Flash thoughts

I've come to the stunning conclusion that ... wait for it ... Flash is hard!

What this means in real terms is that I'm having a little trouble focusing on good pedagogy because I'm having such difficulty in wrestling with the software.

Right now, my draft is about 1/3rd complete, and I can already tell that it's not really any more engaging than a web page. So far, I'm not really using Flash to do anything that PowerPoint couldn't do. I feel like I'm kind of spinning my wheels here.

I have some ideas, but I'm not sure how to make them happen. One idea is to have pictures that (when the user mouses-over them), go from small pics within the stage to big pictures that fill up the stage. I'm not 100% sure how to accomplish that.

Things tend to take a lot of time to do in Flash, even simple text and picture entry, and I'm a bit worried about how I'm really going to make this "pop."