Kind of a boring post but at school, we had some problems with our printers. Actually, the printers were fine. Teachers and students were simply printing large photo files which blocked up the printer queue. We use wireless Pharos printing, and the photo files that were usually inserted into a text document were rather large.
Photos should be resized and then inserted into a document. This may be easily done within iPhoto itself. Using Jing, our tech director created a video tutorial demonstrating how to do this. You may view this quick PD session here.
Go2Convert is a set of free web based tools that allow you to convert and resize a picture without having to install any software on your computer. It supports over 100 major image formats. Once you convert or resize an image, you can choose to copy the image’s URL or download it directly to your computer. (via SmashingApps)
Scroll half way down the page here to view other resources for Photo Imaging.
I found the video below through Free Technology For Teachers. It reminded me of a humorous previous post I made regarding the same topic, which is above. A perfect introduction.
I stumbled across the Painting & Drawing Channel, a TV show that offers tutorial videos related to well…painting and drawing. The site itself offers videos from that week but they also post their videos on YouTube. Their channel is here. I have included one video below to give you a taste.
I often create basic video tutorials for my classes. They are mainly used as a secondary “refresher” resource for students and linked via our class portal web page. What I like about making them is it saves a lot of time in the long run for both myself and my students. Parents also get an insight into what we do in the class and it helps them understand some of the elements on the rubric. If you relocate to another school, the resources also easily follow. The videos do not have to be elaborate (though efforts should be made to make them well in order to reach and appreciate a wider audience), but I myself am occasionally guilty of rushing, resulting in, well…sometimes basic stuff.
This series of photos demonstrate one process to produce a painting. I used acrylic gouache. First, layers of black tones are applied and then a layer of diluted colour is added on top. This is known as grisaille.
In this video, I used blending stumps (tortillons) and graphite to create a landscape drawing. Scumbling and smudging with these produce some nice results.
I think my next step is to get into Adobe AfterEffects, start actually using my copy of Final Cut Express and have some students produce some of these videos instead and then also get them up on iTunes.
I am making a presentation tomorrow on Creativity, Authentic Assessments and Web 2.0 tools for Japan ASCD (more on that in a future post). Before I get into those web tools, I often encounter teachers and students who are still unfamiliar with some Mac tricks and shortcuts.
MacLife’s April issue published this article. Not everything listed here may be of relevance to you but if you are “so-so” at using your Mac, you should check out numbers 3 (keyboard shortcuts), 7 (check and repair permissions), 10 (file info) and 14 (how to install more ram on your mac). Numer 3 is almost a must.
Want to learn how to make a slab plate with clay? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Sorry to the tech subscribers. Anyway, I made this video for my grade 8 students. It’s only 2min38sec. Feel free to use it as well (or correct me if you know a better way, or if I am doing it completely wrong). My other YouTube videos may be found here, but most of them are also included somewhere within this blog. If you use video in your class, I’d love to see your resources too.
Kind of a boring post but at school, we had some problems with our printers. Actually, the printers were fine. Teachers and students were simply printing large photo files which blocked up the printer queue. We use wireless Pharos printing, and the photo files that were usually inserted into a text document were rather large.
