The following multi-media, self-paced, interactive educational CD-ROM was developed by Gerald E. Lowther, O.D., Ph.D in conjunction with others. It includes text, photographs, graphics, voice and motion segments to illustrate the material. This CD was supported by Vistakon and is available from Vistakon.
This CD covers the introductory
and prefitting aspects. The modules included are:
Gerald
E. Lowther, O.D., Ph.D.
School of Optometry
Indiana University
800 E. Atwater St.
Bloomington, IN 47405
email: glowther@indiana.edu
COMPUTER SET-UP
This CD does not download any files to your hard drive as some CD's do. If you do not have the appropriate movie player there is a file on the disk that you will need to load to your computer as described below.
This CD should run on any PC computer with a Pentium processor and Windows 95 or NT. It must have at least 8 Mb of memory with 16 Mb or greater preferred. The monitor should be set for thousands, millions, 16 or 24 bit color (see monitor settings in Windows under "Settings", "Control Panel" then "Display" followed by "settings" where you can set the color). If you view the photos and they do not look good it is most likely the color setting is incorrect. The pictures should be clear, sharp and true colors if your monitor settings are correct, your computer is capable of thousands of colors or better and your monitor is of average quality. In order to show the movies from the CD you need the Quick Time 32 movie player (some computers only come with the 16 bit player). If you do not have this on your computer you need to load it from the CD. When you open the CD there is a file "Qt32 inst.exe" . If you click on this file name it will load and give you instructions on how to load it onto your computer. You can load it in addition to the player you already have or you can indicate you want it to replace the earlier version on your computer.
The same CD will also run on MAC computers. You need to be sure the monitor is set for thousands or millions of color. Click and hold on the apple in the upper left corner of the screen. Go down to 'control panels' and when the list opens up go down to monitors. The monitor set up screen will open. If the color setting is 256 or less reset it for thousands or preferrably millions of colors.
You use the CD by placing it in the CD drive, double clicking on the CD icon which will open a list of files. As long as your computer is set not to see hidden files, you should see two file names. On a PC computer the two files will be Contact1.exe and 32**.exe. To load the educational modules click on the Contact1.exe file. The other file is the Quick Time 32 player described above. On a MAC there will be one file for MAC computers and one for MAC Power PC computers. Click on the appropriate file depending on the computer you are using. The procedures for using the programs are given in the module "How to Use This CD" listed as one of the choices on the screen. Just click on this choice and you will be given a introduction on how to use the features of the CD.
In general the program uses self-explanatory buttons. Clicking on the appropriately labelled button to move through the program or obtain a certain action. The next and back buttons move you through the module. The quit button takes you to the end of the module, menu button takes you to the menu of the module you are in so you can choose to go to a different part of the module (at the opening menu or the quit screen of a module the menu button will take you to the opening menu of the CD). The index button will take you to an index of the module you are in so you can choose a topic to go to by just clicking on the topic. The jump button takes you to a screen that allows you to jump to a particular screen with the module, each screen is numbered in the upper left hand corner with the number of the screen and the number of screens left in the module you are working on. The voice button will place a sound segment. To play a movie, click on the button on the left side of the bar under the movie picture. Clicking this button a second time while the movie is running will pause the movie. The two buttons on the right of the bar under the movie will move the movie one frame at a time either forward or backward through the movie.
Be sure your speaker is turned on and the sound turned up so you can hear the music and voice.
With some computers after extensive use of the CD the program will start to run very slowly. If this happens, note where you are in the program, quit the CD and reload it again.
Sometimes after viewing several modules on the CD when you try to quit out of the CD it will keep reloading the opening screen not letting you out of the program. If you keep clicking on quit 2 or 3 times it will let you out. If this happens (or any time you want to exit the program) the easiest way to exit the program is to just hit 'alt' and 'F4' on a PC or 'Apple' and 'Q' keys on the MAC computers.
If you run into other problems please email me at glowther@indiana.edu