Stranger in a Strangeland (Week 25)

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.” ~ Robert Heinlein

Many of you haven’t realized the value of what you are giving up freely in this class by not participating. As important as the software we are learning is, it is not the most important lesson in the Mac Lab. I am trying to teach you to solve problems, to think for yourself, and to find your own answers. I will answer questions with a question. This isn’t meant to confuse you. It is meant to get you to think for yourself.

Sure there are other elective choices at Edison that are easier. Easier isn’t always better. To be successful in this new economy, you have to be willing and know how to do more than the next guy. Don’t waste your opportunity to learn something that will give you an advantage over the competition. Ignorance only hurts you.

New Media

We are moving on. You should be done with your self portrait. By the end of class on Monday your Website should be done and uploaded to the Internet. On Tuesday we will begin discussing brand identity and logo design. Information for completing the Website can be found on the New Media Projects page.

Multimedia Design

We have been learning Flash for six weeks. Many of you have squandered your time. Your attitude has prevented you from succeeding. Flash is like nothing you have ever done. It requires you to think and to pay attention to details. Two things that many of you shy away from doing, but are very important for you to be successful at as adults. You want stuff to be spoon fed to you. Somebody else to do the work for you. Somebody else to make the template. Flash isn’t a punishment, it is an opportunity to be creative. It may challenge you and that is a good thing. The creative possibilities in Flash are endless.

Some of you have been done great things already. There are a couple of new students at the semester who are doing really well in Flash. Some of you are even challenging me by trying to take Flash to the next level and I have to think about how best to solve your problems.

When starting your portfolio site here are a few things that I suggest:

• Look at the examples that I provided on the project page.
• Write down what buttons you will need and what content will be on your site. This will help you make the labels in your timeline.
• Your navigation buttons will have TWO animations. One is what happens when you roll over the button, the other what happens when the button appears on the screen. Do the rollover animation FIRST.
• Reuse/copy as much as possible. If you put code on the first button and it works, copy that code to every other button and simply change what is needed.

Video Production

The first broadcast group, your stuff is do this week. The first episode should be done Thursday. For the second group, I want your packages done next Monday and the entire episode done by Wednesday.

Let’s make the show good. This has never been done before at Edison. Other schools have been doing it for 20 years. You get the opportunity to say you started a new tradition at a school rich in tradition, but with nothing new for sometime. Set the bar high for future classes.