Creating your first session plan.
At the end of this tutorial, you will know how to create and personalize your own session plan documents.
We'll cover:
- Using the session manager
- Creating folders.
- Using the session builder
- Session plan templates
- Adding images
- Adding videos
- Adding text
- Styling the session plan
- Saving a session plan
- editing a session plan
- sharing a session plan
To help with this tutorial, it is assumed that you have an image in your library, and a video in your video catalog.
Lets start by loading the session manager application, if it’s not already open.
Creating Folders
The first thing we need to do is create a tutorial folder, so we know where we've saved our sample session plan to.
For this demo, I’m using the personal edition.If you are using the personal edition, then you create the folder in "My KwikDrive Sessions". If you are using the academy edition, then you can create the tutorial folder on your home drive.
Creating a folder
1. Locate the top level drive where you want to create your tutorial folder and click it. I'll select "My KwikDrive Sessions".
2. Once highlighted, click "New SubFolder"
A new window will appear asking for a folder name.
3. Enter "Tutorials" and click Ok.
You will see a new folder is created under "My KwikDrive Sessions" called "Tutorials". If you are using the academy edition, then you will see "My HomeDrive Sessions".
4. Now click on the new folder "Tutorials", so it’s highlighted.
Notice that you now get additional action buttons appear on the top menu.
Ok, now we've created the folder for our tutorials, let's create a new document with the session builder.
Using the Session Builder
1. Click "New Session Plan"
2. Click the portrait "template 2"
You can use the dropdown list to switch between portrait and landscape templates.
This will open a blank document in the session builder, with the template you selected.
The Session Builder
The session builder comprises of 3 areas.
1: The action menu
2: Formatting tools
3: Session document
All session documents have 3 containers where you place you content.
These are:
1: Media
You add video and images to the media containers
2: Header
You add logos and header text to header container
3: Text
Then you add text, tables, links, image and video elements to text containers.
Now you have a basic understanding of how a session document is made up, let's go ahead and add some content to the containers.You can add and remove pages in different orientations, and change any styled element inside the session document.
First, we'll give the session plan a title.
3. Click the header title and enter "My First Session Plan"
Now let's add an image and video element to the media containers.
Move your mouse over any of the media containers, shown in blue.
Notice that action 3 buttons appear on the top left corner of the media container.
From left to right, these are clear container, add Image and add video.
Click the add image action button, to load up the image manager.
Navigate to an image on your library that you want to add and double click it.The image manager is a simplified version of your image library app.
Or click it, then press the "Choose" action button.
Notice that the image is dropped into the media container.
Let's now add a video to the next media container.
Hover your mouse over the media container below the image we added, and click the "add video" action button.
This will bring up a simplified version of your video catalog application, which you can add videos and create folders.
Now navigate to the video you want to add, and double click it.
Or click the video, and press the "Choose" button on the action menu.
Our first session plan is now taking shape.
Time to add some text to the text containers.
There are 2 types of text elements.
The first is text boxes, for header text and titles.
The next is the section area.
Session Areas
Let's add a title, and then add some text to the section notes area.Section notes, are areas on the session plan where you can place text, images, tables, links and videos.
Whenever you click on a text container, the formatting tool menu is enabled.
You can then format the text you place into the containers with ease.
Click on the title #1 and enter "MY TITLE"
Notice that the formatting tools are enabled. You can if you want select the text you added and make it italic.
Now click on the section area, so the cursor is flashing and ready for you to type something
But instead of typing something, let’s add an image first.
On the formatting tool menu, click the "image" icon
This will bring you your image manager, like before.
Now click any image and click "Choose"
Notice that the image is placed into the section notes.
You can adjust the image easily by clicking and dragging any of the handles.
You can also delete any video or image element by clicking the trashcan that appears when you hover over the element.
Now click on the section notes where the video is shown.
Type in some text "This is a section area, where I can add my content".
See how easy it is to create your session plan!
Have a play with the formatting tools, to see what you can do.
Styling your session plans
Let's now add some simple styling to the session plan document.
You can style any container and element in the document, by using either with the theme editor or by selecting the text area you want to style, then choosing a fore colour and background colour by using the action buttons on the formatting tool.
In this tutorial, we'll do some basic styling with the theme editor.
The theme editor, is a built in component that allows you to change header styles, theme colours, image styles, title styles and borders.
You can save themes out and load them up, and you can also set a default theme that your documents should use by default.
Let’s go and change the header style, session plan colour and set the title style we want.
Click "Theme Editor" on the top action menu
The editor will slide in from the right hand side.
Here, you have several components you can change.
In the style box, click the "Header Style 1" dropdown box and change it to "Header Style 3".
Notice that the header style changes
Next, change the colour theme of the session plan to black, by clicking "Blue Theme" and selecting "Black Theme"
Last click the "Title Style" dropdown box in elements, and select "Title Style 9".
Notice how the session plan changes to the colour your want.
We have a tutorial all about using the theme editor, saving and loading themes as well as setting default themes.
Let's continue with saving the session plan.
Saving the session plan
Session plans are saved to your sessions library, and if you are using the academy version, you can save them directly to the academy shared session library.
To save the session plan, click "Save Session plan" on the top action menu.
This will bring up the save session window.
When the window opens, navigate to the tutorials folder we created.
Then in the file name input box, enter "My First Session Plan"
And click "Save".
You will see a progress bar appear, once it's finished click "Exit Session Builder".
You will then see the new session plan saved, in your folder "Tutorials".
Double click the session plan to open it.
Notice that you can click on the images and video.
Click the "X" to close the session plan viewer.
[size=130]Editing a session plan[/size]
To edit the session plan, click the file so it’s highlighted and click "Edit" on the top menu.
Or you can right click the file and select "Edit".
This will open the file in edit mode, where you can edit it as normal.
Sharing the session plan
Now click the session plan so it's highlighted and click the "Share" button on the top action menu.
You will see the share window appear
Copy the link. This is your live link to the session plan document.
You can view this link on any device and share it anywhere.
Open a new browser window, and paste the link into the address bar.
You will now see the session plan you created.
You can click on the images to expand them, and you can play the video by pressing play. Or click the grey play button to play the video in theatre mode.
You can also download the PDF version by clicking the PDF icon on the top right hand corner of the web page.
When you click the pdf icon, a pdf file will be downloaded.
You can also download the pdf file in the session manager itself, by clicking the document and pressing "Download PDF".
Ok, that’s it.
You should now have a good idea how to start creating your own session plans.
