | Col 2: Image' layout option, but you may select any layout you wish.

Regardless of the layout, you can type or paste text into text areas and load or paste images into the image areas. If you are already accustomed to lodeStar Learning's Presenter template, you will know that in text areas you can alter the following:

In image areas, you can alter the following:

You can do this by pasting in an image and then right-clicking on the image and selecting 'Edit/Open'.

Note: 'Edit/Open' loads the lodeStar Image Editor. Through the image editor, you can also load a variety of image types such as png, tif, psd, and gif.)

In the example below, I selected the 'Text' option and pasted in text from Nasa.gov.




Step Three:

Turn the page and select a layout option. If you wish a full panel of text, choose 'Text'.

Type in or paste in your text. Then use the formatting buttons to format your text.

From left to right, the buttons enable you to bold, italicize, underline, align, change font color, and change font size.




Step Four:

Turn the page and select a layout option. If you wish a full panel image, choose 'Image'.

You can either load images from the hard drive or paste images into the image area.

To load from the hard drive, click on the image area. A file requester will appear. This simple method allows you to import jpeg images. For other image types, right-click on the image area and select 'Edit/Open'. The built-in lodeStar editor will enable you to import a variety of image types. Inside the lodeStar image editor, click on 'Browse'.

To paste in an image, right-click on the image area and select 'Paste'. To learn more details about image handling, please refer to the Teacher Guide found under Help > Getting Started.



Step Five:

lodeStar also allows you to import SWF animations into BoardMaker. SWF animations are created using the Macromedia Flash tool and they are abundant in the internet universe.

To import an animation, click on image area and then change the file requester 'Files of Type' to '*.swf | Flash file'.



Step Six:

When you've finished with your BoardMaker project, or even while you are creating the project, click on the 'save' button at the bottom right corner. Save often.

To preview your work, select the projector at the top-right corner of lodeStar.

For more details on saving, previewing, and exporting your project as well as other tasks, please consult the Teacher Guide found under Help > Getting Started.




BoardMaker


BoardMaker Version 5.01.07
©2002-2007 LodeStar Learning Corp.