maandag, november 13, 2006
Flash
Flash is a very popular delivery medium for e-learning and increasing in popularity. The obvious reason is it makes content literally more 'flashy'. It gives a visually more attractive experience and can increase interaction. Another reason, enough on its own, is that flash is an excellent compression format and sound and video delivered over the internet in flash take less bandwidth than other popular formats such as .wav, .wmv or .mp3.
Big courseware makers such as NETg/KnowledgeNet make all their new courses in flash format. Of course, students are expected to have a flash player installed on their system, but that is an assumption that holds for most part of computers nowadays. There might be some security issues with older flash content and the newer, more restrictive flash players, but all in all flash is an excellent technology e-learning.
For me, the major drawbacks are 1) search engines cannot index it so it never shows up in search results and 2) you need to by expensive tools such as Adobe/Macromedia Flash to make it and it can be quite complex. I haven't ever tried to make a flash file, but if I am going to I will use a cheap tool called SWF Quicker (http://www.sothink.com/product/swfquicker/index.htm).
Some other resource I'd like to share are:
Big courseware makers such as NETg/KnowledgeNet make all their new courses in flash format. Of course, students are expected to have a flash player installed on their system, but that is an assumption that holds for most part of computers nowadays. There might be some security issues with older flash content and the newer, more restrictive flash players, but all in all flash is an excellent technology e-learning.
For me, the major drawbacks are 1) search engines cannot index it so it never shows up in search results and 2) you need to by expensive tools such as Adobe/Macromedia Flash to make it and it can be quite complex. I haven't ever tried to make a flash file, but if I am going to I will use a cheap tool called SWF Quicker (http://www.sothink.com/product/swfquicker/index.htm).
Some other resource I'd like to share are:
- http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~cczjrt/Editor/ : beta program for making flash-based courses
- http://www.bestflashanimationsite.com/archive/educational/ : best of flash for education (Especially the Chernobyl sample go to me. The Jeruzalem museum one is also nice.)
Labels: flash
