Summer Camp

[thom]

> In addition, I'm also preparing to co-teaching a Flash 5 course. I'll
> teach Actionscript while the other instructor, a professional graphics
> artist, teaches the art animation.  This is a long way from my teaching
> VB, C++ and Java.

Flash bears a lot of similarities to Logo because of the visuals which
attract a different sort of person in rather than screens of text. Logo
actually wasn't successful until it glommed turtle graphics on top of the
language.

The only way to start with Flash is with animation. Make the ball roll,
the eye close and the flower grow and you will have the folks who were
attracted to Flash in the first place. Actually the programmers get very
antsy with this start because their stuff will 'look' really bad next to
the artist/storyteller/musician. After the ballEyeFlower thing I usually
do a joke because a joke is a small story with sound, actually very
difficult but the kids don't know this and never complain because after
all they are just doing a joke. 

I have a very good one called Bacon&Eggs which a non-programming artist
designed who is now really good 3D game designer who has 7 games on the
Cartoon Network.  Started as an artist and became a programmer out of a
logical progression of making his art better. Artists never complain when
they can see the reason for learning a tool.

--Thom