Teaching Flash

Flash is best taught in the classroom as a series of projects using templates. In this way, students can be introduced step by step to the many facilities in Flash whilst enabling them to succeed at every step. Examples of some of these templates are illustrated here.

At the same time, a framework is provided within which students can express themselves creatively and opportunities provided for the most capable to explore problem solving and expression of their imagination to the full. A template provides something that works which can be pulled apart and changed to the level of competence of the student. This enables people of all abilities to feel they have achieved something special - an ideal goal for an educational experience. By carefully designing projects and templates, those that have difficulty in fully understanding the concept of tweening and the time line can still produce impressive work even during their fourth year of using Flash.

Furthermore by careful design and selection of our templates we have stretched the type of work carried out to cover a wide range of material across the curriculum from Art to English, Drama to History, Geography, Religious Studies etc etc

Flash 4 provides the right level of sophistication for the student up to key stage 4 ie up till 16 years old. There is nothing that can be achieved with Flash 5 or Flash MX that cannot be achieved with Flash 4 at the level of competence required of a 16 year old and only in exceptional circumstances would 18 year olds be able to use the facilities of Flash 5 or MX (these lie in the field of action scripting). Only one area would attract interest and that is the use of digital video movies with Flash MX (here are a couple of examples). If you have purchased Flash 5 or Flash MX you can still use the templates that we have prepared in Flash 4. Though Flash 4 is no longer available from Macromedia,this version can still be obtained from me and if you haven't purchased Flash yet, licences can still be purchased through Pugh Computers in the UK. Many schools are persuaded to do this which means that students have a much more successful time learning Flash because version 4 is much more logical and easier to understand. Furthermore, the fact that we are all using the same format enables us to share and progress with our work together.

Here is the progression that we have developed at Newbury Park Primary School for Years 3-6 and then in Year 7 at Oaks Park High School.

With the experience gained from completing the above projects, students in Year 6 and 7 are ready to tackle presentations on a number of projects which use a wide variety of skills as illustrated by a Report on Glasbury, The Thames and Roding Valley, History of World War 2