animation capability

[saha]

It would be great to have "powerpoint-like animation" of graphics, objects and text in AS2.

This feature would totally make AS2 a superb application.

[agnesacy]

I second this request!

[Margaret Allen]

It is always good to have suggestions and its certainly not my place to decide whether or not they will be included. BUT I would be interested to know why you would want this facility.

I believe the strength of ACTIVstudio and ACTIVprimary is its ability to "invite" the user in to interact with the board. The trouble with using Powerpoint is that it quickly becomes a presentation where "things" happen and the natural progression of moving text and images around on a page gets lost.

When I am teaching I like to have an idea (plan if you like) of what and where I am going, but I need to have flexibility. If the lesson goes another way then that will determine how I engage the children and how I will adapt the content.

I have seen so many lessons where Powerpoint's ability to animate has actually been more about Bill Gates' ability than about the content!

Excuse me while I remove my soap box ;)

[Rob Radcliffe]

And AS2 does have the Flipchart Recorder, which is great for creating a little animation sequence you can link to from your main flipchart - a bit different from PowerPoint, but when the children use it they get a good insight into how the animation process works too!

Using PPT in combination with AS2 is also an idea. As most people have PPT it would probably redundant to add such features to AS2, which as Margaret says is more about interacting with the flipcharts than creating non-interactive, albeit fancy, animations!

[djmitchella]

Another problem with animation is how to let users create it -- even something as simple as timed reveals of bits of the page requires extra UI to make it possible, and where to stop? After a point, you'd just end up reimplementing Flash..

[J Boucke]

I'm not sure this applies to this discussion, but I have recently been experimenting with the record tool in combination with the count down clock set to turn page and repeat. I plan to display a series of student created posters in a sort of automatic slide show format at parent night.

[markrobinson]

Version 2.5 features of ACTIVprimary include a full screen recorder, you can use this to record something that needs to be animated for teaching purposes, e.g. the formation of a letter, etc. and then reuse the video you have just made as a teaching animation.

Pure animation for visual presentational purposes is also the domain of other specialist applications such as FLASH, etc. and Version 2.5 includes support for FLASH animations to be embedded within the page.

There are often free online animation creators for eye-catching banners, etc:
http://www.sophistronix.com/flashg/entry.php?go=freeftb

The forthcoming Developer Edition will introduce a host of restrictors, blockers and actions that can be assigned to objects... in most cases these new interactions are intended to support true 'user interactions' as opposed to animation - such as constrain an object, alterning their properties dynamically when buttons are pressed etc.

A sample flipchart that you can use to see just some of the things that can be made with DE can be found at:
http://www.prometheanworld.com/uk/html/uksolutions/products/activstudiodev.shtml