Creating Flash Animations
for the Science Classroom

by James J. Jaurez
Monday, 6/29/2009, 12:30pm–7:30pm

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Overview

This workshop will introduce science teachers to Macromedia Flash 8 as a multimedia design environment and will show them its capabilities in creating simple animations and simulations that would enhance teaching and student understanding in the science classroom. The workshop is divided into two sessions. Session 1 will introduce the Flash user interface and its various design and animation tools through small activities that will enable participants to acquire the basic skills of drawing, creating animations, importing multimedia objects, creating symbols, and exporting the product to a web page or as a standalone file. Session 2 will showcase several science-related animations that will be created throughout the session.

Objectives

Participants will be able to:
- create basic standalone and web-based animations using Flash 8.
- identify the benefits of using animations to make teaching and learning more meaningful, interesting, and fun in the K-12 science classroom.
- use Flash drawing tools, symbols, libraries, timeline, and tween animation to create animations for their science classroom.
- add simple action scripts and command buttons to control an animation and add interactivity to it.

Outline

Session 1 (8:30 – 11:30)
• Introduction to the design environment, tools, resources, and potentials of Flash animations (20 minutes)
• Hands-on activities covering the use of the user interface, the stage, drawing tools, as well saving and exporting a flash animation as a standalone or web-based animation (40 minutes)
• Creating animations using the timeline, motion and shape tweens, layers, and masks (60 minutes)
• Creating graphic, button, and movie symbols
• Working with libraries
• Importing graphics, sounds, and movies (60 minutes)
Break
Session 2 (12:30 – 3:30)
• Showcasing the different animations that will be created during this session
• Creating the animations (150 minutes + a short break)
• Antigen-Antibody reactions (key/lock)
• DNA replication
• Enzymatic reactions
• Nuclear Fission
• life cycle
• Electric Circuit (On/Off)
• Interactive labeling of images with invisible buttons
• Tsunami
• Q&A, a discussion about learning objects, and evaluation (15-20 minutes)