The Graduate Manifesto of George Cassutto

There is one electronic medium that seems to be left out of our arsenal in module development, much to the detriment of the Virtual High School program. Macromedia's Flash has not been part of the course of graduate studies as we have moved from HTML through graphics and video editing to elementary JavaScript. Learning how to edit Flash is very time intensive, so there may just not be enough classroom time to show the teacher-students how to make useful Flash interactives that could be incorporated into the VHS modules.

Flash is essentially a timeline with layers placed on top of each other. Each layer can be transformed in terms of transparency, motion, or size. Flash has interactive abilities as well. Clickable buttons can cause other actions on the screen. The image below shows what the Flash editing interface looks like.

According to Donald Tapscott, author of Growing Up Digital, interactive experiences are what the digital generation of students want because it reflects what they find on the Web at large. Just make one visit to any of the major media websites and the use of Flash is clearly evident. Flash allows the usually static web interface to become more like video in texture and more like video games when participating in on-line learning. In the future, one full course should be devoted to teaching teachers the basics of Flash. If teachers want to incorporate Flash files into their teaching modules, they should be given the time to develop those skills with instruction in class and guided practice in developing the modules out of class. I think having these skills would be a positive method for using my time and improving the level of instruction. I have incorporated Flash modules into my own website for presenting information and adding a dynamic feel to what would be an otherwise static web page.

The downside is that many hours of self-taught Flash editing results in only 30 seconds to one minute of screen time. Given teachers' busy schedules, the "juice may not be worth the squeeze," so to speak, since the editing time may not bring the desired returns based on the small amount of resulting instructional product. Teachers have the option of bringing existing Flash activities to the VHS student by finding effective examples on the web and linking to those files within their modules.

Given teachers' busy schedules, the "juice may not be worth the squeeze," so to speak, since the editing time may not bring the desired returns based on the small amount of resulting instructional product.

One excellent example of the use of Flash in developing instructional material is the website for the television miniseries "Into The West," which aired on TNT during the summer of 2005. Another example of Flash can be found in the introductory page of the Cassutto Memorial Pages where family photographs were animated to create a short slide show.