Thus far, the Flash lessons in Flash Professional 8 Revealed have been extremely manageable, even ActionScript. Although I never solved the problem of cetain sound bytes not actually making a sound, everything has been running smoothly. There were a couple of times I was working through a lesson and the effect didn't actually work, but going back and starting over always fixed the problem.

My biggest concern in understanding how to apply all of the lessons to my own project. Although I feel like my project idea is fairly solid at this point, the idea of starting with a completely blank slate, after all of these tutorials that usually began with a little material already on the screen, is a little intimidating.

I have been working on collecting graphics from Google Images. Because I chose art pieces from the Louvre that are very famous, and the Louvre allows photos inside, its be extremely easy to get a variety of angles, which is what I think I will need in order to do a "close looking" at different artistic elements, as well as keep the program interesting. The other thing I was considering was applying the lessons that my program teaches using 3 art pieces to other art pieces during the review and/or final quiz.

Project Goal:

The goal of this brief instruction is to teach museum visitors how to look at sculptures in a museum in a critical manner (I am using the Louvre for my museum but the techniques I use are applicable to any museum).
Learning objectives:
1. Museum visitors will be able to describe ways color can be used in a sculpture.
2. Museum visitors will be able to identify ways shape can be used in a sculpture.
3. Museum visitors will be able to identify ways texture can be used in a sculpture.

Student Description:

The students of this program will be an international body of adult visitors to the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Despite museums’ intention of being educational facilities, a commonly known statistic in the museum field claims that, on average at most museums, visitors spend approximately 3 seconds with each object they see. However, looking at a work of art in a critical and educational way requires substantially more than 3 seconds.

Most people that visit the Louvre are tourists that have little to no formal instruction on how to look at a work of art in a critical manner; if they did have formal instruction in art, it is likely that it was during their youth and has not been a common practice since (unless they have pursued a career in the arts). Thus, the students of this program are currently incapable of looking at a work of art in a critical manner and are in need of basic instruction and practice of looking at a work of art in a critical manner.

As tourists, many visitors to the Louvre see looking at a famous work of art as simply a photo-taking opportunity, rather than as an educational experience. In other words, they have a very simplified understanding of objects that are actually very complex. Thus, they are in need of instruction that takes complex ideas and simplifies them to the point that they are understandable to the general public and yet are still educational.

Finally, the students of this program are also informal learners, as they are most likely visiting the museum as a leisure activity. Thus, they will require the ability to make choices throughout the program, and they will require a program that is interesting.

Proposed Strategy:

This instructional Flash program will teach museum visitors different elements of art to think about when they are looking at a sculpture. An object-based learning technique will be used to do this by using thee specific works of art in the Louvre to teach three specific art elements. The three art objects will be among the more famous pieces in the museum’s collection because tourists in need of this program are likely to visit the most famous works of art in the museum. There will be 3 kiosks containing the same program, each located next to one of the art objects featured in the program. The three art objects will also be located in proximity to one another so that visitors are likely to be seeing all three of the objects during their visit to the museum.

The program itself will be interactive, beginning with a choice of which of the three art objects the visitor would like to learn about. After selecting the image of their choice, the visitor will be led to a page that describes the artistic element (texture, shape, or color) associated with that object. A definition and explanation will be provided of the artistic element, ending with an image or animation of a photograph of the featured art object morphed into a new version. The new version of the object will have the artistic element altered, to show the importance of that element to the work of art. For example, a white marble sculpture would be morphed into a green sculpture to provide a visual image of how important the color white is to the sculpture. Visitors will prompt the morphing by activating buttons in the program.

After completing the animation, the visitor will be taken back to the original screen, which also has options for a review game that reviews the information provided about the artistic elements and for a quiz of the information learned about the artistic elements.

this is my flash site ~ c'est magnifique.