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Teaching Ideas: Desert Animals is a very simple project that was created in response to a teacher request. She wanted a plain background, plain text, and some simple navigation for her students. She wanted her grade four students to add the bells and whistles in terms of pictures and effects and video and audio clips, etc. This is another type of training wheels project in that it has some navigation involving Button Objects and GoTo Objects that are used rather than presentation clicks. Another request was that she wanted the frames to have some common core elements such as the title for each frame. To make sure those didn't get moved or altered, the text was added to the background of the frame which is just the same as gluing it down on a permanent basis. The project also introduces the notion of a non-linear presentation. You really don't have to go in sequence. We're so used to moving through projects frame by frame or slide by slide that we've been conditioned to force ourselves into that mode. The Internet and hypertext documents have challenged that notion and open up some interesting discussions around literacy and creating meaning in a non-sequential world. This project allows teachers to begin that discussion with their students of when sequence impacts comprehension. Desert Animals is designed with the following frames:
The only thing that is a little different about this project is that the frame size is a bit smaller than normal. The teacher who had originated this request wanted it that way. Figure 1: Here's the first frame of the project. You can see how plain the frame design is. I've done the screen capture from the eZedia Preview Player. You don't see the blue bar when it is running. 
Figure 2: There isn't much difference here except for the slightly raised edge around the picture of the Mule Deer. Beveled, raised effects like that are available in the Resources folder that comes with the program in eZediaMX. Look in Resources > Transparency Wells > Border Wells. You just drag and drop the effects into your frame. Nothing complicated. If you don't like the effect, you can delete it. 
Websites for resources and teaching ideas and lessons: Resources Desert USA This is a one-stop site for pictures and facts about all sorts of desert animals. Far more than I had ever considered. http://www.desertusa.com/animal.html Missouri Botanical Garden The Desert Animals site these folks have pulled together provides a wealth of information and pictures on the animals of the desert. http://www.desertusa.com/animal.html Enchanted Learning The Enchanted Learning site brings you desert animals classified according to the type of desert where the animals live. Not all the animals listed have links to further information but this would be a wonderful opportunity for students to work with the media specialist to find those missing facts. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/biomes/desert/desert.shtml Mojave National Preserve Desert Plants and Animals From the National Park Service comes another fact-filled resource on the animals and plants of the Mojave. http://www.nps.gov/moja/mojaan.htm Desert Animals from the Blue Planet Biomes Page This isn't an extensive site for animal information, but it does provide bibliographic information on each of the animals I looked at as well as pictures and facts. Some of the creatures mentioned here were different from the other sites. http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/desert_animal_page.htm The Negev For specific information on the Negev desert including animals, plants, landscape, settlements, and people, check out: http://www.boker.org.il/meida/negev/album/index.html Sonoran Desert This site has a significant number of pictures available on desert animals. http://www.miragemall.com/desertjpegs/imagesf.htm Teaching Ideas and Lessons: Jim Cornish Jim Cornish's Desert Project featured in Classroom Connect in May of 2002 Jim Cornish does a tremendous job of organizing resources and ideas that involve using the Internet to extend learning for his students. He generously shares this with others. Check it out at: http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/CITE/desert_animals.htm DiscoverySchool.com The Discovery site has a complete lesson available aimed at 6th grade on desert animals. This project would integrate well with their suggestions. They've also noted the national curriculum standards that are addressed by the lesson. http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/deserts/ From NASA - Interactive Multimedia Adventures for Grade School Education Using Remote Sensing Let's face it. The people at NASA do an amazing job of bringing the wonders of science down to a level for everyone. They've put together lessons on biodiversity that happen to encompass our desert animals project. Check it out. http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/teachersite/Bout.html Project Template and Project Well Both of these files are rather small. The template is only about 30 KB and the Object Well is only about 6 KB. Download the eZediaMX project template Download the eZediaMX project well Note: The picture of the Mule Deer used in the frame came from: http://www.miragemall.com/desertjpegs/imagesf.htm
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