Are there alternatives to Flash?
I received this email yesterday:
Geoff,
Have you thought of turning your attentions to MIT's Scratch? It is a
wonderfully creative tool, it's completely free (so once fired up children
can continue work at home), has an online community and though schools that
use it see the benefits pretty quickly it has yet to take off as a key tool
for engaging children in learning using ICT.
I'd download it, try reverse engineering some of the games on the site and
play!
Dan
Dan,
It's really good to hear from you!
Having used Flash in so many different ways successfully with such a range of abilities, even with three years olds but many 5 up to 16, educationally challenged students of all types, some using a joy stick others temperamentally unstable, I have problems turning to anything else.
The price is minimal - £200 for 17 licences for a primary school for Flash 4.
It's such a Rolls Royce piece of software I can't imagine how it can be improved on.
The schools I'm still working with continue to develope new fields of use and the work using shapes and music is just scratching (?) the surface.
So why not use one piece of superb software in a multitude of different ways - far less strain on teachers who don't have to keep on learning new software but working in teams to develop and share new uses for Flash.
The problem may be that I'm far ahead of my time, I say modestly ! ! Which is what Mike Bostok tells me - and he's trying to get me to write a book!
It's the way I teach with Flash that is perhaps special - where students are put in charge of their learning and there are few barriers to what they can do as their curiosity and excitement develop as they enjoy this kind of education.
The crux of this philosophy is not training but exploring our innate wish to ask each other "Why?"
Thank you for stimulating my response. I would be very grateful to hear your comments and awaiting these. Perhaps we'll get some other reactions.
Note I'm available at any time any place to run teacher training with certain reservations - that the teachers are going to be encouraged to teach with Flash themselves in the classroom (not a club) with my support in the background!
Geoff
Geoff,
Have you thought of turning your attentions to MIT's Scratch? It is a
wonderfully creative tool, it's completely free (so once fired up children
can continue work at home), has an online community and though schools that
use it see the benefits pretty quickly it has yet to take off as a key tool
for engaging children in learning using ICT.
I'd download it, try reverse engineering some of the games on the site and
play!
Dan
Dan,
It's really good to hear from you!
Having used Flash in so many different ways successfully with such a range of abilities, even with three years olds but many 5 up to 16, educationally challenged students of all types, some using a joy stick others temperamentally unstable, I have problems turning to anything else.
The price is minimal - £200 for 17 licences for a primary school for Flash 4.
It's such a Rolls Royce piece of software I can't imagine how it can be improved on.
The schools I'm still working with continue to develope new fields of use and the work using shapes and music is just scratching (?) the surface.
So why not use one piece of superb software in a multitude of different ways - far less strain on teachers who don't have to keep on learning new software but working in teams to develop and share new uses for Flash.
The problem may be that I'm far ahead of my time, I say modestly ! ! Which is what Mike Bostok tells me - and he's trying to get me to write a book!
It's the way I teach with Flash that is perhaps special - where students are put in charge of their learning and there are few barriers to what they can do as their curiosity and excitement develop as they enjoy this kind of education.
The crux of this philosophy is not training but exploring our innate wish to ask each other "Why?"
Thank you for stimulating my response. I would be very grateful to hear your comments and awaiting these. Perhaps we'll get some other reactions.
Note I'm available at any time any place to run teacher training with certain reservations - that the teachers are going to be encouraged to teach with Flash themselves in the classroom (not a club) with my support in the background!
Geoff
posted by Geoff Dellow at
13:18
1 Comments
