This Adobe Flash Player presentation considers the finite element method applied to one-dimensional linear differential equations. It describes in detail principles of the FEM approach. For better understanding of discussed issue, it is good to become familiar with a short introduction to Linear Differential Equations (LDE). This site presents a piece of theoretical information of LDE for one-dimensional cases that is accompanied by programs written in Octave (MATLAB). Numerical codes are also part of introduction to the time-dependent LDE discussing the Weighted Residual Approach and the Taylor Series Collocation Method. The time-dependent linear differential equations are also described in the Adobe Flash Player demo.
The Adobe Flash Player demo runs very slowly that you can read all pages. However, if it seems to be too slow for you let it end and then start it again and manually navigate between pages.