Why Flash Animation?
The first time we taught the High School Career Challenge we taught real work projects in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It seemed like a good idea at the time… however it didn’t really interest the students. (They were bored.)
We decided to teach Adobe Flash animation. It’s exciting to tell a good story. We were building a course from scratch. What were the goals for this class? How did we approach the topic? What skill were assessed?
Goals for the High School Challenge
Our goal, as instructors, was to evaluate the student’s ability to learn complex software that involved editing many objects on different layers. Could the students follow our directions? Could they repeat these steps in the next lesson and add more?
Another goal was to work together. The students designed the banner ads as a team. Ideas were discussed, listed, and selected by voting. For students with Autism, it was often challenging to speak in class and share ideas. We didn’t insist on participation, but almost every student did each year. This seemed to surprise parents more than anything, that the students succeeded, they worked together and created some very clever animations.
Skills Taught
Certification Skills Taught -Elizabeth Nofs
- College Readiness: work with an online Learning Management System (LMS)
- Work skills: GDrive, eMail, Calendar and Reminders (Tasks)
Animation Skills Taught – Alex Sergay
- 12 principals of animation
- Classic animation tweens, shape and motion animation tweens, key frame animation, lip sync, sound and text.
