Thursday, December 13, 2007

Drag and Drop

I like the flexibility of using Word for creating simple but colourful drag and drop exercises.

There is, however, a problem when drag and drop exercises are created using text boxes. The learner has to be able to click on the text box correctly, being sure not to select the text, but just the frame. This requires high levels of mouse control and for some learners this is too difficult.

An alternative is to use WordArt for all text that you want to move. This is possibly easier, but I am still not happy. I get annoyed by the flashing that occurs as the crosshair disappears and reappears when moving between letters. And, annoyingly, the WordArt toolbar pops up whenever I click on the text.

So what do I use? Simple - I create the text in Paint and paste it into Word. Just use the text tool, remembering to change the size and style of the font. You can crop the picture before leaving Paint, or do it afterwards. It takes seconds to create any text and you can use colour as well.

Sometimes it's easy to picture a solution!

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