Last Monday I bookmarked an article on ZDNet about Adobe’s new Project ROME for Education to read later. I now wish I hadn’t waited. After trying it out for the better part of an hour, I can describe Project ROME as a combination of the best elements of Glogster, Apple’s Pages, Keynote, and touch of GIMP thrown-in for good measure.

Project ROME allows users to create multimedia documents and presentations. ROME can also be used to create quizzes and to design websites. Users can build documents that include images, videos, and animations. Animations can be imported from an existing file or created from scratch within ROME.  Resizing of elements within any project in ROME is a simple matter of drag and drop resizing. Arranging elements is also a drag and drop process. Adding elements to a project in ROME is done by selecting from a large series of drop-down menus. Some parts of using ROME are quite intuitive, but as you might expect with a program that has many features, there are parts of ROME that will require you to follow a tutorial the first time you try it. Watch the video below for an overview of Project ROME.

Right now Project ROME is free, but I don’t expect it to stay free forever. ROME is available to use online and as a desktop application.

Applications for Education
As the demo template shows, Project ROME could be used to create mathematics quizzes that contain animations. You could also use ROME to create a quiz or set of discussion prompts that contain videos. ROME could be used by students to create multimedia presentations or documents.