Goals are Met!!

I feel that I have really and truly met my goals that I had set for myself. I am 100% addicted to Photoshop Elements and I can not wait to get home and share the pictures with my family! Even more than that I am wanting to get the program so that I may continue my editing for my family and firends. I really enjoyed learning all of the elements that go along with photoshopping. I especially like that I can get rid of imperfections in pictures! That is great!!!

I am super excited to create a classroom blog with my classroom next year. I am going to have a 4th grade Banks Blog and then add my students as different authors. Then as we have computer lab time or when they are at home, they can add to the blog and reflect on different things. I also think that it will be an awesome incentive. I can have them not only be able blog, but use so that they can only blog if they earn that reward. I know that the students will absolutely love it and they will have to earn.

As far as the photo elements, I plan on using this in school for my yearbook. I am going to be co-editor of the yearbook next year and I think that this will be a great tool for me to have!

Thanks So Much for allowing me to learn so me great and wonderful things!!

Until next time.........

Photoshop Elements

No Problem Mon!! Welcome to Jamaica!!

This is my second creation I hae made that used PhotoShop 5.0. I absolutely loved every minute of learning this program. As a matter of fact, I would like to purchase the program for my own peersonal use.

I used several steps in this picture. I started with creating a new photo album page. Then I chose to have 2 images with a soft image for the pictures. After it pulled it up, I chose the fern background that reminded me of Jamaica. The background was really beautiful but it needed just a bit more, so I added the graphic pictures in the corner. The next step I took was to crop and add my pictures into my background. The pictures were a bit to small so I had to enlarge them to make it the size that I wanted. After I was satisfied with the pictures I added some text. I just went with a darker green to go along with the filter of the background. I ended up adding an inner shadow to the text, to give it some depth.

Like I said earlier, I really really enjoyed working with this program and I can not wait to have it at home to be able to create pictures for my family and friends!

Digital Images in the Science Classroom

(This is a digital image of the mentos experiment that was conducted to learn the scientific properties the first week of school.)

Digital Images in the Science Classroom

After reading the article by Randy Bell, I have learned many things about digital imaging in a science classroom. I know that I have used my digital camera before in my classroom, but now I would really like to use it even more. I would absolutely love to get funded to have more digital cameras in my classroom for student use. Each year the district I teach for used to give teachers $250.00 for classroom use. If we are able to receive the money this year, then I may use it to buy some additional cameras for my room. This coming school year 2008/2009 I will be teaching Math and Science to two different groups of students. I plan on completely integrating the two subjects in many differnet ways. I would love to be able to use the digital cameras to take pictures of different science elements and then blow up the pictures on the smartboard that would enable the students to draw and highlight attributes that could be used for math problems and equations as well as teaching a science lesson.

I think that using a digital video would also be a great way for students to learn different science elements. This is a video below that was taken of trout swimming in the creek while in the mountains. I would love to show this to my students and have the analyze how the animals have adapted and survive in this environment.

As from the picture below, it is seen that I took my class to the National Wild Turkey Federation for a field trip. I have some digital photographs that were taken. Next year when we go, I would like for the students to have the cameras and for me to have taught them by the time of the trip, the correct ways to take pictues. This way we could create a photostory for the end of the year program or for studying reasons back in the classroom of what was learned on the field trip. Next year the students will be doing a water study of the pond water that the animals drink out of and it would be great to capture digital photos of the images that they are studying. Then we would be able to bring the field trip back to the classroom and continue what we were learning.

I am very excited about the possibilities of a "Digital Classroom".

Goals for the 1st Weekend of the Technology Class

My Top 5 Goals for this Weekend!

1. My number one goal for this weekend will be to learn more about digital imaging and how I can use it to further my knowledge with my clogging studio website.

2. My second goal will be to learn how to create a photo story and add music to it for my digital picture frame that I want to give to family and friends for gifts.

3. My third goal that I want to accomplish will be to further my knowledge of the blog postings and learn how to use them more frequently for my personal use.

4. My fourth goal is to learn more about stories and photos with powerpoint. Since I have powerpoint in my classroom I think it would be great to use with my students on the smart board.

5. My final goal for the weekend would be to complete my midterm project before I leave, that way I will not have to stress over it during my break for summer!

This is it for now, I will have more things to post later!!

Video Review

Hello everyone! This is my first blog ever! I am doing this for my Masters Class in Integrating the Arts into Teaching. I am pretty excited about having a blog, because after this class is over, I plan on erasing this stuff from class after this is over so that I may use this and connect it to my personal website for my clogging team that I own. We are the Southern Thunder Cloggers!

Anyways, for now it is back to class stuff!

Yesterday was my first day in the class for Technology in the Classroom and we had to watch a movie named Born into Brothels by Zana Briski. This was a very moving movie about a lady who moved into the brothels of India and went to capture photography of the women and how they lived. It was very eye opening to see that women were used there as strictly prostitutes. WOW!! I can not imagine living my life that way. As Zana was living with the women, to get into their lifestyle, she became really drawn into the children. The children called her Zana Auntie. She introduced groups of children to photography since they were so interested in it. It was very fascinating to watch the children learn and explore with the cameras.

I was amazed at how wonderfully the children that lived in such trash and poor surroundings were so strong and so well minded of the cameras. Their pictures were breathtaking and amazing and by the end of the movie their pictures were being seen worldwide. Zana had showings of their pictures and all of the money raised was going to to be used to profit the students that were living in the brothels. Many of the students made it into boarding schools and other schools that got them off the street and allowed them to have a better chance at living in something besides prostitution.

Now that I have seen this movie. I defintely hope to check out some more information about http://www.children-with-cameras.com/ I am very interested in sharing with others what the power of one person has done in one community. I have always believed that one person can make a difference and this movie is proof of just that.

Well I will be writing again soon! Check back for updates!