How To Deliver Content Online - version 1.2

I have spent the past couple days hammering out some issues to figure out just how I am going to be able to deliver online content to my students. I have made some breakthroughs and now have an idea how this may all come together.

My solution requires that all of my students have access to a working, updated Adobe Flash Player on their computer (either at home and/or at school), but the payoff will be increased interactivity for the students. (For example: instead of a video just playing, I can put cues in the video that will cause the video to pause and wait for student input...)

Here is a brief outline of how this will work:

First: VIDEO LESSONS - I have been able to load flash videos directly onto my www.colbysworld.net server. Even though the newer .f4v videos are not allowed on my ftp server, the older .flv files DO work. The catch is that I need to provide a video player in order to run the video directly from my web page. (When you post videos on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc, those web sites provide the video player.) The solution: use Adobe Flash Professional to build a .swf file for each video. This means that I also have to build an .html "wrapper" page for each video. (Not real tough but requires a little bit of basic html programming ability. I already built the generic file that I can just re-use for each video.)

Second: VIRTUAL LABS - I have been able to load interactive flash files onto my www.colbysworld.net server. These are .swf files that I make with Adobe Flash Builder that will allow students to perform mini-labs and hands-on tutorials. Note: So far I have only posted a couple of those silly "video games" that I made last week while I was learning Flash. Again, each file needs an html "wrapper" page just as the videos above need. (I already built the generic file for these as well.)

Third: MAIN PAGE - I will use Adobe Muse to create the main page(s) that the students will use to navigate through the material. Most of my "text" content will be delivered with Muse, along with html links to the above two other types of pages. When it is done it will look like one, seamless website.

A "prototype" of the website, with all three above elements included, is already up and running. I expect it to improve over the next year. So, if you are reading this blog entry after a couple months I hope that you are looking at a version of the page that is a bit different than described herein. (Hopefully you are not seeing a "number guessing game" or a "Time Bomb Diffusing" game by then!)

Time: 6 hours