Flash in 2012 education

This blog has ceased running solely because of lack of interest. What is here illustrates its potential.

This is not my wish. Flash, as used in my web site, is, I still believe, an excellent tool in education.
It provides a way of teaching mixed ability children so they have an exciting activity pitched at each person's level of expertise.
I have found that 30 primary school children or 24 secondary students years 7 to 9 in the UK system can have 60 minute lessons where the whole class enjoy the experience and leave the classroom feeling very positive ready for their next lesson (their behaviour even improves). It was for this reason that Flash became such a popular subject in the schools where I taught in North East London and why I was invited by several boroughs in London to run projects there. Much of this work can be seen on my web site at www.tygh.co.uk/new.html where the work of every student in many classes is demonstrated showing how successful the work was with mixed ability classes.

The reason why Flash has lost its appeal is probably for two reasons:
First because teachers feel too pressured to take it on and because it is sadly not promoted in the British National Curriculum. Conformity has led to the death of very good initiatives.
Secondly Adobe who now own the licences on Flash software do not want to promote the Flash 4 software; software that is superbly suitable for young students because of its combination of simplicity and the powerfulness of the software. Later versions have quite naturally become better suited to web site design rather than as a teaching tool. This is where Adobe believe the money making market is. I believe they are mistaken in this as if adopted in education they could be selling licences at a low fee to millions and millions of students rather than mere hundreds of thousands of licences to potential web design experts.

Both these attitudes can be challenged. First, I can still support those wanting to use Flash in education.  I have put several detailed tutorials and resources on the Internet. I can and have taught teachers all over the world from my office here in Britain using the phone - Skype in particular. Secondly I have copies of Flash 4 software that I can provide at a moderate cost - the money going straight to Adobe. I have already spent £400 to explore the legality of such a procedure  with top lawyers ( Pannone ).

I suspect that Adobe could be persuaded to market Flash 4 as an educational tool which this version is.

So over to you - I can be contacted by email : gd at tygh.co.uk or by phone - 01229 480 347 and would give all the help I could for free to those showing a sincere interest in following this up. To get on top of Flash 4 software you will require five lessons with me involving homework of about 90 minutes each time supported by phone backup of 30minutes. My experience has been that those I've taught have loved the experience and are still good friends though for various reasons not practising Flash because of an inability to introduce Flash into their teaching. Sad.