Niels, at Adobe we currently actively investigate how we can support education in a better way when it comes to RIA development education - for sure we agree on the need for it. One of the challenges we have is related to a point you already made; ‘traveling’ to all educational institutions to do 1-hour workshops (or even half-day workshops). It would make wide-spreading of the Adobe evangelism a tough job and we currently don’t have the recourses to do that.

Personally I think our support should be something more concrete then ‘just’ onsite workshops, but it should also be something that is easier to replicate for Adobe and easier to integrate into an educational program for teachers (I mean, how can students really leverage what is presented during a workshop).

So I have been brainstorming about other ways in which we can potentially support you and would love to get your feedback (and maybe also from your teachers). Obviously, the traveling issue can be solved by using Adobe Connect (Macromedia Breeze) in some situations. On the other hand I wonder how Adobe can contribute learning materials to teachers; what would students and teachers need? Sample applications, slides, building blocks, books? And in which form, etc etc. I think we can also help educational institutions to get in touch with companies that develop RIA themselves.

If you have any concrete ideas, or know any organisations that could help us or that we should talk to, please let us know (either on the EMEA RIA blog, my blog, by email or even phone).

Waldo
Adobe

Hi Waldo,

The ideas you enumerate are great. Breeze (live) presentations would solve the distance problem. In our school we use wiki’s to spread our knowledge. Maybe we could build an educational adobe wiki, where universities can post their knowledge (like college presentations, code samples and products).

Adobe could also organise competitions between different universities, where adobe gives an assignment and also the use of some resources like a Flash Media Server 2 and/or Flex Data Services. When succesful these products also can be shown in the showcase of Adobe. Give students a chance to showcase their work to the world.

Adobe partners can also give presentations about the way they work, give workshops and give feedback on the students products.

But it would be a great idea to brainstorm with Adobe and some other universities about this subject. I’ll ask my fellow students, if they could also write a blog post, or give a comment and spread their ideas.

Thank you for you interests in our blogs. We really appreciate this!

I also posted some suggestions on my blog on how to improve the collaboration between Adobe and students learning Flex. link

[…] Related posts: Niels Bruin: The North Netherlands Web 2.0 / RIA scene is gaining interest Gerben Robijn: The North Netherlands Web 2.0, RIA scene 1 Views |   |  print |  del.icio.us |  Annotate this page […]

Thanks Niels and Wietse, great feedback. Maybe Raymond will also come up with some cool ideas. Give me at least 2 months to try to get the hands together, internally at Adobe, and let’s see where we can take this.

Regarding collaboration with other universities, if there is a organizational body that allows for this please let me know.

BTW: are you familiar with the http://www.generation-next.nl initiative?

[…] While I was hibernating for the last month, there was a lot of discussion on weblogs relating to the minor about the Ria scene in the North Netherlands. Niels Bruin stated that he thinks companies can support eco-systems like this and education in general more(link). This spawned a discussion on how this can be done (see comments on the original post) […]

[…] Mike Downey! Waldo will also show a sneak preview of Flex 3. So I hope everybody (especially the North Netherlands Web 2.0 / RIA scene) will join me in this event. I will put on my red Apollo t-shirt so everybody will recognise me […]