Going on a Picnik - but bring your camera...

Exploring Picnik - a fabulous user-friendly photo editing website. For a computer-challenged person, such as myself, Picnik made editing photos fun because of its ease and appeal to people who may find editing photos a chore, or a waste of time. You can edit any photo for free, and make traditional or auto changes, or go as far as removing blemishes and even adding makeup or touch ups to the faces in the photo! Or you can add fun stickers or phrases to the photos to spice them up...

Check out my photo from Positano, Italy. I tweaked it only slightly by first cropping it and then changing the colors to bring out the vibrance of the blues and greens. I also enhanced to photo to darken and lighten the most important aspects featured.

As a teaching tool this can be fun to take photos of students interacting within the classroom, working on projects or taking photos of final projects. Compiling a photo album of student photos can be a great way to create a "classroom yearbook", a nice piece of memorabilia for the students - you can enhance or create silly, fun additions to the photos using Picnik. You can also use this sight in conjunction with your students, actually having them edit photos and integrating it into the topic you are working on for example if you are taking photos of completed science projects- have students edit photos as a fun way to end the lesson and then print them and hang them up in the classroom or hallway on a bulletin board to share the fun with other schoolmates!

Enjoy...

A Little Tableau Vivant Action...

Ahh, Tableau vivant. Here is a photo after a class session about digital photography, particularly Tableau vivant. Can you guess what scene this photo is depicting from a classic American story most of us would have 'read' in elementary school?! .....you guessed right, Lord of the Flies! This scene illustrates after Piggy is killed by Ralph, the island gets chaotic. Highlighting in particular the drama and how a governed society can fall apart when too many strong personalities compete for a leading position, or a 'chief'.

This activity was of particular interest to me because of the fun way that teachers can integrate technology into the classroom. I am a firm believer of incorporating drama and theatre into the classroom. I believe it is necessary to take a piece of text or reading and truly 'act it out' as if you are living it. This can work really well for social studies/history, reading, writing or poetry lesson. Also a great way to get kids out of their seats and to use those creative noggins!  

Social Studies K-4

http://www.ctcurriculum.org/list_standards.asp?taskid=&dis=SS&grade=4&disname=Social+Studies&gradename=Grades+K-4

The standard I am considering using for the course of this class and possibly for a final project is: the Historical Thinking approach

Linking different activities to different types of learning styles can link by using technologies such as YouTube videos, educational websites such as Brain Pop, etc., acting out different historical scenes and initiating dramatic role-play as well as fostering discussion to how the students feel the history may have happened based on their prior knowledge from educational activities. These theater-type activities will help visual learners as well.

Teddy Bears Go Blogging...

What a fabulous article! As a young kindergarten student, I participated in the teddy bear exchange similar to the one discussed in the article. Integrating blogging in this activity is a wonderful way to get students connected into the technology world, by using the same "old-fashioned" activities that were used to initiate communication between students, especially while they are taking the teddy bear over weekends, vacations and holiday breaks from school. This keeps kids in touch with one another and engaged in classroom communication and activities while not actually in the classroom. It also helps to ensure the kids participation and thinking about classroom activities and learning when they are not in school for a typical school day.

Reading Digital Goonies

I enjoyed reading Digital Goonies blog. As a first time blogger, and totally new to the scene, it was a fascinating first blog for me to read. I found I have a lot to learn. This new technology world is very much an online diary.

Digital Goonies blog was an array of photos which relate to a posting about a program the author has been a part of which illustrated the text written above it very nicely. The next few postings were things the blogger wanted to share with followers and other lists and ideas.

Great first blog to read, sets me up with some great new ideas.

Excited to start Blogging for Education!

Test!