In light of teacher appreciation week, I would like to give a shout out to all my favorite teachers:

• Mrs. Kuhlman, the best Kindergarten teacher ever. Okay sure, she was my only Kindergarten teacher, but the mere fact that I still remember her name, carpet time, and snack time (I can taste the graham crackers as I write this) shows how much of an influence she had on me
• Ms. Hoff, my 3rd grade teacher who welcomed us to a new school (they converted our elementary school to a middle school)
• Mr. Harris who always grew his beard out and recited the Gettysburg address
• Mr. McChesney who made science so much fun with his Van de Graaff Generator
• Mrs. Najarian who was as tough as nails but taught me English like no other
• Mrs. Sears who introduced me to video production
• Ms. McKinney-Wain, my English and Creative Writing teacher who humored my fictional oddities
• Mr. Curtis, my Physics and Astronomy teacher, whose sneeze could blow your hat off. His physics tests were so rigorous, we were happy to get 60/100
• Mr. Camwell, the funniest teacher I ever had. He gave us such tough tests that college was a breeze after his preparation
• Mrs. Fangman my biology and anatomy and physiology teacher who loved her subject so much, we all loved it too
• Professor Archer, my Core 150 professor who encouraged me to take his Jan. term class at Whitworth where I read a minimum of 100 pages a day (turning me into an English major)
• Professor Oakland, whose primary assignment on the French study tour was to find a cafe for me to call my own and invite him to a cappuccino
• Mr. Kilburg who accepted me into the MAT program at George Fox and made every “lecture” (they felt more like workshops) a fascinating sort of recursive experience where I wasn’t sure whether I should pay more attention to how he was teaching or pay more attention to what he was teaching
• My uncle, Larry, a band teacher whom I never had but was always proud to have as an uncle
• My mom, a former pre-school teacher who passed on the teaching legacy to me

Before I post all the files, I want to thank all who attended my workshop. We gathered quite the range of experience. I had so much fun, and I appreciated the input you gave. I hope you take more SuperQuest courses in the future.

Here you go folks!

Flash Files

These are the source files (.fla), shockwave movies (.swf), web pages (.html), & necessary JavaScript (.js) to both edit and post animations. They are all zipped, so you will need to save them (right-click > Save Target As…) and then extract the zipped files.

• Flash-driven Website Files – here are all the files I used to create the flash-driven website:
  • the Flash CS3 source file (lost.fla)
  • the style sheet (styles.css)
  • the xml files
  • the graphics (you’ll note I added extra images since the class ended). Note: I used the <img> tag in the xml files to show them
• Image Scroller Files - Image Gallery
• Simple Frame by Frame Animation - me, talking to myself
• Simple Motion Guide Animation - just a box moving on a loop
• Simple Spotlight Mask - this was the spotlight of the image of the Golden Gate Bridge
• Spotlight Mask - this was the night-time forest spotlight

PowerPoints

• Flash-driven Websites Saved My Life
• Flash Animations in a Nutshell
• XHTML Tags

Due to popular workshop demand, I have added a copy of the Photoshop assignments that I gave my students last semester. I’ve linked to a pdf version of my Photoshop assignments here.

Note the following ideas:

• A great way to start a web design class is to start with Photoshop – that way you wait to introduce the core knowledge of HTML until after the drop-date, and you minimize having 1 or 2 students arriving for the first time when the rest of the class has moved on to images and tables
• The sooner you get your students learning independently, the better – my favorite moments in my web design class happen that by the time I get around to answering a student’s question, they tell me, “never mind; I figured it out.” – I could give my students a web page, or I could teach them how to code.
• Encourage students to teach themselves (and each other) – this is pretty much the same as the previous note. I regularly assign tutorials to my students. You’ll note that I have one assignment where everyone does the same tutorial, and the rest of the tutorials, I encourage students to find one on their own (one that interests them). Note the following:
  • Make them follow the tutorial, but make them change the shape, color, text – to prove that they followed the tutorial and didn’t just copy an image of the final result
  • You might want them to write a review of the tutorial – not all tutorials are well-written, and not all tutorials are complete