exploring photoshop

this week has been great! we had more and more time to slow down and really dig in to photoshop. our assignment was to create a halloween party invitation, or other such classroom visual. i chose to create mine as an invitation to a fall social for my class.

it was hard. i am not creative or crafty by any stretch of the imagination, and learning photoshop is like learning a new language. but i think my invitation turned out pretty good-looking. it was a fun assignment.

i think learning photoshop is very valuable for teachers. in my field i am going to be creating a lot of visuals; posters, diagrams, fliers, etc, and i think that photoshop is a great program to use for such things. i think it will still take a lot of practice (for me!) but it's a good skill to learn.

photoshop week

this week we learned the basics of photoshop. on monday i think we were all a little confused about what was going on or why we needed to learn this stuff. on wednesday we had a visual worksheet, if you will, designed for us with specific instructions to get more comfortable with the various functions of photoshop. it was pretty intense.

i like photoshop, and i may use it to help prepare materials for class; posters, handouts, etc. i also think it would be interesting to have a project where my students have to work with some sort of visual, such as a cartoon diagram of the GI tract, or make up their own visual and format it in photoshop. I don't think i'll make my students use it too terribly much, though. it's a fun program but i don't think it's worth taking the time to learn how to do it in order to present curriculum. that's just my own opinion, though.

say cheese!

this week our classtime has been devoted to learning about iPhoto and Comic Life.

iPhoto is a way to organize, edit, share, and publish pictures. we had a blast playing around with it; making a slideshow and a keepsake book. (i hope you got the email!)

then we learned how to use Comic Life, a program that lets you make and share your very own comic strips. i thought it was very cool.

I like both of these programs and i think that they could both be used in the classroom. my students could do what i did: take pictures, import them to iPhoto, and make some sort of book or slideshow to do a presentation on a certain topic. comic life is great if you want to explore your creative side. for example, for a history project, students could make up their own comic strip and create one in comic life that showcases a certain event in history. what a great project! i think that would be a lot of fun.

September 4, 2009

this week in class has been pretty intense.

on monday we discussed our thoughts about the alignment theory of classroom activities. there were some good insights shared, about how teachers have to be creative and think on their toes. it's important for me as a teacher to remember that everything we do in the classroom should be geared toward my learning objectives, which should be clearly outlined for me, if not all of my students as well, to see.

on wednesday we discussed the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants and the conflict that results from the information gap. i really enjoyed reading the articles. i think that the problems included in the difference between the natives and immigrants are problems that are there for everyone to see and gripe about, but they have never really been given a name before. i like the concept of natives and immigrants, and i think that for me as a teacher, i'm going to concentrate on trying to bridge that gap between me and my digitally-native students. i think that working together can solve problems faster than working separately.

i'm glad we are getting started on some applications, like the iPhoto. we scrambled around the hallway to take pictures for a project that we'll hopefully be working on next week. i'm excited!