Flash Classroom: Flash tutorials for teachers

What is it? Flash Classroom is a great site for those want to learn how to create Flash content using Adobe Flash CS3 or CS4.  Flash is a platform that allows you to create multimedia presentations, simple games and manipulate photos and videos.  Flash is really a cool tool for teachers and students to grab your audiences attention.

How can I use it in my teaching and learning? Flash classroom has a number of tutorials specifically aimed at the teacher to create interactive white board presentation content.  A simple drag and drop game or animate images and shapes.  you can simply put your older (teenagers) on this to learn the basic concepts of Flash for a great starting point.

What level of expertise is required? Look, this site is aimed at the novice or totally uninitiated Flash user and it could not be any simpler for that audience.   But remember  Flash is a computer programming language and if you are not familiar with it at all there will be a relatively steep learning curve.  My advice is to get some of your more advanced or older kids to work through some of the tutorials at the same time and share the knowledge around.

Would love to hear from anyone who has had a shot at flash classroom it is available here.

Livebrush: Brilliant free Drawing App

What is it? Livebrush is another product built on the amazing Adobe AIR platform which is offering some pretty impressive stuff at the moment in terms of multi platform applications.  Livebrush is a little bit of Corel Draw, Painter and Photoshop. I stress the term a little bit of each as they are industry standard programs in their own right and livebrush offers elements of these.

Livebrush is a free motion-based drawing tool that lets you create beautiful graphics in few strokes. The beauty of Livebrush is that you can create something amazing in no time if you are not an artistic genius.  Yet the artistic genius has plenty to explore here to.

What’s unique about Livebrush is the brush tool that responds to the speed of your mouse movements. The program also ships with a wide range of brush styles and decorative patterns to help you to create impressive drawings in no time – just select a particular style and add some random strokes to the drawing canvas.

Livebrush is as a line drawing tool on steroids. There are an overwhelming number of options available for your brush strokes including a standard set of 100 styles and decorators. Each of these can then be customised and tailored to suite your style and project.

The Ultimate Application Search Engine

Ever wanted to find an application to solve a problem for you and could not be bothered trawling through the ver confusing iTunes or Android Marketplace.  MimVi is a purpose built application search engine designed to help you find the right tool for the Job.  It has Apple, Android, Blackberry and Web Apps and is a great little tool to remember.  See it here.

Earthbrowser - Nice Google Earth Alternative on Adobe Air Platform

EarthBrowser is an innovative earth simulation that combines an easy to navigate 3 dimensional globe with real-time weather conditions and 7 day forecasts for thousands of locations. Live earthquakes, satellites, webcams, volcanoes and current cloud animations are also featured. Great educational tool, a must have for avid weather watchers! Get hold of it here.

Aviary all in one Educational Suite - Cool tools for school in the browser.

Aviary would have to be one of the most innovative software companies going around at them moment.  They have created free versions of Garageband, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator that are rich in features and run straight from the browser.  Myna - Aviary's version of Garageband is still one the most impressive pieces of web programming I have ever seen and it really gives you an insight as to what can be achieved in the browser.

They have just released an educational suite including their image editor (Photoshop wannabe, vector editor (Illustrator wannabe), Audio Recorder (Garage band Equivalent) and music creator for students as part of a specific suite.  The benefit students gain from accessing this over the traditional net is that all images as are kid friendly and you can access work they are doing.

Sign up for it here. Might be just what the creative / artistic teacher is seeking.

Livebrush - Awesome free Drawing App

What is it?  Livebrush is another product built on the amazing Adobe AIR platform which is offering some pretty amazing stuff at the moment in terms of multi platform applications.  Livebrush is a little bit of Corel Draw, Painter and Photoshop. I stress the term a little bit of each as they are industry standard programs in their own right and livebrush offers elements of these. 

Livebrush is a free motion-based drawing tool that lets you create beautiful graphics in few strokes. The beauty of Livebrush is that you can create something amazing in no time if you are not an artisitic genius.  Yet the artisitic genius has plenty to explore here to.

What’s unique about Livebrush is the brush tool that responds to the speed of your mouse movements. The program also ships with a wide range of brush styles and decorative patterns to help you to create impressive drawings in no time – just select a particular style and add some random strokes to the drawing canvas.

Livebrush is as a line drawing tool on steroids. There are an overwhelming number of options available for your brush strokes including a standard set of 100 styles and decorators. Each of these can then be customised and tailored to suite your style and project.

You control the speed, angle width and other parameters for your brush stroke. Detailed colour options are available to really enhance that drawing.

There is a Paid version of Livebrush Pro that offers a little more for $10 bucks but there is plenty in the free version for your students.

How Can I use this in the classroom?  The great thing about livebrush is that you can create something pretty amazing if you are a novice.  I would highly recommend this to high school students to create backdrops to print and web based activities and even explore some fashion opportunities of livebrush.

Anyhow livebrush is available here. Below is a video of what it can do and I would love to hear some feedback from those that have used it.



Adobe CS5 Education Solutions

Adobe is just about to release the latest version of it's productivity suite CS5 including Photoshop, Premiere, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator and numerous other multimedia and productivity tools.  This suite has been the industry standard for professional content creation for a number of years accross a multitude of fields. 

Adobe has just released a video outlining how CS5 can be integrated into education and explains some of the new features available to teachers and students. 

I am really looking forward to CS5 and will definitely test out what it has to offer and share my feedback with you.

In the meantime check out the CS5 launch site here and here are some educational links to CS5. and again

Is the HP slate what the iPad should have been?

Recently I applied for a grant to trial touch technology with my students and I was planning to purchase some iPad's and iPod's.  However today I found the HP slate which looks every bit as good as the iPad but it offers Adobe Air, Flash and Shockwave and runs natively on Windows 7 supporting all its software.  Having been disappointed with the iPad due to it's short fallings and lack of flash & Air support I may hold out for the HP Slate.

The whole lack of Flash and Air is ridiculous from all Apple products and it is purely driven by the fact that as soon as they enable it iTunes is dead as anyone can offer apps for sale and free without letting Apple get a handout from every transaction.  iTunes is not only the worst media player available on any platform for my money but also out grown itself as Apple's very obese cash cow and needs a major overhaul

Check out these videos of the HP slate below and make up your own mind.