Uses in the classroom
Although there’s a tendency to think of the uses of
Photoshop as a topic that only belongs in a computer graphics class (or worse,
a computer science class) the learning outcomes that are inherent to a
Photoshop like activity are applicable to many learning audiences of varying
topic and age range. To illustrate this process, I’d like to talk about a
two-part lesson on computer graphics for a typical 6th grade English
class.
Everyone hates poetry…especially when you’re young…I can hear
the students groaning every time the word poetry comes up. Anyway, to make this
daunting task of understanding classical poems more palatable, I’ve seen great
success with letting the students act them out and film scenes using iMovie. An
iPad is the perfect companion to this assignment because it allows the students
to film, edit and make music on one device. However, before we start working
with iMovie, a brief introduction assignment on animated gifs similar to the
deliverable I’ve posted to my blog will teach the students how to modify moving
pictures frame by frame, and pay close attention to small details in a very
controlled setting. For this activity the students would individually create an
animated GIF, in which a ball bounces around the screen or a rocket ship
crashes into the ground, or something very small. This would allow the students
to individually get some animation experience and to have a lesson on applying
technical concepts before moving on to a larger task.
This type of activity is super easy to apply to Bloom, in
that the lesson would discuss things like color, smoothness and attention to
detail. The students would then go and create animated GIF’s themselves,
needing to take all the components of the lesson into account. Finally, the
animated GIF lesson itself would serve as a form of assessment and refinement,
before the students started to make larger more ambitious movie or animation
projects with iMovie, ultimately learning to understanding and finally
evaluation would take place when they start to critique the movie editing
efforts of their group members in the larger project having learned the
concepts from their own animated GIF’s.
Issues to Consider
Two types of issues that need to be managed when completing
an assignment like this need to be understood by the teacher. First, there are
a certain number of students who will become perfectionists when completing any
graphic activity. With a software program like Photoshop (THE professional tool
used by everyone from Disney to elementary school students) the possibility
exists to get beyond super detailed with your image editing. You can literally
manipulate images pixel by pixel if you so desire. The drive to create the
perfect image for an imaging assignment may be overwhelming to some students
who “need” to get it 100%, those students will run out of time and become upset
if things are not just right. The teacher can manage this, simply by being
aware of the possibility and doing some simple student monitoring.
The second issue to consider is that of expense. Adobe
products in particular are prohibitively expensive; although they often give
educational discounts and have limited versions available for schools the fact
that they’re expensive still remains. This can also be easily managed via a
strong technology in education advocate team who can lobby for additional
software funds. Also, as Stacy
discovered (kudos!) there are freeware alternatives to Photoshop such as GIMP
that work amazingly well and could be used as an alterative to the costly adobe
versions. Obviously, the teacher would not run the assignment if the software
was not available, however it remains an issue to consider.
Copyright
·
Adobe and Photoshop are trademarks of the Adobe
Corporation
·
GIMP is a GNU project and the term is licensed
under the Open Source Licensing.
·
iPad and iMovie are trademarks of the Apple
Corporation.
·
Bouncingball.gif was an original creation by Ian
Thomson using Adobe Photoshop CS5.5
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