Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Flash Animations by Interns No Longer Easy to View - Workaround Needed

If you browse articles on this blog, dating back to 2007, you'll see a variety of visualizations, like this one, that use Flash animation to communicate a strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (and since 2011 the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC). You can also see these on a different blog, focused on work interns have done to aid the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Unfortunately, as time goes on older technologies are no longer supported and that includes Adobe Flash.  To view these in the format they were created you need to download a swfplayer which you can find at this link.

I've created a video, which you can see below, to show the project for those who don't want to download the swfplayer. I've also added some comments updating status of Tutor/Mentor Connection.  To see the project shown above, and others, visit this page.


Over the next couple of weeks I plan to record all of the projects created with Flash animation so they remain available to help people understand the strategies I launched in 1994 to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach youth in all high poverty neighborhoods of a city like Chicago, and to help each program get on-going resources that help them build mentor-rich strategies that help kids who start in these programs when in elementary school, be starting jobs and careers with the help of people they met on their journey through school.

Thank You! to Interns
At the same time, I'm trying to show that students and volunteers from middle school, high school, college and non-school programs in Chicago and other cities could be creating their own visualizations of Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies and share them with leaders in their own communities who need to provide the time, talent and dollars to make mentor-rich programs available.

I've coached interns using this on-line forum on Ning.com.  I invite you to look at the conversations and work done over past years.  As with the changes in technology, Ning moved from being a free site, to a moderate-cost site to a more expensive site over the past few years.  I've not been able to generate consistent revenue to support the Tutor/Mentor Connection via my current Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC structure, so don't know if I will be able to continue the Ning site past this coming year.  The annual fee for 2017-18 is $600. If you'd like to help pay that fee, use the PayPal button on my personal "gofundme" page to send a contribution.

If you're a student, volunteer or educator who might want to help with this work, introduce yourselve via the comment box or connect with me on Twitter or Facebook.

No comments: