A little background...
I am an Instructor of Computer Science at McHenry County College. I currently teach programming, microsoft office, and web design classes. I have both taken and taught classes online. (I recieved my masters degree entirely online through Capella University)
I mention this because I will be blogging a bit about my new interest - video game programming.
I am working on bringing in some video game programming and design courses to MCC, and within the next two years I hope to have a couple of certificates and a degree approved by the state.
We will be working closely with local high schools, offering classes for dual credit (high school and college credit at the same time.) Later this summer, I will be teaching a week long summer enrichment class for high school students in Flash animation.
This fall I will be offering a basic Flash Animation class, not programming intesive, for people who would like to learn basic web animation. This will also prepare students to take the very first Video Game class that I am going to offer - Internet Game Programming.
Flash is great technology to program in. It has really come of age. Over 97 percent of computers can access Flash files, and increasing bandwidth allows for richer content.
The newest version of Flash - MX 2004 - is completely object oriented instead of being object based (Should anyone care for more detail, just ask and I will explain the difference between the two - othewise just accept the "Tim Taylor" answer of MORE POWER!)
Flash can now be used to create full fledged, internet based applications, tied to back end databases. This technology can also port over to hand held devices.
Recently, Adobe (photoshop, acrobat) bought Macromedia (Flash, Dreamweaver) which is going to provide interesting opportunities.
