March/April 2002 - Review of
Educational Uses of Macromedia Flash By: Virgil
E. Varvel Jr. Keywords: Macromedia
Flash, Shockwave, Online Education, Review, Evaluation; Exemplary;
Educational Multimedia
Entry Movies (a.k.a. skip intro pages)
Another common trend on the Web is the use of eye-catching Flash
animations as an introduction to a Web site, partly because these
animations are so easy to create. As usability and accessibility experts
will point out though, you have to be very careful when placing a
Flash animation as your main index page. Since the animation may be
difficult to navigate through for disabled individuals, it is imperative
that some method of skipping the animation and accessing a text-only
site be available. The following two examples demonstrate how Flash
can effectively be used to introduce an audience to an educational
Web site; or in these cases, a couple of educational institution Web
sites.
Tuscaloosa Consortium for Higher Education, Located on
a University of Alabama Web site but no copyright information directly
given, http://consortium.ua.edu/,
accessed March 2002.
From this page, you are given the opportunity to see the Flash animation
or skip directly to the Web site.
Several considerations make these exemplary sites. First of all, there
are still only a few educational examples out there so they almost
make it by default, but that does not mean that they are not of high
quality.
On the contrary, they take several important points into account.
These points include: giving the audience the choice of whether or
not to
view the animation (unless accessed directly from a search engine),
providing a quick and interesting metaphorical introduction to the
content of the site as a whole, and they are short with small file
sizes to
allow viewing over slower modem connections without a long wait.
