How Flash is useful...

Flash gives a web designer tremendous flexibility and freedom for designing animation in a fairly user-friendly way. While I've only scratched the surface of what the software makes possible, I can see some very apparent uses:

• Combining animation with static text - I used this sparingly in my index page animation, but Flash lets the designer combine any kind of text with animation in a truly dynamic way. You can move blocks of text around, fade text in and out, or keep the text static with animation moving around it. Using animation and movement can transform even mundane images and pieces of text into something much more eye-catching and interesting.
• Creating dynamic music players - I can already see how I can use the jukebox function in class. If I have a listening list for one of my classes, I can create a jukebox player with Flash that can be posted to a website, which students can then access at their leisure. This would have helped me this semester with my strings class, where we distributed CD's of the works the students are performing. Posting this music (abiding by fair use laws, of course) would obviate the need to make these CD's, saving time and money. Likewise, biographical information about the composers could be included and updated on the pages with the Flash player, giving the students a multifaceted view of the works they're performing.
  
• FlashPaper - I've made ample use of this feature on my site. The ability to post documents for easy viewing, without the need to download them, is tremendously useful. For my graduate portfolio at NYU, I posted four of my string orchestra compositions using the FlashPaper format. Once they were laid out in Dreamweaver, I included a MIDI file for each, so that anyone visiting that link can listen and scroll through the score online. Very useful. This function could be used in music class in many different ways: for posting scores and recordings for students to follow along with, or versions of individual parts, etc.; for displaying student work for others to see; or for displaying any class documents for that matter. Flash is a remarkable piece of software. I look forward to learning more about it this summer, and continuing to improve my site with it.