Flash + AIR on OLPC

[Carlos Nazareno]

> Nobody has stated that it can't be done. But experience shows the
> opposite correlation (and I have worked in many edu projects using
> Flash myself, some huge such as TLF's SOCCI).
>
> Maybe it's a cultural problem (ie: people who get excited with Flash
> things singing and dancing tend to build shiny stuff rather than deep
> rich stuff with "no ceiling").

Martin, how is this Flash's fault? This is a problem with the authors
creating sub-quality content or having poor source material or
terrible developers, not a problem with the platform itself. If your
educational content is poor, it's going to remain poor no matter what
platform you use.

If Flash was such a terrible platform for creating e-learning
materials, how come over 50% of the e-learning demand outsourced over
here is for Flash? (by the way, kids love shiny stuff.  it helps 'em
learn and pay attention if stuff is shiny.)

> Please change our opinion -- build something outstanding for learning
> with low barriers of entry and no ceiling :-)

There are 26,909 *FREE* Flash games on Kongregate alone -- a lot, if
not most of the really fun ones made by amateur self-taught one-man
gangs. How high a barrier of entry is that if those guys were able to
make multimedia games, something even most "real" programmers find
challenging, given that there are now free supported tools?

I don't know what you mean by ceiling.

Also, games, games, games, games, games.
If you can make education fun, kids will to learn better.

I was lucky enough to have had access to a PC in my childhood with a
number of educational games bought by my parents. Because of those
games, I was able to get a leg up on my classmates in Math, English
and creativity & lateral  thinking as opposed to my other classmates.
Because of my exposure to the PC, I also started coding BASIC games at
10 years old (starting with books from the library) and was actually
already messing around with Algebra when almost everyone else only got
exposed to it in freshman high school.

I don't think I would have been as "smart" a kid if all I had were
books, school, teachers and no educational computer games.

Moreover, think of the possibilities for OLPC if you could tap just 5%
of those Flash game developers to volunteer for edu-games.

Head over to the list of submissions to the 2009 Mochi Media +
Dictionary.com word game  contest:
http://www.mochimedia.com/contest/may09/games

There are some really great word games in there. What if we send an
invite and could get just 20 of those guys to contribute?

I admit, things are very bleak for Flash performance on the XO-1 given
the extremely high resolution (it taxes the vector rasterizing engine
because of the massive increase of pixels that have to be pushed), but
for the XO-1.5, I think the sky's the limit.

Aside from poor performance on the XO-1, what exactly is it that makes
Flash much worse than any other content-authoring platform?

-Naz

-- 
carlos nazareno
http://twitter.com/object404
http://www.object404.com
--
"if you don't like the way the world is running,
then change it instead of just complaining."